It looks like a quiet place, just steps from the traffic noise of Lake Shore Drive. It is a pleasant courtyard. The building is and always has been well kept. It has an almost serene feel.
A statue of a creature on the east corner of the building.
Yet, in one of the apartments of this courtyard building, a horrific murder took place.
The story is long, involved, and reads like a gangster saga. The "Godfather" had nothing on the Chicago mob. This is the very short version.
In 1941, Willie Bioff, a former violent pimp, and George Browne, a union thug, were indicted for shaking down the movie industry and Chicago theater chains. They took payoffs to prevent "labor problems". They were front men, bag men really, for the Chicago Outfit and New York mob controlled IATSE and film projectionist unions.*
A Chicago mobster, Nick Circella, a.k.a. Nicky Dean, was in charge of the two men. He was also indicted. Nicky Dean ran night clubs and gambling for the outfit. He was dating a woman named Estelle Carey. Ms. Carey was described as stunning. She was a 26 girl (A dice game) and hostess in Dean's Colony Club on Rush Street.
Carey would steer clients to the big game tables on the upper floors of the club. If the client was a high enough roller, she would provide other services.
After being indicted, Circella and Carey went into hiding for several months. Circella was eventually apprehended. While circumstances are unclear, the mob thought Circella would turn states evidence. Much pressure was being put on him by the Justice Department.
On the afternoon of February 2, 1943 a fire broke out in one of the apartments at 512 W. Addison. Firemen found the smoldering corpse of a woman. She was beaten, stabbed with an ice pick, and set on fire after being soaked with some kind of flammable liquid. The flesh was burned off her legs. Her hair and blood covered the floor and walls.
Police found a blackjack, ice pick, electric iron, and broken whiskey bottle. Estelle Carey owned a lot of very expensive jewelry and furs. Only two fur coats were missing. Police surmised the murder was made to look like a robbery. There had been several fur coat heists in the area recently.
After Ms. Carey was identified, police did not initially suspect organized crime was involved. There was a rule about harming wives or girlfriends of mobsters. The penalty was death.
Eventually several theories emerged, most of them pointing to the Outfit. None could ever be proven.
Nick Circella never talked.
*The account of the Estelle Carey murder is from the book, "Outfit" by Gus Russo.
The Chicago Tribune and other media often reminisce about the past history of the mob and Chicagoland, regaling in stories about mob influence in communities like Melrose Park, Cicero, Oak Brook and so many others. But you rarely read a story in the Tribune about its own ties to the Chicago Outfit. And those ties ran deep.
By Ray Hanania
Scene of the gang land murder of Alfred ‘Jake’ Lingle, newspaper reporter with gangster connections. (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)
The legendary mobster Al Capone was sent away to an 11 year prison incarceration in May of 1932 after a long battle with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and special agents who had been involved in fighting the sale of alcohol in violation of prohibition laws.
Capone was charged with income tax evasion following an investigation by the IRS, ironically the same year that prohibition was ended. He was paroled and released from prison on Nov. 16, 1939, but he spent the remaining years battling his disease, dying on January 25, 1947.
Capone’s mob influence ended with his jailing and his physical ailments. But despite Capones incarceration in 1932 and his death in 1947, the Chicago Tribune and other media have continued to publish stories about Capone’s ties to suburban communities back in the 1920s.
Nearly 100 years after Capone’s fall, the news media continues to hold Capone up as a symbol to imply government corruption lingering in many suburbs. But what the news media doesn’t like to discuss is its own ties to Organized Crime that surpassed the crimes of even Al Capone.
About a year before Capone was sent to the hoosegow, the Chicago Tribune’s pre-eminent crime beat reporter, Alfred “Jake” Lingle Jr., was just enjoying what he thought would be another leisurely stroll to the Illinois Central (IC) terminal at Randolph Street downtown.
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Al Capone’s reign as a mobster ended in 1930 and he was sent to jail in 1932. At the same time, Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle was murdered in 1930 and pulled the covers off of his close ties to Chicago’s Organized Crime. So why does the Tribune spend so much time writing about Al Capone and so little time exploring their own mobster connections?
