by Gus Russo
After greeting Roosevelt at a public appearance in Miami’s Bayfront Park, Cermak, who had uncharacteristically neglected to don his protective vest, was shot by a former Italian army sharpshooter named Giuseppe Zangara. When his Chicago secretary rushed to his hospital bedside, Cermak managed to say, “So you arrived all right. I thought maybe they’d shot up the office in Chicago too.” The fifty-year-old Cermak lingered for three weeks before succumbing to gangrene and pneumonia, and Zangara was summarily tried and executed.
The accepted version of the murder has it that Zangara was a complete psychopath who, despite being a sharpshooter, missed his real target, Roosevelt, a man whom he paradoxically said he admired. But in Chicago, another theory held sway: Cermak’s killing was intentional, a fallout from the Outfit-Cermak power struggle. Municipal Judge John Lyle, Chicago’s fiercest and most knowledgeable antimob jurist of the era, opined, “Zangara was a Mafia killer, sent from Sicily to do a job and sworn to silence.” The expounded theory posits that Zangara, whose occupation was betting on dogs and horse races, owed the mob huge gambling debts and was ordered to kill Cermak or be tortured to death. It was also alleged that he had been promised that his mother would be cared for should he be caught in the act. Lastly, renowned criminal attorney and criminologist August Bequai learned in his research for his book Organized Crime that Zangara gave an interview shortly before his execution in which he admitted that he had been ordered by the Outfit to kill Cermak. Although, when recently queried, Bequai could not recall the source of his contention, it was likely none other than the most famous syndicated columnist of the time, Walter Winchell. Using all his powers of persuasion to finesse his way past Zangara’s prison guard, Winchell obtained the only interview with the killer. According to what Winchell told his editors, Zangara was ordered to kill Cermak, and that had he missed, the fallback plan was to assassinate the troublemaking mayor on the opening day of the World’s Fair. Winchell’s editors declined to print the story since Winchell had no way to prove its veracity. However, sixty years later, thousands of Secret Service records obtained by investigative journalist John William Tuohy virtually proved the mob-hit allegation.
It turns out that the thirty-three-year-old Zangara had immigrated to America ten years before the Cermak murder. Settling in New Jersey, Zangara became a bootlegger, which resulted in his 1929 arrest for operating a massive thousand-gallon still. After spending seven months in Atlanta Federal Prison, he relocated to Florida, where he became addicted to gambling at both the horse and dog tracks. Zangara’s addiction was worsened because most of his bets failed to deliver. According to government records, Zangara became “juiced up” and was forced to work off his vigorish by becoming a drug mule: He couriered narcotics from a south-Florida processing plant to members of the New York Commission. However, for reasons unclear, Zangara went afoul of his controllers. Documents hint that he was possibly caught cheating them out of their profits. In any event, Zangara was earmarked for elimination. However, before the hit was enacted, Paul Ricca picked up the telephone.
The Waiter called Dave Yaras, a feared Outfit enforcer and labor liaison to Florida, who was moonlighting with Zangara’s New York dope pipeline. Ricca informed Yaras that the Cermak situation in Chicago had become unbearable, and that the Outfit had decreed that Cermak should be whacked, most suitably when out of town. And he was on his way to Florida. Did Yaras have any ideas? Yaras offered up the doomed Zangara. With Ricca’s consent, Zangara was made an offer he couldn’t refuse: either be killed horribly on the spot or kill Cermak and take his chances by pleading insanity in a state with liberal laws regarding mentally unstable criminals. Zangara chose the latter.
Unbeknownst to Zangara, he had more to fear than the Florida legal system. Sources told the Secret Service that Ricca dispatched two of his best killers, Three Fingers Jake White and Frankie Rio, to kill Zangara in the post-assassination confusion. On the morning of February 13, tipped by the gangsters, Zangara first proceeded to the Bostick Hotel, where Cermak was going to privately call on the owners, Horace and May Bostick, who were longtime friends. However, by the time Zangara arrived, Cermak had departed. The owners of the hotel nonetheless remembered seeing him on the premises stalking the Chicago mayor. “Zangara’s object in coming here,” May Bostick told the Secret Service, “was to kill Cermak.”
