Tonne then bent over Sam Garrett. Garrett’s eyes were closed and blood was oozing out of his ears. There were bubbles of blood on his lips.
“Don, I’ll pay you the money,” Garrett moaned. Then he slipped into unconsciousness.
Tonne and Horvath drove King to the police precinct in their patrol car. They vouchered his gun—serial number 36222—because it had bloodstains on it and would be needed as evidence. They also confiscated King’s shoes as evidence because they, too, had specks of blood.
Under questioning at the precinct, King gave Detective Tonne his version of the events leading up to the arrest. King claimed that it was self-defense, that Garrett had threatened him, and jumped him first, in a quarrel over the unpaid gambling debt.
King insisted that Garrett threw the first blow and that he knocked Garrett down only in retaliation. He swore that while Garrett was down on the sidewalk he “tried to pull something out of his pocket,” and had tried to kick him in his testicles. King claimed that only then did he retrieve a gun out of his car to protect himself from whatever Garrett was trying to reach for in his pocket. But Garrett did not have a gun or a knife in his pocket.
When Tonne asked King what he was doing with the fully loaded gun, King swore that he was “on my way to get it registered,” when the altercation occurred. A police check showed King’s gun was unregistered.
The original police report by Detective Bob Tonne on King’s beating of Sam Garrett, written before Garrett died. The report describes the gun in King’s hand, and the last kick to Garrett’s head after Tonne ordered King to drop the gun.
King’s arrest for aggravated assault was reported the next morning in the Cleveland Plain Dealer under the headline BARETS NAB NUMBERS OPERATOR IN BEATING. The story reported, “Witnesses told police they also saw Garrett beaten with a gun.”
The story also said that Garrett was in poor condition after undergoing surgery at Lakeside Hospital. Garrett had a massive clot of blood from a brain hemorrhage. Doctors privately informed the police that his chances of survival were “1 out of 500,” and that if he lived, he would be a vegetable.
After five days in a coma, Garrett died at 11:15 A.M. on April 25. King now faced murder charges.
The autopsy report of the Cuyahoga County coroner detailed the cause of death. “The decedent came to his death as a result of: Multiple blunt impacts to head with basal skull fractures, sub-arachnoid hemorrhages, lacerations and contusions of brain, and confluent pontine hemorrhages. Homicide by assault.”
In plain English, Garrett’s brain had been broken like an egg and flooded with blood as a result of the kicks to his head and the crashing impact of his skull against the concrete sidewalk. The autopsy report showed that Garrett weighed 134 pounds. King weighed just over 240.
Two black detectives—Harry Davidson and Charles Reynolds— were placed in charge of the investigation into Garrett’s murder. According to Lieutenant Carl DeLau, the chief of the homicide unit, the six-foot-three-inch Davidson was the “smartest and toughest” of the twenty-eight detectives assigned to the homicide squad.
On April 21, 1966, Davidson and Reynolds submitted their first official report:
“Upon being informed of his constitutional rights, he [King] refused to make a statement or answer any questions pertaining to this crime.” On April 26, after Garrett died and after King had surrendered to the police in the company of his lawyer, James Willis, the two detectives reported:
Statement was obtained from King in which he tells of having a fight with the victim after the victim had grabbed him from his auto. He further relates that the victim pursued him after he had tried to walk away from him…. King was asked for a sample of his blood but refused to give same.
King was clearly laying the foundation for the same self-defense excuse that got him off when he shot Hillary Brown to death in 1954.
Lieutenant DeLau had known King well for almost fifteen years. He had arrested King for illegal gambling in 1954. He had used him as an “informal informer” against other numbers operators. On a regular basis over the years, DeLau would pay a relaxed visit to the loquacious King, engage him in small talk, and invariably King would happen to mention specific locations where betting clips and adding machines might he found. Or King might casually drop the name of a new runner, or pickup man, for a rival who had recently defected from his employ. DeLau and King enjoyed a semi-friendly cat-andmouse relationship.