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Al Capone. Mugshot information from Science and Society Picture Gallery: Al Capone (1899-1947), American gangster, 17 June 1931. ‘Al Capone sent to prison. This picture shows the Bertillon photographs of Capone made by the US Dept of Justice. His rogue’s gallery number is C 28169′. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lingle had much to celebrate. He had just left the old Sherman House Hotel where he had received some inside racing tips from his mobster pals about horses at Homewood, a racetrack that had opened only a few years early at 17800 S. Halsted Street. The Homewood racetrack was popular through 1977 until it burned down in a fire.
But Lingle wasn’t think about the historic racetrack, where he would often consort with prostitutes and spend the late afternoon and evening boozing it up with bookies and bagmen he knew from Chicago’s seedy streets. It was his favorite place to go. The racetrack opened in 1926 the day after his birthday on July 2, and Lingle would often brag to his journalism colleagues that the track was built as a present just for him.
He’d go there often. And he had a lot of cash to burn on horse racing longshots. Although he only earned $65 a week in salary from the Chicago Tribune, clearing about $48 a week, Lingle enjoyed a disclosed annual income of more than $60,000 and some speculated even more that was not reported to the IRS.
[Editor’s Note: $60,000 in 1930 is the equivalent of just over $840,000 in today’s dollars.]
On June 9, 1930, as Lingle walked down the marbled staircase into the station, two men, one of whom described as a tall blond haired thug, raised a .38 calibre handgun to the back of Lingle’s head and blew his brains out along the foyer’s walls.
Some argue that Lingle technically was not a true reporter, but more of a “legman,” someone who “found” stories for the Tribune editors who assigned them to writers. But it was Lingle’s reporting that was carried in the newspaper articles that carried his byline and the byline often of another crime writer. Lingle would call in his stories by telephone and they were published as he reported the information to the desk.
Lingle’s killing was reportedly ordered by Al Capone, but the truth may be that Lingle had abandoned Capone when the heat increased and he began working for Bugs Moran. Although police questioned 664 suspects — more suspects questioned than in any previous murder at the time in part because of the heightened attention Lingle’s career as a journalist had raised among an outraged public — the culprit who ordered the hit was Moran’s “greaser” Jack Zuta — a “greaser” was someone who handed out money or “greased” the palms of sources for information or favors.
Several of Zuta’s colleagues were in the station when the Chicago Tribune’s celebrated crime writer had been gunned down in front of a dozen witnesses.
Zuta fled to Wisconsin to a resort lodge that was also a frequent host to several close associates of Chicago Tribune owner Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick. McCormick was a crusading publisher when it came to international affairs and championed wars and warriors internationally. But he coveted the power of his newspaper base in Chicago and exploited reporters like Lingle, who used his ties to muscle competition from stories and popular newsstand locations.
The Zuta-Lingle connection was ironic. Zuta was Jewish and so was Lingle, until he converted to Catholicism to strengthen his ties to the mainly Catholic mafiosa in Chicago.
It’s not a story the Tribune likes to showcase. In fact, so little has been written about the seedy years of Chicago’s largest and longest surviving daily print publication or the longstanding ties that the Chicago Outfit had with some journalists over the years.
But the Lingle connection to mobster corruption peeled back a little of the onion skin that supplied the mettle to the true face of Chicago’s journalism history.
Don Denison, left, former Clark County undersheriff for Sheriff John McCarthy, and former Clark County sheriffs Ralph Lamb and Bill Young attend a Dec. 3 ceremony to rename three buildings for them at Metro’s headquarters, 400 S. Martin Luther King Blvd. (Special to View)image
By JOHN L. SMITH LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
John McCarthy lasted just one term as Clark County sheriff, but he will forever be remembered for pursuing organized crime with unprecedented gusto.
McCarthy died Monday in Texas after suffering from heart and lung disease, it was confirmed through a law enforcement website and his former undersheriff. The death was first reported locally by the Las Vegas Tribune weekly. McCarthy was 82.
