Organized Crime

St. Louis, Missouri

Paulie Leisure wanted to control St. Louis' underworld and he was prepared to kill anyone who stood in his way. In using car bombs to take out Tony Giordano protégé Sonny Spica and then Jimmy Michaels, the venerable head of the Syrian-Lebanese faction, he touched off a bloodbath known as the "Leisure War."

by Ronald J. Lawrence

Prologue

St. Louis' underworld was unique. It had three distinct, but cohesive, organized crime families. The most influential was the Mafia, controlled by the respected Anthony "Tony G" Giordano. The Syrian-Lebanese faction in south St. Louis was headed by James A. "Jimmy" Michaels Sr. Across the Mississippi River in Illinois, Art Berne ruled the third outfit. Like Giordano, Berne spoke with the authority of the Chicago Syndicate.

All three shared authority in many of the construction unions, the most important of which were Laborers' Union Locals 42, 53 and 110 in St. Louis. Not only were they a source of lucre for the mob, but whoever controlled them inherited considerable influence and power. For some time Giordano had been the overlord.

Paul John "Paulie" Leisure, a Syrian who was a suspected contract killer, headed a small dissident, but deadly, group of gangsters. He once had been close to Giordano and Michaels, but he had come to despise them. He coveted control of the St. Louis underworld and saw the Laborers' locals as an expedient to it. He already had a piece of the action, but he wanted it all. However, Giordano and Michaels stood in his way and someone had to die.

The car bomb that killed Philip J. Lucier – the president of the Continental Telephone Co. and the father of 11 children – was meant for an attorney whose clients had swindled a minor New Orleans Mafioso. The FBI misread and mishandled the case from the beginning. Subsequent federal investigations never produced a single indictment. Now, 30 yeas later, it seems certain no one will ever be charged in Lucier's tragic death.

 by Ronald J. Lawrence

"It never occurred to me to look closer. There was nothing suspicious."

- A witness

12:13 p. m. July 24, 1970 – Philip J. Lucier, president of Continental Telephone Corp., drove his black Cadillac into the parking lot of the Pierre Laclede Building, 7701 Forsyth Blvd., in the Clayton business district of suburban St. Louis. He and two telephone company vice-presidents, James Robb and James Napier, had decided on the spur of the moment to have lunch at the St. Louis Club. No one knew they were going there.

There were no empty spaces, but Lucier saw Theodore F. Schwartz, a respected attorney, back his black Lincoln Continental out of a parking stall. The two men knew each other and Schwartz waved to him. The lawyer, whose office was in the building, rarely left in his car for lunch, although this day he did.

The casual observer might not have noticed it, but, despite the difference in models, there was a similarity between Lucier's Cadillac and Schwartz' Lincoln. Not only were both black, each had a mobile telephone antenna and a four-digit license plate.

12:40 p. m. July 24, 1970 – A businessman drove slowly, looking for an empty space in the parking lot of the Pierre Laclede Building. Up ahead, he saw a man sitting behind the wheel of Lucier's black Cadillac. The door was open slightly and the man's foot dangled outside. It appeared as if he was working underneath the dashboard.

He recalled, "After a few minutes, I guessed the man was waiting for someone. Then, he looked back for a glance, pulled his foot inside, shut the door and sat there." The businessman found a space nearby. "I drove right behind the car, and then walked past it again to the building. It never occurred to me to look closer, there was nothing suspicious."

Jesse Stoneking

Before Jimmy Fratianno made ratting out mob bosses fashionable, Jesse Stoneking's testimony against St. Louis mob figures was the most damaging ever heard in a courtroom. It helped send more than 30 gangsters to prison. Stoneking was a respected and feared wise guy, a lieutenant to St. Louis Outfit boss Art Berne and an accomplished thief. When Stoneking was packed off to prison in 1981, Berne failed to take care of Stoneking's family as promised. That disloyalty quickly turned Stoneking into an FBI informant.

 by Ronald J. Lawrence

"I never thought anything about cracking a guy. So what? It was just something you had to do. I figured the guy deserved it."
- Jesse Stoneking

It was a little after 1 a.m. in 1988 when the swarthy, ruggedly handsome man stepped out onto the porch of his mother's house in north St. Louis County. The mid-summer day had been one of stifling humidity and heat. He could hear a distant rumbling of thunder and see a glimmer of lightning. Above him rain-laden clouds low on the horizon forebode an approaching storm. It was what much of Jesse Stoneking's life of 42 years had been about. One storm after another, endless crises, and of late, countless burdens that would break the wills of weaker men.