At 9:25 that night, Tony Cermak was seated on the park’s bandstand as Roosevelt’s car approached, and while Zangara waited in the crowd of fifteen thousand, Roosevelt’s vehicle stopped mere feet from Zangara. With Roosevelt lifted onto the trunk, Zangara had a clear shot at the president’s back - but did not take it. Instead, he waited for the president to spot Cermak: “Tony! Come on down here.” Cermak walked down and spoke with the president for about three minutes, then returned to the stage area. With Cermak at one end of the stage, and Roosevelt’s car on the other side, some thirty feet away, Zangara fired three shots in Cermak’s direction. William Sinnot, a New York policeman injured in the attack, said, “He was no more shooting at Mr. Roosevelt than I was.” Mark Wilcox, a Florida congressman who witnessed the shooting, stated emphatically, “He was shooting at Cermak. There is no doubt about that. The killer waited until Mr. Roosevelt sat down and then fired.” For his part, Roosevelt agreed with the other eyewitnesses that he was not the target. For the rest of his life he reiterated the opinion that Zangara was “a Chicago gangster” hired to take out Cermak.
Upon hearing news of the attack, the Chicago police department moved to have the Miami authorities round up eighteen Outfit associates known to be in Miami. However, Chicago state’s attorney Tom Courtney, known to be in the pocket of the Outfit, countermanded the department’s request before they could send it. Meanwhile, the imprisoned Zangara, who futilely pled insanity, took the prison’s warden, Leo Chapman, into his confidence. Chapman told the Secret Service that Zangara was anything but insane, and that he was in fact linked to “some sort of criminal syndicate.” Zangara’s last words before receiving twenty-three hundred volts in the electric chair were “Go ahead and push the button. Viva Italia! Viva Comorral” Comorra is an Italian word synonymous with Mafia.
Back in Chicago, firehouses sounded their alarms in celebration upon hearing of Cermak’s death: The late mayor had hounded the firefighters with unannounced midnight raids to catch men who might be dozing on the job. In short time, Sergeant Lang was fired from the police force and tried for assault with intent to murder Nitti. After hearing damning testimony from both of Lang’s partners, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Lang, however, had other ideas. “I will blow the lid off Chicago politics and wreck the Democratic Party if I have to serve one day in jail,” he threatened to a throng of reporters. Within hours he was granted a new trial, and when bail was posted at $15,000, so many worried politicians chipped in that the court was awash in $45,000 cash. Lang was said to have chuckled when he heard. He must have laughed harder when his new trial was postponed into oblivion and never occurred. Interestingly, after his firing from the force, Lang left the Cermak sphere and sided with another crook, Maxie Eisen, a racketeer and former associate of none other than Big Al Capone.
After the trial, Nitti took a much needed vacation at the Florida home of Capone’s cousin, Charlie Fischetti. Chicago crime experts believe that Nitti never fully recovered from his injuries, suffering lasting neurological injuries that rendered him incapable of taking charge of the Outfit. Some months later, acting as the “caretaker” chief of the Outfit, Nitti returned to Chicago and met with his board at what the locals referred to as Little City Hall, on the third floor of the Capri Restaurant on North Clark Street, directly across from official City Hall. According to a union boss who was taken to the Capri, the Outfit maintained a supersecret room on the third floor where they held daily meetings. “This dining room was so private,” the labor organizer said, “that you couldn’t get in there unless the elevator operator recognized you.” In attendance were Curly, Joe, Paul, Sam Hunt, and the Fischettis. Nitti adv
ised his crew of decisions made at a meeting at Charlie Fischetti’s Biscayne home that summer, a convocation also attended by the Lansky brothers from New Jersey, and Jack Dragna, Rosselli’s Los Angeles partner. At the Capri, Nitti ticked off an agenda largely dictated by Chicago’s position as the country’s hotel and service industry mecca:
• Invest in beer and liquor businesses, then control restaurant and bartenders’ unions to increase the sales of their own brands.
• Expand into hotel and food operations, building on the groundwork already laid by Curly Humphreys.
• Get into the entertainment business, especially nightclubs and musicians’ unions.
• Take over the race wire and bookmaking businesses.
Nitti advised his gang, “The bartenders” union is our biggest lever. After we get national control we will have every bartender in the country pushing our brands of beer and liquor.’ But Nitti was wrong. Although the control of the bartenders’ unions would be lucrative, it would pale in comparison to other schemes soon to be devised.