“He was a wonderful man,” McCarthy’s former Undersheriff Don Denison said. “He was one of the best friends I’ve ever had, if not the best friend.”
McCarthy rose to office with an upset over longtime Sheriff Ralph Lamb, whose incumbency was fractured by a tax evasion charge and a department corruption scandal. Lamb was acquitted, but the fallout enabled McCarthy to emerge the winner.
Once in office, McCarthy shook up the department, put Kent Clifford in charge of the mob-fighting Intelligence section and developed a close working relationship with the Las Vegas office of the FBI. Together, officers and agents pursued reputed Chicago Outfit enforcer Tony Spilotro and his street crew.
“He gave Clifford free rein and said, ‘Go, get ’em,’ ” Denison recalled. “It was the end of Spilotro and his group and what have you, and overall it worked out well.”
McCarthy, considered ethical but inflexible politically, lost to John Moran in 1983. Moran served three terms.
MOVING DAY: That groan you hear is coming from some veteran detectives complaining as they move from Metro’s mother ship to area substations as part of Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s plan to decentralize the department.
Lombardo, who during the 2014 campaign advocated spreading out his troops, has been working with top staff to make the most of Metro’s personnel. That includes sending general assignment detectives closer to the field.
The moves have some veteran detectives venting and wondering whether the exercise will improve efficiency.
“It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds,” Lombardo said during a Thursday Review-Journal editorial board meeting. “It’s actually a small portion of the totality of the police department.”
The plan is to move approximately 160 officers from Metro’s headquarters at 400 S. Martin Luther King Blvd. to substations across the valley.
Lombardo kept the complaints in perspective by recalling a police adage about the temperament of officers: “Cops hate the system they work in, but God help you if you try to change it. … There’s concern. There’s change. I don’t care what organization you operate in, change is difficult.”
CONCEAL-CARRY: Conservative legislators in Carson City are pushing a plan to give out-of-staters with concealed-weapons permits “blanket reciprocity” when they visit Nevada. Lombardo doesn’t like the idea.
Although he was quick to note he is a Second Amendment advocate, the sheriff said some other states aren’t as demanding when it comes to approving concealed-weapons permits.
MARCY’S MAGIC: Family and friends will gather this morning at Christ the King Catholic Church to honor and celebrate the life of Marcy (Romeo) Humm, who died Saturday after a long cancer fight.
She was a great sister, wife, mother and grandmother, but what truly set her apart was her dedication to the establishment of the Rape Crisis Center in Southern Nevada. She was a member of the local charity’s board of directors and raised funds and awareness for more than 14 years.
The whole community can be thankful for her devotion. To honor her giving spirit, the family has asked that donations be made to the Rape Crisis Center and Nathan Adelson Hospice.
DURABLE DANE: Embattled conservative activist Tony Dane confirms his autodialing equipment recently was removed by Metro detectives, but it’s also clear that he’s back in the business of political robo-calling.
Dane, part of a group seeking the ouster of Assembly Speaker John Hambrick, is under investigation after being accused by freshman Assemblyman Chris Edwards of attempting to extort his vote for the leadership position.
ON THE BOULEVARD: Robert Durst was finally formally charged Monday in the Dec. 23, 2000, murder of writer and former Las Vegan Susan Berman. The development in the case surely came as good news to former Las Vegas author Cathy Scott, who devoted hundreds of hours researching and writing her book “Murder in Beverly Hills: The Mob-Style Execution of Susan Berman.” … Prolific travel and gambling writer and editor Deke Castleman is out with an updated and expanded edition of “Whale Hunt in the Desert: Secrets of a Vegas Superhost.” It’s the continuing saga of high-roller specialist Steve Cyr.
BOULEVARD II: Leave it to hall-of-fame casino man Michael Gaughan and all-star oddsmaker Michael “Roxy” Roxborough to come through with generous donations to the St. Baldrick’s childhood cancer research foundation. They know a good bet when they see one.
