by John Buntin
Mickey immediately suspected foul play. What he didn’t yet understand was that the Dragna crew was moving to eliminate him with the assistance of his supposed friend from Cleveland, Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno.
In the world of organized crime, where loyalty is paramount, tribal segregation has long been the norm. But Mickey had always been different. His organization in Los Angeles had drawn on two disparate groups, Jews from New York (like the late, lamented Hooky Rothman) and Italians from Cleveland or New Jersey (like Joe and Fred Sica). Fratianno was supposed to be part of Mickey’s Italian Cleveland contingent. Like Mickey, Fratianno had enjoyed a long run as a holdup man. Unlike Mickey, Jimmy had had the bad luck of being arrested while shaking down a bookmaker in 1937 and shipped off to prison. When Fratianno got out of the pen in 1945, Cohen helped him move to L.A., even springing for an expensive sanitarium sojourn to help cure Fratianno’s consumption.
Far from responding gratefully to Mickey’s gestures, Fratianno drifted into the sphere of Jack Dragna and his ambitious nephew Louis Tom, both of whom chafed at the notion of a Jew running the rackets. The Dragna circle soon felt comfortable enough with Fratianno to enlist him as a conspirator in an effort to regain control of the Los Angeles underworld—by rubbing out Mickey. “The Weasel” was happy to help. Their first target was Cohen henchman Frank Niccoli, who also happened to be one of Fratianno’s old stickup buddies from Cleveland. At Dragna’s behest, Jimmy called up Niccoli and asked him to come over for a drink. He let Niccoli finish it before having him strangled. The killers then stripped off Niccoli’s clothes, stuffed the body in a mail sack, and threw it in the back of their car. A few hours later, Niccoli was interred with a sack of lime in a vineyard in Cucamonga. Niccoli’s car was then abandoned at LAX.
It took Mickey several days to realize that Niccoli was missing. But Superior Court Judge Thomas Ambrose was not impressed by Cohen’s claim that something awful had happened. The judge suspected that Niccoli had simply flown the coop. Reports that Niccoli had been sighted in Mexico filtered in. Police officers were dispatched to search for him in Texas. When Niccoli didn’t appear in court on October 3, the first day of the trial, the $50,000 Mickey had put down as bail was forfeited.
Then, on October 10, another Cohen henchman, Davey Ogul, vanished. His car turned up two days later. Again the judge rejected Mickey’s claims that foul play was involved and, when the dead man failed to present himself in court, Mickey was out another $25,000. With the police breathing down his neck, it was practically impossible to do business anyway. So on October 13 Mickey took the humiliating step of instructing his remaining henchmen to return to jail, where their safety would be guaranteed.
But where is true safety in this world? Surely not in jail. The constant attempts on his life, his miraculous escapes from death—it was enough to make a man think of Providence, for as the Psalmist said, “It is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety.”
Mickey Cohen wasn’t a religious man. But in the autumn of 1949, God came calling at 513 South Moreno in the form of an unlikely duo: Cohen wiretapper Jimmy Vaus and a charismatic young evangelist named Billy Graham.
14
The Evangelist
“He has the making of one of the greatest gospel preachers of all time.”
—the Rev. Billy Graham, commenting on Mickey Cohen
THE YEAR 1949 had been a disastrous one for Jimmy Vaus. “Happy” Meltzer’s trial and the revelations that followed had exposed him as a double agent and placed him in considerable legal peril. And so it was that driving home late one Saturday night in November, filled with mournful thoughts, listening to the original singing cowboy, radio host Stuart Hamblen, Jimmy Vaus heard something that would change his life.
“A few nights ago,” began Hamblen, “I went to the Big Tent at Washington and Hill, and after I heard Billy Graham preach, I accepted Christ as my personal Savior.” Hamblen was so committed to Jesus, he continued, that he was selling his racehorses—save for his sentimental favorite, the champion Thoroughbred El Lobo.
This was serious. Everyone who listened to Hamblen’s radio program knew he was crazy about the horses (as well as other not-strictly-religious activities such as coon-hunting and skirt-chasin’). “He meant business if he were selling his horses,” concluded Vaus.
