The Outfit

by Russo, Gus

  But it was too little too late for Roger “the Terrible” Touhy, who languished in prison until 1959, when the abomination was finally reversed. When Judge Barnes finally reviewed the case, he concluded that “the kidnapping never took place.” The parole board agreed. Unfortunately for Touhy, he released his autobiography, The Stolen Years, simultaneously with his release from prison, wherein he referred to Curly Humphreys as a pimp.3 Compounding his error, Touhy announced that he intended to sue Factor, State’s Attorney Tom Courtney, Ricca, Humphreys, and Accardo for $300 million for wrongful imprisonment. One wonders what Touhy could have been thinking; it was obvious to many that he was signing his own death warrant. By this time, the Outfit, in collusion with its New York Commission partners, was on the eve of bilking the Teamsters Pension Fund out of hundreds of millions of dollars to finance casino construction in Las Vegas. Touhy’s suit held the ominous potential for exposing this massive conspiracy. Thus it came as no surprise when, on December 16, three weeks after his emancipation, Roger Touhy was murdered with five shotgun blasts, while Jake Factor dined at the Outfit’s Singapore Restaurant. The Daily News reported two days later that “police have been informed that the tough-talking Touhy had given Humphreys . . . this ultimatum: ’Cut me in or you’ll be in trouble. I’ll talk!’ On his deathbed, the former gangster whispered, ’I’ve been expecting it. The bastards never forget.’”

  Jake the Barber continued his association with the Outfit for many years. After finally serving six years in prison for mail fraud involving the fraudulent sale of other people’s whiskey receipts, Factor moved on to Las Vegas in the 1950s. At that time, the Outfit had expanded its empire into Sin City, and Curly Humphreys sponsored Jake for a position as manager of one of Vegas’ (and the Outfit’s) first premier hotel-casinos, the Stardust. In 1960, just months after Roger Touhy’s release from prison and subsequent murder, Factor sold Curly Humphreys four hundred shares of First National Life Insurance stock at $20 a share, then bought them back after a few months for $125 per share. Curly netted a tidy $42,000 profit.

  In the 1950s, Factor began drawing on the great fortune he had amassed during his early British stock swindle, to embark on a successful PR campaign aimed at creating the persona of Jake the Philanthropist. His frequent six-figure donations to various charities earned him numerous humanitarian awards. Some have asserted that another reason for Touhy’s murder was that a free Touhy could easily destroy the Barber’s hard-won reincarnation as the beneficent John Factor.

  In 1960, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was considering deporting Factor back to England to face the massive mail-fraud charges brought against him decades earlier. Also in 1960, Jake Factor contributed $22,000 to the presidential campaign of Joseph Kennedy’s son Jack, becoming JFK’s single largest campaign contributor. In 1962, the INS moved to deport Factor, but was thwarted when Attorney General Bobby Kennedy brought Factor to Washington to speak with him and review the INS case. Factor later told the press that Bobby Kennedy slyly brought up that he needed donations to help secure the release of 1,113 Cuban Brigade soldiers captured by Castro’s forces after the disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Reports had been circulating for months that Bobby Kennedy was placing threatening calls to business leaders with tax or other pending legal matters, practically extorting the funds from them. In conversations monitored by the FBI, the Outfit was clearly impressed by Kennedy’s mastering of the “velvet hammer” extortion approach. On one occasion, the agents reported that Giancana aide Chuckie English “pointed out that the attorney general raising money for the Cuba invaders makes Chicago’s Syndicate look like amateurs.” After a number of meetings with the Barber in December 1962, Bobby Kennedy recommended to his brother that Factor be pardoned. Factor told reporters that he had contributed $25,000 to Kennedy’s “Tractors for Cuba” fund.4 President Kennedy granted Jake’s parole on Christmas Eve, 1962, the same night the prisoners landed in Miami, and just one week after the INS had announced its decision to deport Factor.

  But soon after, the inexperienced attorney general began to have misgivings about what he had done. Jack Clarke, who worked in the investigative police unit of Chicago’s Mayor Daley, recently recalled what happened next. “Bobby Kennedy called me and asked if there would be any problem if Jake Factor were pardoned. When I explained the details of Factor’s Outfit background - Capone, Humphreys, the Sands, et cetera Bobby went, ’Holy shit!’ He then explained that he had already approved the pardon.” Clarke adds that Bobby’s dealings with the Factor case were not atypical. “RFK didn’t know what he was doing in the Justice Department. He had no idea of the subtleties, the histories of these people.”