The iconic Riviera, whose previous owners have included Dean Martin, The Marx Brothers and the Chicago Outfit, it to close its doors after 60 years. (Image: topvegaspokerganes.com)
The iconic Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip will close May 4th, its management announced this week, just two weeks after it celebrates its 60th anniversary.
“The Riv,” as it is affectionately known, is one of the oldest casinos in Vegas, the ninth to be built on the Las Vegas Strip and the first high-rise building.
Its story took in everything from the Mob to the Marx Brothers; Joan Crawford hosted its opening night party on April 20th, 1955, while Liberace provided the entertainment.
However, if its glamor has faded in recent years, it is about to be snuffed out completely when the property is demolished to make way for an expansion of the Las Vegas Center and Convention Authority’s (LVCCA) Las Vegas Global Business District.
$275 Million in Debt
“With no shortage of sadness, we can confirm that our doors will close at noon on May 4, 2015,” the casino said in a new release.”
“We greatly appreciate the expressions of fondness and loyalty for ‘The Riv’ from our guests since ground first broke in 1954 and through the years. More importantly we want to acknowledge and applaud our associates who have worked to create enduring memories for all of our guests. This is what will be remembered long after the walls have come down. We look forward to making the coming weeks fun, exciting and memorable.”
The Riviera filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2010 for the second time in its history, its holding company listing $275 million in debt. The casino had suffered from a lack of foot traffic in its part of the Strip due to the demolition of its neighbors, the Stardust, The New Frontier and The Westward Ho.
The properties were knocked down to make way for new constructions, all of which were stalled by the recession, which meant that Vegas’ overstimulated tourists remained in livelier areas. The property was acquired last month by the LVCCA for $182.5 million and it is currently leased back to its operators Paragon Gaming.
1000 Jobs Lost
Paragon is the latest in a long line of operators, which has included Meyer Lansky and the Chicago Outfit, while shareholders have included Dean Martin and the aforementioned Marx Brothers.
Meanwhile, Paragon has said that its primary concern is finding employment for the casino 1,000 staff. The company is working with several agencies in Nevada to assist in the transition, it said. “We’ve had a huge response of support from local and regional gaming companies looking for experienced and well-seasoned people,” said Paragon CEO Scott Menk. “We hope to be effective in helping everybody connect.”
The new property, meanwhile, is expected to create 6,000 construction jobs, along with 6,000 more projected permanent jobs on completion.
LAS VEGAS (CN) - A defunct Mafia museum claims an auction house sold dozens of articles once owned by Sam Giancana, though the museum owns them - having bought them from the late Chicago boss's daughter. The Mafia Collection LLC sued Munari Auctions and William Woolery on Monday, in Clark County Court. The Mafia Collection claims that it warned Munari that it owned the Giancana collection, but Munari auctioned them off on Nov. 22 anyway. It's a rather tangled tale. The Mafia Collection claims in the lawsuit that it paid $23,300 to buy the artifacts from Giancana's daughter, Antoinette McDonnell, in 2009, and that has the bill of sale. It bought the articles for the now-closed Las Vegas Mob Experience, which featured artifacts from many prominent gangsters. The artifacts include photographs, court documents, furnishings and personal effects once owned by Giancana and passed on to his daughter. McDonnell initially was a paid consultant for the Las Vegas Mob Experience, which was owned and operated by Murder Inc., according to a Las Vegas Review article on a previous lawsuit 2011. The Las Vegas Mob Experience was an interactive exhibit housed in the Tropicana Las Vegas hotel and casino from 2011 to 2013. It featured artifacts from Giancana, Bugsy Siegel, Anthony Spilotro and others. Before that exhibit opened, McDonnell sued Murder Inc. and the Mafia Collection in Clark County Court. McDonnell claimed the Mafia Collection never paid her for Giancana's items and that the selling price was too low. In the present lawsuit, the Mafia Collection calls that lawsuit "frivolous," and says that a judge ruled against McDonnell in July this year and ordered her not to get rid of the artifacts in question. But McDonnell turned over the stuff to Munari Auctions, according to the lawsuit, and Munari sold some or all of them in November. The Sam Giancana Estate Auction featured 152 "lots," including photos, documents, furniture and police and coroner reports about the mobster's 1975 murder in his Chicago home, according to the auction catalogue. The Mafia Collection claims that Munari's auction was "reckless and done in circumvention of the law, court order and the directive of the artifacts' owner" and done "for the gain and profit of both McDonnell and itself." Some or all of the artifacts are housed and controlled by McDonnell's "appointed agent in fact," William R. Woolery, according to the lawsuit. Mafia Collection seeks declaratory judgment that it owns the articles, possession of it, and damages for conversion. Giancana was boss of the Chicago mob from 1957 to 1966. His alleged ties to President John F. Kennedy and the CIA are the stuff of legend. The CIA allegedly sought his help to assassinate Fidel Castro. Giancana was shot in the head in his Chicago home in 1975. He was 67
Associated Press: After befriends John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra recorded a special version of "High Hopes" as a JFK campaign jingle.