The next day was a Sunday. Vaus went to the beach. It was foggy and cold. He dropped by Mickey Cohen’s house in Brentwood. Mickey wasn’t home. He drove down to a bar on Washington Boulevard—and then realized, with a start, that he was headed straight for the Billy Graham revival meeting.
By November 1949, everyone in Los Angeles knew about Billy Graham. One month earlier, the lantern-jawed young evangelist with the fierce blue eyes and the booming voice had arrived in town with plans to hold a series of old-fashioned tent revival meetings. The idea was quaint. The messenger wasn’t. Graham was Hollywood’s idea of what a minister should be—a six-foot, two-inch booming baritone who wore sharp, double-breasted suits and flashy ties. Nonetheless, Graham’s campaign for Christ might well have remained a modest affair but for the mysterious intervention of William Randolph Hearst. Soon after Graham arrived in town, the editors at the morning Los Angeles Examiner and the evening Herald-Express received a terse telegram from San Simeon: “Puff Graham.” The city’s largest morning tabloid responded with typical élan. Graham noticed that suddenly “reporters and cameramen were crawling all over the place.” Stories about Graham’s “Crusade for Christ” played across the front pages of the two papers for weeks, as did breathless accounts of the goings-on within what was now dubbed “the Canvas Cathedral” (“the largest revival tent in history”). Modest crowds became impassioned mobs. And so that Sunday evening Jimmy Vaus found himself squeezing onto a back bench under the big tent, one of the roughly six thousand people who’d come to hear Graham speak.
“You know,” Graham boomed through the tent, “there’s a man in this audience tonight who has heard this story many times before, and who knows this is the decision he should make…. This is your moment of decision.”
Suddenly, Vaus found himself gliding up the isle toward the platform at the front of the tent where Graham was standing. Then he was down on his knees. He left in a daze. As he was exiting the tent, a photographer’s light-bulb flashed. The next day, newspaper readers awakened to the headline WIRE-TAPPER VAUS HITS SAWDUST TRAIL.
Celebrity criminal Jimmy Vaus had been born again.
It was with some nervousness that Vaus drove over to Mickey’s house to explain his conversion. November had not been a good month for Mickey. After forfeiting bail on his disappearing gunmen, Mickey needed to be able to show more income from legitimate sources. So he announced plans to sell his haberdashery. Cohen carried it out with unusual style. A huge sign appeared in the haberdashery’s window: MICKEY COHEN QUITS! A spotlight danced across the Los Angeles sky from the doomed store, as if its closing were a movie premiere. Curious Angelenos responded by the hundreds, helping themselves to a look into Mickey’s luxurious lair (as well as a chance to purchase $25 ties at $10 prices). Vaus feared that Mickey’s mood might be bad. But when he arrived at 513 Moreno, he found the gangster in good spirits. When Vaus informed Mickey that he was “going back to the Church, back into Christianity,” Cohen responded, good-naturedly, “Well, what the hell else ya been?”
No, no, Vaus explained. “You’re not a Christian till you give your life to Lord Jesus Christ and are born again.”
Mickey was a bit unclear on the born-again thing but told Vaus “that was fine with him.” Vaus summoned his courage and plowed ahead. He intended to go straight, he told Mickey, despite the financial hardships this would entail. Cohen wished him the best of luck and offered a gift of $1,500 that he happened to have in his bedroom. Vaus declined. Now that he had resolved to walk with the Lord, he didn’t think it would be right to take such a sum from a notorious gangster. He left with only $500.
Vaus’s conversion became the talk of the city. Billy Gr
aham’s star ascended ever higher. Graham then offered Vaus a job as a junior spokesperson, essentially, someone who would accompany Graham on his crusades and testify to the power of faith. Vaus, in turn, offered Graham something enticing: the prospect of “saving” Mickey Cohen. He arranged for Graham and radio host Stuart Hamblen to stop by the Cohen residence for a visit. Cohen’s housekeeper served them hot chocolate and cookies. The men got along well. A few weeks later, Graham invited Cohen to attend a private meeting “of Hollywood personalities.” At the meeting, Graham asked people who wanted him to pray for them to hold up their hands.
“Mickey lifted his hand,” Graham later recounted, “and I am sincerely convinced that he wanted God.”
The effort to convert Mickey Cohen had begun.