By June, DeLau and his detectives had enough evidence, and King was indicted by a grand jury for second-degree murder—a charge that carried a maximum penalty of life in prison. At that point, Detectives Davidson and Reynolds had lined up four solid witnesses who had seen the one-sided beating King administered to Garrett.
After his arraignment, King was released on $2,500 bond and continued to manage his gambling operations, and indulge his lifestyle, in his routine fashion.
Now retired and silver-haired, DeLau says: “From the start, there was an awful lot of suspicious activity around the Don King murder case. Witnesses started to vanish and change their testimony. There were constant rumors that King was spreading money around on the street to reach witnesses. We heard witnesses were threatened. I know Officer Tonne was approached twice with bribe offers. The whole situation smelled bad.”
Detective Tonne, now the elected mayor of the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn Heights (population 1,400) told me in 1991 that two different intermediaries had offered him bribes to change his testimony about Don King. The first week of June, at the corner East Forty-ninth Street and Central, Tonne was in his radio car when Herman Roberson, a bail bondsman of his acquaintance, waved him over and started to talk to him.
“Bob, I hear you’re involved in the Donald King case,” Roberson began.
“That’s true, I arrested him,” Tonne explained.
“You know, if you do right, Donald can do a lot for you,” Roberson said. “Donald is a big man. He has lots of friends. You can make a lot of money…”
Tonne shut off the conversation, feeling a rush of anger.
During the week of July 18, Tonne ran into a schlock criminal attorney named Milton Firestone in the hallway of the police court. Firestone was even more explicit than the bondsman in his overture.
“You can help Donald on the issue of self-defense,” Firestone told Tonne. There’s something in this for you if you change your testimony.”
On August 2, 1966, Detective Tonne submitted an official confidential report about these two illicit approaches. One copy went to DeLau, and the other went to the Intelligence Unit of the Cleveland Police Department.
Sitting in the mayor’s office in May 1991, next to an American flag, Tonne reflected and said: “I definitely think they were trying to bribe me and fix the case. After my conversation with Milton Firestone I heard through the grapevine that I would have made at least ten thousand dollars if I changed my testimony. They wanted me to testify it was self-defense. But it wasn’t. It was a beating, not a fight. Just a vicious killing.”
As Don King’s trial date approached in February 1967, Assistant County Prosecutor Ralph Sperli, Tonne, and DeLau all felt confident they had an overwhelming case. They had a least four eyewitnesses who had given the police statements incriminating King the day after the arrest and had cooperated with prosecutors during the following weeks. But the day the trial opened, on February 21, all four had either changed their story or lost their memory or—in the case of the best witness of all—simply vanished from home.
The police were told by informants that all the witnesses had received threats from King’s men in the rackets. Three of these reluctant witnesses were in the numbers business themselves and had arrest records for illegal gambling: Charles Johnson, Daniel Howell, and Jack Owens.
The most important of the eyewitnesses was fifty-three-year-old Rosa Wrines of 9907 1/2 Cedar Avenue. She saw most of the beating and she was scheduled to testify early in the state’s case. But the week before the trial, Rosa Wrines
was not at her job. She was not at her home. And the police knew she had gotten threats.
At 3:30 A.M. on February 22, Detectives Joseph Fischbach and Clarance Jackman visited her apartment in a “night search” in a desperate effort to locate the missing witness on the night before her testimony was scheduled. A neighbor named Maude McQueen was awakened by the heavy knocking on the door of Rosa Wrines’s apartment. Ms. McQueen told the two detectives she had not seen her neighbor for the last few days.
A memo by Sergeant Mike Haney in the files of the Cleveland Police Department says that Wrines “had been run out of town by King and his men prior to the trial.”
At 11:45 A.M. on February 22, as King’s trial was in the second day, Sergeant Haney received a phone call at police headquarters from his friend and confidant Fred Mollenkoff, the city editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Mollenkoff had been a fine investigative reporter before he became city editor, and as a result of his experience in both jobs, he had developed a close working relationship with the police brass. Right after their conversation, Haney wrote the following confidential memorandum:
At about 11:45 A.M. this date received a telephone call from Fred Mollenkoff—City Editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer—in which he informed me that he had a call from an anonymous caller who gave him information regarding the Second Degree murder trial of Donald King, which is currently being tried in Criminal Court, in Room #5.