  It is impossible to know if Bobby Kennedy grasped the historic and complex relationship between the upperworld barons, such as his own father, and the hoods with whom the barons consorted. If he did, he may have thought twice before launching his full-scale assault on the underworld.

  Eventually settling in Los Angeles, the much traveled Factor took particular interest in the welfare of underprivileged black youth in the Los Angeles district known as Watts. In the 1960s, after bestowing a million-dollar endowment (allegedly through the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation) on a Watts youth center, a Los Angeles Times reporter brought up his ties with the Outfit. Factor broke into tears, asking, “How much does a man have to do to bury his past?” The reporter could easily have countered, “Perhaps an apology to Roger Touhy’s family, for starters.”

  Factor died of natural causes in 1984 in Beverly Hills. His Los Angeles Times obituary headline read JOHN FACTOR, NOTED PHILANTHROPIST, DIES AFTER LONG ILLNESS.

  On June 27, 1933, “the Man” finally caught up with Curly Humphreys and his labor racketeering. Apparently the Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union business manager, Steve Sumner, was not intimidated by the Humphreys muscle. Although Sumner could not prove who actually snagged his partner, Doc Fitchie, he was certain who collected the $50,000 ransom: Curly Humphreys. Without a witness to the actual kidnapping, the court found itself in a quandary and was forced to indict Humphreys on the only charge that seemed to stick in 1930s Chicago: federal tax charges. Thus Humphreys earned the distinction of becoming the only man known to have been charged with not paying taxes on a ransom he received for a kidnapping of which he was never accused.

  Instead of answering the charge, Humphreys took the opportunity to pursue one of his favorite hobbies: traveling. After hiring a manager to look after his affairs at the “Century of Progress,” Curly fled the Windy City, “lamming it,” as he put it, for sixteen months. This period gave the first hints of trouble in the Humphreys’ marriage. According to conversations overheard by FBI bugs planted years later, Humphreys spoke of how he was accompanied by “a little blonde I used to have” on his escape. Among other locales visited by Curly and his mistress was Mexico, where Humphreys pursued his passions for fishing, reading, and photography. In future years, Curly expanded into documentary filmmaking.5 The Chicago Crime Commission quickly named Curly its new Public Enemy Number One. In its previous list of twenty-eight hoods, the Commission had failed to even name Humphreys, who now leapfrogged the competition to gain the top spot.

  Returning to Chicago some fifteen months later, Humphreys pled guilty to the tax charge, adding that he alone was responsible for the financial misunderstanding. His performance as a “stand-up guy” succeeded in securing the release of others who had participated in the scheme. Curly paid his taxes (with interest and penalties) and calmly headed off to Leavenworth Federal Prison on October 31, 1934. Some knowledgeable observers perceived Humphreys’ acquiescence as reminiscent of Capone’s tactical vacation spent in the Philadelphia lockup. That conclusion was bolstered by the grand schemes to be undertaken by Humphreys upon his release from prison fifteen months later. On his departure for jail, Humphreys informed the press: “While I’m down there, I intend to study English and maybe a little geometry.” For Curly, the term college was not a just a cute euphemism.

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nbsp; The Big House was not such a cavalier subject, however, for the gang’s original architect, Al Capone. Initially placed in the overcrowded Atlanta federal penitentiary, Al displayed gallows humor mixed with some sense of optimism. “Uncle Sam got me busted on a bookkeeping rap,” Al told a fellow prisoner. “Ain’t that the best!” He added hopefully, “If I could just go for a walk. If I could just look at buildings again and smell that Lake Michigan, I’d give a million.” Any optimism Capone might have harbored was quickly tempered by the awful truth of his current situation. Soon after arriving in Atlanta, the Big Guy received a triple whammy: he was diagnosed with central-nervous-system syphilis, gonorrhea, and a perforated septum due to chronic cocaine abuse. He was only thirty-three years old.