The Mafia detested the administration of John F. Kennedy as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy raised the number of mob convictions from 35 in 1960 to 288 in 1963.
But there may be a much deeper connection between the Kennedys and the mob, and legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra reportedly served as a key intermediary and whipping boy in one case.
According to "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (JFK's father) set up a meeting with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana to obtain Giancana's support for Jack Kennedy's run for the White House — thereby combining the sway of Chicago crime syndicate with that of Mayor Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine.
Hersh also reported, along with others, that Giancana also helped funnel cash to buy votes and endorsements for the West Virginia Democratic primary election in May 1960.
Sabato also writes that "when JFK began having an affair with a black-haired beauty named Judith Campbell while he was still a U.S. senator, Giancana slept with her as well, reportedly so that he would eventually have a direct link to the White House."
It turns out, according to Sabato, that Sinatra introduced Senator Kennedy to Judy Campbell and also "served as the go-between for the West Virginia primary shenanigans."
After JFK reached the White House, however, the mob boss was not welcome near the president's ear. And Sinatra was the one that ultimately paid for it.
When the Kennedys turned on Giancana once they were in the White House, Sinatra had to work hard to deflect the mobster's wrath at Sinatra on account of the Kennedys' unfaithfulness. In atonement, the singer played at Giancana's club, the Villa Venice, with his "Rat Pack" of fellow entertainers, for eight nights in a row.
Sabato notes that "Sinatra worked his way back into Giancana's good graces, but the Kennedys never did."
Here's The Rat Pack playing "Chicago" at the Villa Venice in 1962:
One Saturday in April of 1855, a large group of German immigrants assembled around the courthouse in downtown Chicago, hoping to attend a hearing at which nineteen saloonkeepers would stand before a judge for violating one of two new laws enacted by the new nativist mayor, Levi Boone, who had promised during his campaign to curb liquor consumption. One banned the sale of alcohol on Sunday, while the other mandated a three-hundred-dollar fee for a liquor license (up from fifty dollars in previous years). As constables tried to move the crowd out of the street, a tussle broke out. The Chicago Tribune fashioned the crowd as monsters. The street, it claimed, was “crowded with a multitude of the most desperate and savage characters in the city, ready for any blood, rapine or murder.” It’s true that the crowd was angry and agitated, but it was the show of force by a constable that turned the assembly into a melee, a mob against the police.
Working-class taverns were often the center of immigrant community life, especially on Sundays, the one day most workers had off, and the liquor license fees threatened to make the cost of running one too high. What the Chicago Tribune later framed as an “ordinance requiring them to close their Lager Beer Halls on the Sabbath, and restrain their Bacchanalian revels for one day,” was in practice a great challenge to leisure and to community. German and Irish immigrants quickly found their own taverns and Bierstuben raided on Sundays, and owners of establishments in immigrant neighborhoods faced arrest for not paying the higher fees. (Drinking establishments frequented by the elite, many just blocks from the city hall and courthouse, quietly broke the law without interruption.) The Germans who assembled that Saturday feared the loss of their neighborhood life—in fact, many worried that German-style lagers, brewed mostly in Wisconsin would cease be exported to Chicago entirely without a healthy collection of Bierstuben.
