Hall and Heady probably did not experience anything like profound remorse. That was almost certainly a moral quality neither was capable of attaining. There was a tinge of “if only” on both their parts—Heady wishing that she had been able to spend some of the ransom money on herself, if only Hall had not botched things up; Hall admitting as much himself.
Yet neither sought to appeal their sentence; both wrote letters of apology to the Greenlease family, knowing that they had nothing to gain; and they went to their deaths with a sense that each deserved their punishment. The suggestion that they took with them the secret of what happened to the ransom money leads down a labyrinth of conspiracy theories unsupported by the known evidence. The FBI, like the St. Louis and Kansas City police departments, rightly concluded that Costello, with the connivance of Shoulders, Dolan, and Hager, stole half the ransom money. The only remaining piece of the puzzle is how it was disposed of afterward.
The lives of Shoulders, Costello, Hager, and Dolan spiraled catastrophically downward in the early months of 1954, as though the missing ransom carried with it a pharaonic-like curse on anyone who touched it, or was involved in trying to hide or fence it. Dolan, testifying before a grand jury in Kansas City, said that he actually saw only one suitcase and a briefcase taken from Hall’s apartment. He said he found out only later that the second suitcase apparently had been placed in the police car at an undetermined time. Shoulders now told the authorities that he asked cabdriver Hager to carry one of the suitcases. Hager dutifully remembered that indeed he had carried a suitcase to the police car. All three fabrications were brazen ex-post-facto attempts at a coordinated cover story that would contest Hall’s version of events. If the missing ransom had been fenced to a figure far more powerful than Costello—possibly John Vitale, head of the St. Louis mob; or Buster Wortman—then all four had another reason to revise their story: They feared for their lives if the money trail led anywhere outside of the Newstead station.
On March 26, Shoulders, aged fifty-five, married his thirty-year-old landlady, June Marie George. It was his third marriage, and her second. The following month, he was sentenced to three years in prison for perjury. He later suffered a heart attack and was confined at the U.S. Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri. Two weeks earlier, Dolan had been sentenced to serve two years in prison, also for perjury.
In October 1954, ten months after Hall and Heady were executed, Costello was found shot and seriously wounded in his home. He told police he had accidentally shot himself in the left side of his chest while he was cleaning his gun—one commonly used for target practice—even though the time was 3:30 A.M., and no oil or cleaning implements were found nearby. Taken to Jewish Hospital, he subsequently told Chief of Detectives James Chapman that he had not shot himself, but refused to elaborate. He later retracted his allegation that someone had shot him, and insisted that he had wounded himself accidentally. Reporters and police officials close to the case believed that his wife, Barbara, had shot Costello during an argument.
Another incident that attracted the attention of authorities concerned some mysterious digging that occurred around Bland, Missouri, about ninety miles southwest of St. Louis, in January 1955. A man who gave his name as Allsmeyer approached a contractor’s crew at a popular truck stop restaurant, Diamonds, forty miles west of St. Louis, and offered them $160 to “excavate a basement” on some property near Bland. But once they were at the site, the stranger directed the crew in what appeared to them to be rather aimless excavation. After several hours, he halted the operation, and was seen no more. It was later learned that the digging had been done without the knowledge or consent of the landowner, and the name Allsmeyer turned out to be fictitious. Crewmembers did not see the stranger remove anything from the excavation site. One theory was that he had returned later and removed something uncovered by the digging but not noticed by the crew.
On June 5, 1955, an Indianapolis lawyer named David Probstein went missing after leaving St. Louis. In a series of articles for The Saturday Evening Post, reporter John Bartlow Martin later wrote that the disappearance of Probstein and his possible tie to the missing ransom came to light during an investigation by ex-FBI agent Walt Sheridan.
“Sheridan,” Martin wrote, “was working on the theory that Dave Probstein may have been a courier for the Greenlease money.” A few of the ransom bills turned up in August 1955, about two months after Probstein disappeared, in towns between St. Louis and Chicago. Probstein had been associated with State Cab in Indianapolis, which Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa allegedly had an interest in. He was also associated with the Alder Insurance Company, as was Allen M. Dorfman. “Dorfman,” said Martin, “is a Chicago insurance man deeply involved with Jimmy Hoffa and the son of a key figure in the Chicago underworld.” State Cab was losing money, and two Teamsters from St. Louis—Ben Saltzman and Barney Baker—went to Indianapolis to look things over. “Barney Baker’s former wife says that Baker told her he had to go to Indianapolis ‘to take care of a shyster lawyer for Jimmy Hoffa and if he did this one more job for Jimmy, he would be close [to Hoffa] forever,’ ” Martin wrote. “Baker denies this.” Baker was a close associate of both Costello and Vitale. The FBI believed that Costello fenced the money via John Vitale, according to Martin. Costello and Vitale had grown up together in the same St. Louis neighborhood, and were friends.
Some police officials and reporters close to the case gave serious credence to the Vitale connection. In one scenario, Vitale bought the money from Costello and Shoulders for ten cents on the dollar, and sent it to the casinos in Havana for it to be put back into circulation. In another scenario, the money was distributed through carnivals in the Chicago area. That explained why some of the money turned up in that part of the country.