While waiting to assault the Touhy half of the Cermak-Touhy alliance, Humphreys, Nitti, and the Outfit spent the spring cashing in on the “Century of Progress.” Even before the gates were opened on the first day of the Fair, the Outfit reaped huge profits. With land having to be cleared on Northerly Island, just off Lake Shore Drive, and massive construction projects necessary, the organizers were at the mercy of the trucking and construction trade unions, which in turn were controlled by the Outfit. Curly and his boys saw nothing wrong with taking a 10 percent cut “off the top” on all work performed at the Fair. After all, the upperworld had been collecting its 20 percent graft for decades. That fee was the price fixed to guarantee work permits for lucrative jobs. Private contractors automatically added the fee to their job estimates, a tribute paid “to take care of the boys downtown,” as one such businessman put it. The Outfit, led by Curly Humphreys, paid a visit to the Fair’s builders and convinced them of the wisdom of tacking on the added 10 percent for the Outfit.
Held on the Lake Michigan shoreline between Twelfth and Thirty ninth Streets, the 1933 World’s Fair ran for two years, attracting more than thirty-nine million visitors. Its main theme was the number of recent scientific breakthroughs in use of lighting (the Fair’s lights were turned on when rays from the star Arcturus were focused on photoelectric cells at disparate astronomical observatories, transformed into electricity, then transmitted to Chicago).1
Not all the fair’s exhibits were high-minded. The earthy, hedonistic pleasures were in evidence, if not advertised by civic promoters: Exotic “fan dancer” Sally Rand showed her wares at the Streets of Paris emporium; wine and women flowed at the Ann Rutledge Tavern. With so much money to be made at the Fair, the members of the Outfit were not about to look the other way after construction was completed. They were, in fact, among the chief beneficiaries of the tourist largesse. While Chicago’s newest corrupt mayor, Edward Kelly, squired dignitaries around the grounds, Al Capone’s heirs controlled many of the Fair’s critical functions, including parking, hot dog, hamburger, soda, hatcheck, towel, and soap concessions. What services they did not operate outright, they nonetheless profited from by collecting “protection” money. Curly Humphreys owned the most popular ride at the Fair and, with Fred Evans, controlled the popcorn concession. While Curly was on the lam later that year in Mexico, he hired a manager who picked up the weekly profits from each booth. Al Capone’s brother Ralph virtually cornered the market on bottled water and sodas, while Paul Ricca ran the San Carlo Italian Village, where the Outfit socialized after hours. The roulette wheels were spinning and the dice rolled under the supervision of Outfitter James Mondi. Outfit boss and Capone cousin Charlie Fischetti said at the time, “If a wheel turns on the fairgrounds, we get a cut of the grease on the axle.”
When the fairgrounds emptied at night, the adult attendees partook of the Outfit’s other amenities scattered throughout the rest of the city: brothels, casinos, massage parlors, and saloons. Prohibition came to an end during the first year of the Fair, an event that only escalated the partying at the Outfit’s clubs, which operated twenty-four hours a day. With these and other gang enterprises enjoying robust business, the transition to post-Volstead was reasonably smooth.
Curly’s Revenge
With Cermak removed from the scene and the “Century of Progress” filling the Outfit’s coffers, Curly Humphreys was free to redress the personal attack by Roger Touhy, not to mention the murder of his friend Red Barker and the shooting of Frank Nitti. Humphreys’ vengeance had the added bonus of simultaneously removing a major Outfit adversary. The plot was brilliant in concept and actually played out over several decades before reaching its denouement. At the time, an English friend of Curly’s, John “Jake the Barber” Factor, was living in Chicago, on the run from the law in Great Britain. Factor, brother of future cosmetics baron Max Factor,2 had been charged with participating in an $8-million stock swindle involving South African diamond-mine securities ($160 million by today’s count). It seemed that Jake had struck a partnership with the king of New York bootleggers, Arnold Rothstein, to stake him $50,000 to set up the swindle. Among Factor’s victims were widows, clergymen, elderly investors, and most significant, members of the British royal family and the chief of Scotland Yard. When the scam was discovered, Factor fled to Monte Carlo, where he quickly created another crime syndicate that successfully broke the casino bank by rigging the tables. Before authorities caught on, Factor had fled once again. In 1931, when the British government located Factor in Al Capone’s Chicago, they commenced extradition proceedings.