Stoneking's eyes surveyed the landscape in all directions, but they detected nothing alarming. He was in hostile territory and he only was being prudent and cautious as he had learned long ago to be. It was how one survived in his world. As he drove away, a red Buick with a white top eased out of the shadows half a block down the street behind him, its headlights off. He saw it immediately, but he was not alarmed. He increased his speed. So did the Buick. He slowed and so did it.

The City Market Kansas City, Missouri

A first-hand investigative report of the Kansas City Mafia's attempt to take over a major Kansas City entertainment area in the mid-1970s -- an effort that included bombings, extortion, and a large number of murders.

by J.J. Maloney

Every city dreams of greatness. To achieve an identity it constructs symbols (the Eiffel Tower, the St. Louis Arch), or, like New Orleans, has an area, such as the French Quarter, that assumes an identity of its own.

Traditionally Kansas City has been known as a cowtown. It was famous for its stockyards, and the biggest annual event still is the American Royal, during which journalists shake cow patties from their shoes. Kansas Citians are sensitive about that image, feeling it gives them a "hick" reputation.

They point with pride to the Country Club Plaza or Westport, but neither has ever achieved a national reputation. They promote Kansas City as the birthplace of jazz, a claim other cities dispute. They go so far as to call Kansas City the home of great barbecue; local politicians devote great amounts of space to that subject. Such is the desperation for an identity.

June 1, 2007

Vito Genovese

Tim Newark is the author of the recently published Mafia Allies: the True Story of America's Secret Alliance with the Mob (Zenith Press). This article is an adapted extract from that book.

by Tim Newark

Top Mafia Mobster Vito Genovese fled New York in 1937 and settled in with the Fascist regime in mainland Italy. When the Allies invaded Italy, he swiftly changed sides and became close to the senior Allied administration. It would take a remarkable young CID officer by the name of Orange C. Dickey to hunt him down.

October 21, 2006

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela

The sentencing of Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela brought down the world's most successful drug cartel, but did little if anything to halt the flow of drugs to the United States.

by Ron Chepesiuk

U.S. justice was finally served on Sept. 26, 2006 in a Miami court when the godfathers of the Cali Cartel, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and his brother Miguel, pled guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The plea, which came after months of intense negotiations with several U.S. agencies, marked the end of the largest running and most important investigation in U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency history.

The 67-year-old Gilberto, known as the "Chess Player' for his brilliance, and the 62-year-old Miguel, "El Senor" for his no-nonsense style of criminal management, were the co-founders of Colombia's Cali Cartel, history's biggest and most powerful drug-trafficking organization and arguably its most significant organized crime syndicate. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the brothers made billions of dollars building the cartel into the world's top supplier of cocaine. Along the way, they destroyed thousands of lives in the United States and other countries around the world distributing their poison. In the process, the brothers revolutionized the way criminals did business, and in 1994, nearly turned Colombia into a narco-democracy by almost buying the presidency with an illegal $6.2 million donation to the campaign of presidential candidate Ernesto Samper, who was eventually elected.

It is no overstatement to say that Cali Cartel succeeded in the drug trade and organized crime like no other criminal group before or since. In the early 1990s, the cartel supplied more than 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled in the United States, and was raking in between $5 and $7 billion annually, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

February 5, 2006

President Richard Nixon with Bebe Rebozo (left) and J. Edgar Hoover (center)
at the "Florida White House". Credit: National Archives.

By the time he became president in 1969, Richard Nixon had been on the giving and receiving end of major underworld favors for more than two decades. Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg.

by Don Fulsom

During the height of the Watergate scandal, Atty. Gen. John Mitchell's wife, Martha, sounded one of the first alarms, telling a reporter, ''Nixon is involved with the Mafia. The Mafia was involved in his election.''

White House officials privately urged other reporters to treat any anti-Nixon comments by Martha as the ravings of a drunken crackpot.

Time, however, has proved Mrs. Mitchell right.

Richard Nixon's earliest campaign manager and political advisor was Murray Chotiner, a chubby lawyer who specialized in defending members of the Mafia and who enjoyed dressing like them too, in a wardrobe highlighted by monogrammed white-on-white dress shirts and silk ties with jeweled stickpins. The monograms said MMC, because – perhaps to seem more impressive – he billed himself as Murray M. Chotiner, though, in reality, he lacked a middle name.

In this cigar chomping, wheeler-dealer, Nixon had found what future Nixon aide Len Garment called ''his Machiavelli – a hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that politics is war.''

When Nixon went on to the White House, both as vice president, and later as president, he took Chotiner with him as a key behind-the-scenes advisor – and for good reason. By the time he became president in 1969, thanks in large part to Murray Chotiner's contacts with such shady figures as Mafia-connected labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, and Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, Richard Nixon had been on the giving and receiving end of major underworld favors for more than two decades.