Also in 1955, Bobby Gene Carr, the son of Coral Court owner John Carr, was found dead in the trunk of his automobile in Illinois. The cause of death was multiple knife and gunshot wounds, which suggested that he might have been tortured beforehand. The younger Carr was a Korean War veteran who had worked as a cabdriver and novelty salesman, and his murder only fueled public speculation that his father was involved in the disappearance of half the ransom money. Many people thought that the money had been stashed on the motel’s grounds, or even secreted within the walls, perhaps by Hall, Carr, or someone else.
In May 1956, a federal grand jury in Kansas City subpoenaed Mollie Baker, the divorced wife of former Teamster hooligan and ex-convict Barney Baker, who testified, “Baker told me Joe Costello got the Greenlease money.” The grand jury also subpoenaed Hager, but he refused to testify on grounds that he might incriminate himself. He was now living in Los Angeles, and receiving payments of about $200 a week from Costello. Previously, he told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat that Costello loaned him money occasionally—most recently when he needed $300 to get furniture and personal belongings out of storage in Los Angeles. Hager had remained in California, except for occasional visits to St. Louis, since early 1954. Also refusing to testify on the same grounds were Dolan, who had been released from prison in December 1955; Costello’s wife, Barbara; and John Francis Kinney, a bartender and associate of Costello.
The grand jury then began to investigate Costello’s so-called loans to Hager, and the mysterious digging in Bland. Costello refused to testify because he was under indictment on a charge of interstate transportation of firearms. Missouri police had found three revolvers in his glove compartment. Talking to reporters, he denied making regular payments to Hager since the cabdriver moved to Los Angeles, saying that he only once gave Hager $500 as a personal reward for his help in the arrest of the kidnappers, and after Hager’s union had voted to give him a $500 reward.
According to Sue Ann Wood, a reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and Judge Arthur Litz, a St. Louis magistrate, the Post-Dispatch sent court reporter John J. Hines to Los Angeles to find Hager, some years after he had moved to Los Angeles, and to offer him $25,000 in exchange for revealing all he knew about what happen
ed to the second half of the ransom. A destitute Hager was living in a rooming house when Hynes found him. After listening to the newspaper’s offer, Hager walked to a window and for several long minutes simply stared out at the street, debating with himself. Finally, he turned to Hynes and said, “I’ve told everything I know.” Costello was a far more fearsome adversary than poverty.
Curiously, Costello provided financial assistance not only to Hager, but also to Dolan and Shoulders. Ace Cab mechanics also repaired June George Shoulders’s car as necessary, always saw that it was topped up with fuel, and often furnished her with a driver when she went to visit her husband at the U.S. Medical Center in Springfield. She was also a frequent dinner guest of the Costellos. “For all his kindnesses,” wrote reporter Thomas Yarbrough in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Costello is getting to be known among investigators as ‘Godfather.’ ” (Mario Puzo’s bestseller The Godfather would not be published until 1969.)
“I help a lot of folks,” Costello explained, regarding his financial assistance of Hager, though he denied making regular payments. “I’m generous,” he said, “but not a complete idiot.”
Costello’s income, Yarbrough noted, was “not enough to enable him to throw money around recklessly, and in times past he has borrowed heavily.”
Shoulders, who had told the grand jury in Kansas City that he would never again live in St. Louis, returned there when he left prison in an ambulance as a heart patient. According to published reports, he had taken an intense interest in religion while in prison, the Bible was said to be his favorite reading material, and he had even considered entering the ministry. Dolan was now working for a local building materials firm and as an attendant at a service station.
In July 1956 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that, despite many promising leads, local and federal investigations into the missing ransom money had all come to a dead end. But the FBI had not given up. At one time, it had assigned sixty-five men to the case. “If the investigators sometimes wonder whether the thing is hopeless,” wrote Yarbrough, “they can take heart in remembering that the Brink’s robbery case—another one in which the bureau never called quits—took six years to solve.”
Only 115 of the 16,971 marked bills, or $1,690 of the missing $303,720, had by now turned up, even though the serial numbers of the missing bills were nationally circulated by the FBI three weeks after the kidnappers were caught. The first bill showed up on August 20, 1954, when an airport employee in Minot, North Dakota, checked his money against a master list to while away the solitary hours of the night and discovered that the bill matched. Most of the other bills turned up in the Chicago area. All of the recovered money was returned to the Greenlease family. Investigators now believed that virtually all of the missing $303,720 had been put into circulation.
In May 1957, Shoulders and Dolan set up a dry-cleaning shop, but the venture, D. & S. Cleaner, failed and was sold a year later.
The following month, a grand jury in St. Louis subpoenaed Dolan’s wife, Mary. She refused to answer questions on grounds that she might incriminate herself. One of the questions put to her by U.S. Attorney Forrest Boecker was: “Isn’t it a fact that sometime during the past two years you have received loans or advances from Joe Costello in the form of $100 bills?” Another was: “Isn’t it a fact that while temporarily deprived of your husband’s support that you secured employment and also received loans from friends in order to keep your household going?” Further questioning by Boecker implied that Mrs. Dolan had bought a 1955 Plymouth through a Costello fleet discount, and that earlier she had driven a car registered to Ace Cab.