When the fighting broke out, as more patrolmen showed up, the crowd began retreating north, back up the street and across the Chicago river. Eight men were arrested and placed in the jail beneath the courthouse. A mob formed on the north side of the river, determined to free the eight. The mayor had the newly constructed pivot bridge of Clark street swing open, cutting off the mob on the other side of the river from the courthouse. He handed out stars to a force of temporary patrolmen. But with the police still greatly outnumbered, he called in three independent militia as well. After a few hours, and with the assembled men on either side having not dispersed, officials decided they had to briefly swing the bridge back around to relieve backed up traffic. The moment the bridge connected both sides, the mob in the north rushed over it. In the confrontation, shots rang out, shattering a window, but in the end only two deaths were recorded: one cop and the man who shot him. The militia arrived shortly after to fully clear away bystanders. Boone declared martial law, and militia patrolled the streets that night. Two cannons sat at the ready, aimed at the scene where the mob and patrols had met.
In the week that followed, some of Chicago’s most prominent figures advertised a “Law and Order” meeting to discuss ways to “preserve the public peace.” J. Young Scammon, owner of the Marine Bank and one of the financiers of Chicago’s first railroad, was elected president of the meeting. Those present advocated for the formation of a unified police force. At the time, Chicago had two sets of police. Daytime constables and night watchmen both worked part time, with roughly the same responsibilities. They were not professional defenders of the peace; they were by and large elected directly by city residents. In fact, they didn’t even have uniforms—only small star-shaped badges.
There are two origin stories for police departments in the United States. As historian Sam Mitrani notes in his book on the origins of Chicago’s police department, the earliest departments were Southern ones, organized like militaries. They came into being to control large populations of slaves. The archetype of these was in New Orleans, a uniformed and armed force called the “Gendarmerie” that briefly patrolled between 1805 and 1806. Then there were the industrial cities’ police departments, like New York City’s and London’s, which arose out of the need to control dense populations of workers in newly crowded neighborhoods. The impetus to found London’s department—the first municipal force to have men assigned to patrol neighborhoods at all times—came out of riots surrounding the return of Queen Caroline to England in 1820. Sir Robert Peel, the department’s architect and strongest advocate, modeled it almost entirely on the department he led in Dublin—one run as an explicit arm of English power over Ireland. In New York, a series of riots in 1834 and looting after the great fire of 1835 provided the spark of encouragement to professionalize and militarize a set of constables that had originally been established in 1741, after a failed slave revolt. In both the South and North, the object was at its core the same—to try and diminish the power that comes from a lot of otherwise powerless people gathering together in a space; riots and revolts, not theft and murder, were what police departments were first made to combat.
A week after the meeting, Chicago’s city council passed sweeping police reforms: night watchmen and day patrolmen would regularly trade shifts, wear uniforms, and take orders from a superintendent of police. It followed the New York City model, with armed officers organized like a military force, designed in large part to keep the urban poor from demonstrating.
In 1856, immigrant communities rallied together behind the Democratic candidate, named Thomas Dyer, defeating Boone’s effort for re-election. The Republican Chicago Tribune declared that Dyer would likely preside over “such a police as the mob which rallied in our streets after the battle would elect. What vindicators of law and order they will be let their shouts, blasphemies and orgies on the day of the ‘big drunk’ bear witness.”
That phrase, “law and order,” which seems to gesture toward all of the ideals of urban civilization, of a clean and polite city filled with obedient citizens, had circulated in discourse about urban unrest since the turn of the nineteenth century, but with the emergence of professional police forces, its cultural meaning became solidified. Since then, the phrase has remained the essential rhetorical shorthand of police advocates—it had a particularly potent moment during the Republican electoral successes in the nineteen sixties—helping sell ideas about strengthening drug laws, restoring state death penalties, building prisons, and more heavily arming officers. From their beginnings all the way to today’s black sites and armored vehicles, police forces have been haunted by a military spirit. Armed forces and law enforcement are two guns of different gauge, forged by the same maker.