Fred Mollenkoff stated that the caller told him he had learned that Donald King was bragging in the street that he had spent $30,000 already to knock out the testimony of witnesses against him in the trial for the murder of Samuel Garrett, and that while in Houston, Texas for the Cassius Clay fights, that Donald King bet $5,000 that he would never serve a day in the penitentiary or jail for the above crime.
The informer stated he was nephew of slain man and that he did not want to see King get away with his murder; further he was thought to be a Negro from his voice. He also stated that the robbery report of Tracy Smith (Complaint #07781 dated 217-67) was a false report, and that Tracy Smith had been shot because he did not get a female witness against King to change her testimony. Tracy Smith is known to be connected with the numbers racket, and it is rumored that Donald King hangs around the shoe shine run by Tracy Smith at 1080 East 105 St.
The witness who Tracy Smith was supposed to get to change her testimony was Rosa Wrines c-f-53 9907 1/2 Cedar Ave., Apt. #4, and the informant told Mr. Mollenkoff that she had been run out of town since the shooting of Tracy Smith by Donald King and his men, and would not be available for trial against King…. The caller stated that Tracy Smith was the only [person] who could exert any influence on Rosa Wrines in this particular case and was evidently shot because he did not influence her to testify for King.
The next day, the third and last day of King’s trial, Haney wrote another memo for the files. It said:
{Ralph] Sperli stated that he had questioned Charles E. Johnson, Daniel Howell, and Jack Owens prior to putting them on the stand, and they testified other than what was in their statements, and even different than what they had said in their consultations prior to the time he put them on the stand. This ties in with information received from Fred Mollenkoff—city editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer—on Feb. 22, 1967, that King had reputedly paid out $30,000 to knock out the testimony of witnesses against him.
Ralph Sperli further stated that Rosa Wrines c-f 9907 1/2 Cedar Ave., Apt. #4, was missing and that she was a good witness for the state in this case; this also verified information received by this unit from Mollenkoff. Check with Lt. DeLau of the Homicide Unit reveals that Rosa Wrines is missing and that they have made night searches for her without success; which verifies information that she had been run out of town by King and his men prior to the trial.
Despite the threats, intimidation, money spent, and disappearing witnesses, the case against King was still compelling. Assistant County Prosecutor Ralph Sperli placed into evidence the .357 Magnum King held in his hand and pointed out Sam Garrett’s blood on the weapon. Detectives Tonne and John Horvath both testified they saw King kick the defenseless and bleeding Garrett in the head.
Don King’s arrest record in Cleveland between 1951 and 1966
Tonne told the jury King had the gun with him in the bar and did not retrieve it for self-defense from his car.
At 4:30 P.M. on February 23, the jury of eight women and four men began their deliberations. It took them only four hours to return with a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder, punishable by life in prison. Judge Hugh Corrigan suspended execution of King’s life sentence in the Ohio Penitentiary pending a motion for a new trial by King’s attorney, James Willis.
Judge Corrigan did this in the privacy of his chambers. No one was present representing the prosecutor’s office. No one was present representing the Cleveland Police Department. There was no court reporter or stenographer present. Only King’s lawyer, Jim Willis, was present.
Twenty-four years later, Homicide Detective Carl DeLau told me: “This had to be a fix. This was a serious miscarriage of justice.
“I never saw anything like this in thirty years on the Cleveland police force,” DeLau continued. “I know I wasn’t there. Bob Tonne wasn’t there. Ralph Sperli wasn’t there. There never was a proceeding in open court. There was just a docket entry, just a signature of Judge Corrigan on a piece of paper. I’m ashamed to say that Hugh Corrigan is a former Cleveland police officer.”
When Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Terence Sheridan found out what Judge Corrigan had done in secret, he wrote a front-page story, making it clear the leniency was a scandal.