BILLY GRAHAM’S PRAYERS were apparently effective. At 4:15 a.m. on February 6, 1950, the radar alarm designed by Jimmy Vaus went off. Mickey grabbed a shotgun and peeked out the front door. Seeing nothing, he went back to his wife’s bedroom. No sooner had he gotten into LaVonne’s bed than a massive explosion rocked the house. Windows throughout the neighborhood were blown out; police officers at a station three miles away felt the shock waves. When Cohen opened his eyes, his roof and most of the front of his house, including the bedroom where he normally slept, were gone. His first thought was of Tuffy (who slept beside him in an exact replica of Mickey’s bed, save for the fact that his bedcovering was monogrammed “TC” rather than “MC”). Fortunately for the terrier, he had followed Mickey to LaVonne’s bedroom that night. Police arrived to find Mickey in his bathrobe, shaking his head at his closet of ruined $300 suits.
Police later estimated that twenty-eight sticks of dynamite had been placed under the Cohen residence. Providence—or Lady Luck—seemed to be keeping a vigil over Mickey Cohen.
Three days later, the critical witness in the beating case of rapacious radio repairman Al Pearson came before the jury. Hazel Pearson was Al’s daughter-in-law; she worked in his shop and had witnessed the attack the previous spring. But instead of offering testimony that would send Mickey and his surviving henchmen to the pen, Hazel turned on her father-in-law, whom she described as a crook and a chiseler.
“I’ve never really liked the man,” Hazel told the all-female jury. One month later, Mickey Cohen was acquitted.
MICKEY COHEN wasn’t the only person toying with a conversion experience. Interim police chief William Worton was also reaching some startling conclusions about how the LAPD should operate and how it should be run. His ideas put him on a collision course with Bill Parker.
Worton had taken over as the LAPD’s emergency chief the previous July. The city charter provided for a sixty-day term, renewable once. However, when September arrived, Mayor Bowron was not ready to dispense with General Worton’s services. So the city attorney was prevailed upon to issue an opinion that allowed him to continue in office. General Worton’s “temporary” appointment was extended into the winter—and then again into the spring of 1950. If Mayor Bowron had had his druthers, it seems clear he would have simply appointed General Worton chief of police. But the city charter was explicit: The next chief of police had to come from within the department. It seemed an insuperable obstacle. But Worton was convinced that there was a way he could continue to direct the department without running afoul of the city charter. He would simply change what the chief of police did.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s organization was unusual. Everyone described General Worton as the police chief, but in fact he was not technically in charge of the department. The Police Commission was. Worton was technically the department’s “general manager.” The organizational chart clearly put him under the five-member civilian board appointed by the mayor, much as corporate CEOs answer to their companies’ boards. That, at least, was the theory. In practice, the Police Commission provided almost no direction to—much less oversight of—the department. There were a number of reasons for this. Unlike a corporate board whose members come primarily from business backgrounds similar to that of their CEOs, the police commissioners were civilians, not police professionals. As a result, they simply didn’t have the knowledge or experience to evaluate how the chief and the department were doing.
They also didn’t have the time. In addition to supervising the police department, the commission was also responsible for licensing a whole range of businesses (auto-repair shops, pawnshops, dance halls, and so forth) and approving activities (parades, public dances) that might involve the police department. This licensing task alone was enough to fully occupy the commission, which typically met one morning a week. The commission also relied almost entirely on police department personnel to conduct its investigations. Finally, even if the commission had decided to go after the department’s general manager, the chief of police enjoyed something no CEO had: civil service protection. No wonder Police Commissions often made only the barest pretense of directing the department. By the end of Chief Horrall’s tenure, the police chief no longer even met with the commission on a regular basis.
The more time General Worton spent in office, the more convinced he became that the entire system was flawed. The notion that the department answered to a board of civilians was nothing more than a polite fiction—and was exposed as such whenever the police department had something sensitive to handle, such as a brutality complaint. These were dealt with internally, by department personnel alone. This rubbed Worton the wrong way. So too did the fact that while the mayor was held to account, politically, for the conduct of the police department, he exercised only indirect influence over the department, through his appointees to the Police Commission.