  As Al’s health went downhill, so did his temperament. He became prone to mood swings and long-winded boasting about his accomplishments. He was constantly harassed by some of the nation’s most violent miscreants, who were more than a little jealous of Capone’s previous life. “Where’re the broads and booze now, fat boy?” they taunted. The Big Guy was resented by low-life inmates, who dismissed his soup kitchen endeavors, instead perceiving him as an ostentatious rich bloat. He was practically a white-collar criminal locked up with child rapists. For the most part, the threats led to nothing and evaporated. Capone spent his days in the shoe repair shop and settled in as best he could. Just as Capone seemed to be coming to terms with his plight, his world was rocked by news that presaged Capone’s total descent into hell. In the fall of 1934, Capone was informed that he was being transferred to the penal system’s newly completed monument to sadism: The Rock, aka Alcatraz. This bleak institution, situated on a small island in San Francisco Bay, was already being whispered about in the mess halls of America’s prisons.

  Although inmates are prone to exaggeration, there was no way they could inflate the truth of this torture chamber. One prisoner transferred to Alcatraz said, “The buildup makes Alcatraz pretty bad, but the reality is worse.” The prison sat above an abandoned military garrison on a 120foot promontory. Prisoners were housed in single-occupancy, five-by-nine- foot cells, not allowed to communicate with one another, or the guards for that matter. With the exception of cafeteria time, the prisoners were kept in silent confinement. Men were routinely driven over the edge by the boredom alone. Rule infractions landed a prisoner in D Block, or solitary confinement, in which the cells were completely devoid of light, and the prisoners received only bread and water through a slit in the door. This sadistic chamber broke down some men in six minutes, others in a couple days, yet some were kept in for as long as six months, exiting into the light of day clinically insane. One unhinged inmate, assigned to chopping wood on the dock, suddenly began chopping the fingers off his left hand. After removing them all, he begged a guard to amputate his chopping hand.

  When Capone got the news of his transfer, he was fully aware of what it meant, as were his prison tormentors. “You’re going to the Rock, Al, have a nice long ride to Alcatraz,” someone teased. Capone exploded in all directions. His cellmate, Red Rudensky, later wrote about the event: “All the fire and hate and strength and torment erupt[ed] suddenly.” Capone let loose a profanity-laced tirade at the guards, attacking them with all his might. “You’ll never take me out of here!” he shouted before flinging himself at a guard, who signaled for help. When it arrived, the Big Guy was thrown into a wall, slumping to the floor unconscious.

  Capone had good reason to be frantic over the news. His tenure on the Rock, coupled with his insidious illness, was nothing short of a prolonged nightmare. Initially, Capone’s work assignment was on the bucket brigade, mopping the bathhouse floor, where he earned the nickname The Wop with the Mop. After a year of begging, Capone persuaded the warden to allow him twenty minutes a day to form a band with other prisoners. Al had his family send him top of the line banjos, mandolins, and music charts and he succeeded in teaching himself some rudimentary songs. On drums was “Machine Gun” Kelly, while sax chores were handled by kidnapper Harmon Whaley. The ensemble was disbanded after a violent row erupted during a rehearsal.

  After the disbanding, things went quickly downhill for Capone. As in Atlanta, there were factions who hated Capone simply because he was Capone. He was a racketeer businessman imprisoned with two-bit thugs. One Alcatraz clique known as the Texas Cowboys made it their mission to kill the Big Guy. After one of the gang stabbed Capone repeatedly with a scissors from the barber shop, Capone was rushed to the hospital. The offender was given an incredible six months in solitary. Meanwhile Capone’s sexual paresis had spread to his brain, and he became increasingly delusional and disoriented. Physically, he lost his impressive girth, his hairline, and his Italian-olive complexion. After one frightening bout of delirium in 1938, Capone was placed in a mental ward, but it was clearly too late. When Capone got into a disgusting feces-throwing battle with a patient in an adjacent cage, officials knew it was only a matter of time before he would be remanded to his wife’s custody.