In August 1958, Sandra O’Day appeared for an hour before the grand jury. She had been in jail in nearby Edwardsville, Illinois, on a warrant charging her with assault to murder Garland Mc-Garvey, and was brought to the federal building in St. Louis under a writ of habeas corpus. O’Day had shot McGarvey, a former convict and admitted former brothel owner, in his home in nearby Madison, Illinois, on April 4. Four years earlier, Buddy Lugar had been assassinated while driving near Madison on New Year’s Day. In recent months, O’Day had been working as a prostitute out of McGarvey’s house. She had also been seen entering and leaving the Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis where Wortman maintained a suite. O’Day, who claimed she shot McGarvey to prevent him from further abusing Mrs. Garvey, was acquitted in June.
According to the Post-Dispatch, O’Day “answered questions readily, repeating answers she gave to questions at a previous grand jury appearance.”
That same month, during hearings by the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field in Washington, D.C., committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy interrogated Indiana Teamster official and ex-convict Gus Zapas. Kennedy did not mention the Greenlease kidnapping in his questioning of Zapas, but he had said weeks earlier that the missing ransom money would come up during the investigation of the gangster element in unions. Specifically, according to one line of thought, mobster John Vitale had used carnivals in the Chicago area as a means to put the ransom money back into circulation, as previously noted. The Teamsters were trying to organize carnival workers at that same time.
Noting that Zapas had been arrested in Chicago on October 23, 1953, in the company of two St. Louis hoodlums, Kennedy asked Zapas: “Did you ever discuss with anyone getting rid of some hot money you had for a few cents on the dollar?” Zapas replied: “No, sir.” Kennedy: “You never discussed stolen or kidnap money?” Zapas again replied: “No.” Among the spectators sitting in the rear was Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. Zapas also denied that he had threatened to kill David Probstein, the Indianapolis lawyer who had vanished in June 1955, but he did admit he had once thrown him out of his office because he was a “pesty little fellow” that “you wanted out of the way.”
Costello also testified before the Senate subcommittee. He refused to answer Kennedy’s question about whether there was a large statue of the Virgin Mary in his home, and that hidden behind it was a .38 caliber pistol.
Former “rooming house” operator May Traynor testified that Shoulders was never on her payroll, but said that she had given him payments of about $25 at intervals of every three or four months, and that other madams had done so as well. Ironically, Shoulders, as of August 1958, was the manager of four genuine rooming houses. Early that month, he was arrested in a case involving an alleged abortion on a twenty-five-year-old woman, but charges were dismissed.
In January 1959, just days before he was scheduled to begin serving a thirty-month sentence in federal prison, Costello attempted to take his own life with a drug overdose. Costello and his codefendant, Joseph J. Cannella, an Ace Cab supervisor, had been found guilty by a jury in the U.S. District Court in St. Louis of transporting three revolvers from Illinois to Missouri in violation of the federal firearms act that prohibited a person convicted of a felony from shipping firearms interstate. Costello had served a state prison term for burglary in 1936. Costello’s wife, Barbara, worried about his growing despondency, was credited with saving his life. Realizing what he had done, she forced him to swallow coffee until he reached the hospital, where his stomach was pumped. Doctors later explained that Costello had taken one and a half times a lethal dose of a barbiturate, but the drug was contained in slow-dissolving capsules.
Another reason for Costello’s depression was a $35,000 suit filed against him and his wife the previous September by Traynor, who was also a distant relative of Barbara Costello. The retired brothel operator claimed that she was fraudulently persuaded to release a deed of trust she held on Costello’s home as security for a loan to Costello.
Father Charles Dismas Clark, SJ, known locally and later in a film of that title starring Don Murray as “the hoodlum priest,” told reporters that he had visited Costello at his home the Monday before he tried to commit suicide, and found Costello sick with a severe cold. On Tuesday, he heard that Costello had been taken to the hospital, and tried to visit him, but was not permitted in t
he room.
After a three-day stay, Costello was released, and his physician reported that his patient’s condition had not been as serious as first reported.
In the fall of 1961, May Traynor was found shot and beaten in her home. Costello still owed her $31,700, and they had had a falling out. “I just know Joe had something to do with it,” she told police, who found her mortally injured. But before she died, she changed her story, and Costello was freed after questioning.
A popular theory among some political and police insiders in St. Louis about what happened to the ransom money was that Costello had immediately turned it over to Traynor to launder it. Costello had consistently refused to say where he had been on the night of Tuesday, October 6. If he had gone to Traynor’s brothel and given the money to her for safekeeping, and ultimately arranged with her to launder it, that would explain why he had not been seen at his usual haunts. Traynor was known to have close ties with both Vitale and Buster Wortman in East St. Louis. Costello had borrowed money from her, securing the debt with mortgages on his cab business and his home. When detectives arrested Heady at the rented apartment at 4504 Arsenal, they discovered a slip of paper with Traynor’s address. The fact that Traynor was beaten suggested that someone was trying to get information from her that she was unwilling to give.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 20