A better model was needed, Worton concluded, and it wasn’t hard to find one. Police departments in New York, Chicago, and Detroit all operated under a different management structure. In those cities, the mayor appointed a single civilian commissioner or superintendent to supervise the department. This commissioner or superintendent answered to the mayor. Day-to-day police department operations were run by a top-uniformed officer—in the NYPD, the chief of department. The Marine Corps had a similar structure. There the top-uniformed officer—the commandant—ran operations but answered to a civilian, the secretary of the Navy. Worton believed that the LAPD would benefit from a similar structure.
During the fall of 1949, he fleshed out his plan for reorganizing the department. It called for a non-civil-service commissioner who would be appointed by the mayor (subject to city council approval) to a three-year term. This commissioner would be responsible for setting goals for the department and would directly run important bureaus such as internal affairs, planning and accounting, records and identification, and communications. A uniformed police chief would serve under him and direct actual law enforcement activities. Worton believed such a reorganization could be accomplished without amending the city charter. As to who this new commissioner would be, most observers assumed that the candidate Worton had in mind was himself.
Mayor Bowron liked the idea. But Worton’s plan quickly encountered opposition from powerful forces—and from at least one member of his inner circle, Bill Parker. The disciplinary system that struck Worton as ill conceived was among Parker’s proudest accomplishments. With the department’s top job once again in reach, Parker had no intention of standing aside while an outsider gutted the system he had created. He boldly criticized General Worton’s proposed reforms. He insisted that a five-member civilian Police Commission whose members were each appointed to five-year terms would be more independent and responsive to the public than a single commissioner who answered only to the mayor would be.
“You’ll get a bad city administration someday,” Parker warned.
For months, the police department had stood by meekly while Mayor Bowron extended General Worton’s emergency term of office in legally dubious ways and considered plans to unilaterally reorganize the department. Now the forces of the status quo ante counterattacked. General Worton had suggested that the department could be reorga
nized without a charter amendment. A chorus of voices arose to question this sweeping claim. Reluctantly, Mayor Bowron agreed that his acting police chief’s plan would have to be submitted to the voters for their approval. As the weeks passed, it became increasingly clear that the only person who was really enthusiastic about this idea was Worton himself. Finally Mayor Bowron gave in and announced that he’d be scheduling an examination to select a new chief in the spring of 1950. Some two dozen LAPD officers promptly announced that they would sit for the examination, among them Bill Parker.
On July 10, participants’ scores were announced. Parker placed first. Thad Brown and Roger Murdock placed a distant second and third. That same day, General Worton notified the Police Commission that he wished to step down from his position at the end of the month. Legally, Mayor Bowron could select any of the top three candidates, but everyone knew that the choice was really between the two heavyweights, Brown or Parker. Both men now attempted to rally their allies. In Parker’s case, that meant the American Legion and the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, including its new archbishop (soon to be cardinal), James Francis McIntyre. By 1948, there were 650,000 Roman Catholics in Los Angeles, and another 55,000 were arriving from across the country every year. Msgr. Thomas O’Dwyer, the top aide to Archbishop McIntyre, sent a pointed letter to Mayor Bowron, noting Parker’s many qualifications.
These were powerful backers, but Thad Brown, arguably, had even stronger allies. The LAPD had long been a strikingly Protestant organization: All but one of its previous chiefs had been Protestants. Almost all of them had also been Freemasons, as were many of the officers on the force. Brown was both. He also enjoyed the quiet support of the underworld. Thad Brown was in no way corrupt, but neither was he seen as a zealot who would attempt to eradicate the underworld altogether. The Los Angeles Times also supported Brown. In early August, it reported that three of the five Police Commissioners—clubwoman Agnes Albro, Henry Duque, and Bruno Newman—had settled on Brown. The Police Commission’s sole African American member, J. Alexander Somerville, and Irving Snyder, the commission’s Jewish member, supported Parker. Brown had the votes to become police chief—if he could keep them. For at that very moment, Agnes Albro was dying of breast cancer. Already, she was confined to bed. Brown’s supporters knew they needed to move quickly. Duque and Newman proposed to convene a meeting at Albro’s house to select Brown as chief. Parker vehemently objected. A meeting in a private residence would be illegal, he warned the commissioners, a clear violation of California’s open meeting requirements. Brown’s supporters paused. As they were debating the issue, Agnes Albro passed away.