Factor was by now a multimillionaire, thanks to the profits from the British and Monte Carlo swindles, and enlisted a strong legal team to stall the federal government for over two years, but by 1933, they had run out of maneuvers. When Curly Humphreys learned that the statute of limitations on the extradition would soon run out, he envisioned his elegant, if elaborate, revenge against Touhy. Only a mind like Curly’s could see the connection.
Factor had been summoned to appear in federal court on April 18, 1933, for what was certain to be his one-way ticket back to England. By amazing coincidence, Jake the Barber’s nineteen-year-old son, Jerome, chose this moment in history to become a kidnapping victim, coincidentally giving Jake an incontestable excuse for having the proceedings postponed yet again. With a $200,000 ransom on Jerome’s head, Chicago police, apparently unaware of Factor’s friendship with Curly, raided the headquarters of the the best kidnappers in Chicago, the Outfit. There they encountered Curly Humphreys, Joe Accardo, and Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt. The gangsters were incredulous, telling the cops that they were in fact strategizing on how to get the young boy freed. Jake himself admitted that he went to Curly for help. After all, Curly was not only Chicago’s best kidnapper, but also one of its best negotiators.
Eight days later, Jake and a carload of Outfitters rescued Jerome on the city’s West Side, but they failed to catch the kidnappers. “We spotted them in their car,” the Barber recounted, “but some policemen came along and the criminals sped away.” Neither Jerome, who was allegedly blindfolded the entire time, nor Jake could identify the scoundrels. With Jake’s legal confrontation in D.C. temporarily postponed, phase one of Curly’s plan was complete.
On May 29, frustrated Supreme Court officials reset the date for Factor’s hearing. It was a last-ditch motion, since the statute was due to expire in early July. But by a propitious turn of events, this time Jake Factor himself turned up kidnapped.
On June 30, 1933, Jake Factor disappeared after leaving an Outfit-controlled saloon in the northwest suburbs. Twelve days later he surfaced, walking the streets of suburban La Grange, appearing bleary-eyed and bearded. He told a policeman he had paid $70,000 in ransom to his kidnappers, whom he could not identify. But the totality of Factor’s physical appearance invited skepticism. As later described by the detaining patrolman, Bernard Gerard: “Well, his tie was in place . . . and he was w
earing a light linen suit, which was clean. His sleeves were wrinkled. His pants were somewhat wrinkled. His shoes were quite clean, no marks or dirt on them; no marks of dirt on his hands. He also had a white handkerchief, which was very clean - wrinkled, but no marks of dirt on it. His nails and hands were perfectly clean, cleaner than mine, and I have just cleaned them . . . The cuffs of his shirt were pressed and clean. His collar was straight [and] in place.”
But the discrepancies didn’t matter to a state’s attorney’s office controlled by Curly and the Outfit. Touhy was soon named the chief and only suspect in the case. Many years later, mob-fighting federal judge John P. Barnes described the arrangement between the Outfit and a compliant state’s attorney’s office: “The [Capone] Syndicate could not operate without the approval of the [state’s attorney’s] office . . . The relationship between the State’s Attorney’s office, under [Tom] Courtney and [Dan] Gilbert, and the Capone Syndicate, was such that during the entire period that Courtney was in office [1932-44], no Syndicate man was ever convicted of a major crime in Cook County.”
In rapid succession, Courtney’s goons arrested Roger Touhy and persuaded the Washington authorities to cancel Factor’s extradition proceedings, now that he was a material witness in a capital case. Touhy was tried twice in the Factor case, the first jury unable to reach a decision. Although Factor identified Touhy, his admission was suspect given that he had earlier testified that he had been blindfolded the entire time. Two weeks later, the second trial produced a surprise witness, Isaac Costner, or Tennessee Ike, who, when asked under oath to state his occupation, replied, “Thief.” Ike stated that he was with Touhy during the kidnapping but he was against the idea. Touhy was found guilty this time around and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. Meanwhile, Jake the Barber was allowed to stay in the country as “a friend of the court.” Twenty years later, Ike filed a deposition in which he admitted that he was put up to the false testimony by U.S. assistant attorney general Joseph B. Keenan, who promised to cut Ike a break on a thirty-year sentence for mail robbery if he agreed to testify against Touhy. When Keenan reneged, Ike filed the damning deposition.