On July 24, 1967, the Plain Dealer ran a headline at the top of the front page: JUDGE CUTS HOOD’S MURDER PENALTY. Below this news was the headline: VIOLENCE GRIPS DETROIT; GUARD, TANKS SUMMONED.
Sheridan’s story pointed out that Judge Corrigan himself had ruled during the trial that the charge of second-degree murder should be placed before the jury, when King’s lawyer tried to exclude it from the jury’s consideration.
Sheridan quoted from Prosecutor Ralph Sperli’s four-page brief against reducing the murder two conviction to manslaughter:
Moreover, since the question of whether or not the state established a prima facie case for the crime of second degree murder was answered by the trial court when the motion to remove the question of second degree murder from the consideration of the jury was overruled, and it now becomes a subject for the Court of Appeals, and not for a reconsideration of the trial court.
In 1976 Hugh Corrigan ran for the Court of Appeals and King arranged for Muhammad Ali to campaign for Corrigan. Nobody tried to conceal the fact that this was a contract, a favor for services rendered.
Ali recorded a commercial, played on black radio stations WABJ and WJMO, that said he was endorsing Corrigan because of what he did to help “my good friend Don King.”
The Plain Dealer quoted Corrigan as saying, “As far as I know, I’m the only candidate in the country with Ali’s endorsement. He usually doesn’t do this kind of thing, King tells me.”
In researching this book I discovered allegations that Judge Corrigan was corrupt and controlled by organized crime in the files of James Licavoli (Jack White), the late boss of the Cleveland Mafia. The document I received is dated June 1965, and is a “weekly summary airtel” to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Cleveland field office. The airtel says:
On 5/20/65 [informant’s name redacted] advised that it appears that Judge HUGH CORRIGAN, Common Pleas Court, Cleveland, Ohio, received money for a favor. The amount involved was $6,000….
Another unknown male in conversation with JACK [WHITE] told him that “I’ve seen them give the [obscene] money to CORRIGAN [Judge HUGH CORRIGAN] and they didn’t get no job from it.”
The unknown male told JACK WHITE, “if he is going to do anybody a favor from CORRIGAN [Judge Hugh Corrigan, Common Pleas Court, Cleveland, Ohio], he was go
ing to ask for SHONDOR [BIRNS]—anything he could get he was going to get for SHONDOR. He was not going to use the guy too much—he said he would get whatever he asked for him.”
The source was not clear as to the identity of the individual who has the contract with Judge CORRIGAN.
The unknown male continues telling JACK WHITE that SHONDOR will probably file “in front of CORRIGAN— CORRIGAN will probably grant him what ever he asks for…. [lnformant’s name redacted] indicated that another unknown male, believed to be MONIQUE, told JACK [WHITE] on 5/20/65, that, “I’ve seen them give the guy the money— what more can they do than give CORRIGAN money.” MONIQUE continues by indicating there was $6,000 involved.
Sam Garrett lies dying on the sidewalk in Cleveland, after Don King—one hundred pounds bigger—stomped and pistol-whipped him. Garrett’s last words were “Don, I’ll pay you the money.”
At the time of this confidential report, Licavoli was a capo. He became the Cleveland boss in 1976 when John Scalish died. Licavoli himself died in prison in 1985, at the age of eighty-one, while serving seventeen years for the bombing death of a rival mobster.
At the time the FBI’s confidential informant was reporting Judge Corrigan’s fealty to the mob, both Licavoli and King were sharing the same attorney—James Willis.
Hugh Corrigan died in 1979. When I obtained his FBI file under a Freedom of Information request, the incriminating 1965 airtel to the director was absent from the documents. I had to obtain it from Cleveland author Jim Neff, who got it while preparing his book on Jackie Presser, Mobbed Up.
Judge Corrigan’s sentence reduction was probably the turning point of Don King’s life. If the murder two conviction had not been modified, King faced life in prison, with the first eligibility for parole coming after eight and a half years. Because of Judge Corrigan’s decision, King would emerge from prison after serving three years and eleven months.
The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America Page 2