  In 1935, with Curly, as well as Jake Guzik, now imprisoned, Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca, and Joe Accardo were left to oversee the Outfit’s business. Although Nitti had seniority, it was Ricca, as liaison to the Commission, and Accardo who took charge behind the scenes. Ricca seized the moment and nourished private relationships with Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. Although Nitti was allowed to sit on his leather throne at the Bismark Hotel, the Ricca-Accardo-Humphreys triumvirate created a power fusion that far exceeded Nitti’s own designs. While Ricca’s work was mostly ambassadorial, Accardo’s talents, which differed from Humphreys’, drew him to a racket much more suited to his tough-guy exterior: gambling.

  1. The Chicago Crime Commission’s director, Virgil Peterson, described the Fair: “[It] epitomized a new age - an age of steel, electricity, chromium, aluminum, and modernistic architecture. Most of the buildings were completely without windows. Day and night they were illuminated by electricity. At night, colored illumination added to the beauty of the exteriors of the futuristic buildings. The Travel and Transportation Building was a block and a half long. Inside were locomotives, multiple-motored transport planes, and a cross section of an ocean liner.”

  2. Max Factor single-handedly reinvented Hollywood’s look with his development of Pan-Cake makeup. Prior to this, stars were painted with vaudeville-style greasepaint. Factor was also the originator of the pouty-lip look and is widely considered the father of the cosmetics industry. When his products went commercial, they dominated stores for decades. Factor, who was immortalized in the Johnny Mercer song “Hooray for Hollywood,” died in 1938.

  3. Joe Accardo saw to it, however, that Teamster truckers would refuse to ship the book, and that Chicago bookstores were frightened off from carrying the memoir.

  4. It was reported that Factor’s payoff to RFK was an Outfit practical joke: The money came from the skim the gang was taking from Las Vegas casinos, about which more will be seen.

  5. Humphreys shot one such epic on location at Alcatraz, sarcastically dubbing the sound track with the popular song “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.” (His heirs still proudly display examples of Curly’s photographic prowess, including 8mm footage from Hawaii, Europe, Africa, Havana, and Asia.)

  4.

  Joe’s Racket: Running the

  Games (The New Booze)

  Bootlegging was always seen by the gangsters as a temporary cash cow. When the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal became imminent, the Outfit kept a watchful eye for new sources of treasure, such as the union invasions that were scripted by Curly Humphreys. Or perhaps the new windfall would come from the groundwork being laid by Johnny Rosselli in the embryonic Hollywood “dream factory.” But while Curly and Johnny concocted grand schemes, looking for the “new booze” as Curly called it, someone had to tend to the relatively mundane task of keeping the ship of crime afloat. The job required a decisive executive who understood the importance of instilling fear in rivals, but who nonetheless appreciated that violence had to be kept t
o an absolute minimum. Much as the smooth-talking Humphreys was the only choice for the role of union mastermind, streetwise Joe Accardo topped the short list of Outfitters equipped to oversee the universal staple of gang rackets: gambling.

  Joe’s World

  At the time Joe Accardo took control of the Outfit’s “games,” Chicago gambling was a multiheaded hydra that included card and dice games, slot machines, and sports betting, especially on horse racing. (See the Appendix for a detailed history of gambling in Chicago.) In a few years, Accardo would expand his gambling empire to include the forerunner of the now legal lottery, “numbers,” also known as policy, and the jukebox racket. The Outfit made certain each game was rigged in its favor; the gamblers knew it but played on regardless. Although they assumed many forms, the Outfit’s gambling endeavors were not as closely scrutinized as their union machinations. By the time Accardo took the reins, there was little need for early-morning bombings that were guaranteed to invite newsprint.

  Thus details are scarce regarding Joe’s day-to-day exploits during this period. However, much is known about the gambling world he lorded over. Joe’s responsibilities consisted of having his crew police the poolrooms, barrooms, and secret gambling parlors, keeping the proprietors in line, making sure they paid a cut to the Outfit. A compulsive gambler himself, Joe was known to attend many of the floating games, where surprisingly he often lost. Joe also became a devout billiards enthusiast, albeit with mixed results. On one occasion, Accardo was hustled by a pool shark who had rigged a table to be slightly off-kilter. After adjusting his own stroke accordingly, he challenged the Outfit boss, who accepted and was soundly beaten. When the subversion was detected, one of the Outfit’s enforcers offered to whack the foolish pool shark. “Nah. Leave him alone,” decreed Accardo. “He cheated me fair and square.” Although there existed numerous permutations of the games, the key variations were as follows: