In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Dan O’Sullivan from the new podcast The Outfit to discuss the incredible story of Ken Eto, known in Outfit circles as “Tokyo Joe.” Ken Eto was unique: the only Japanese American member of the Chicago Outfit, and the only man to survive being shot three times in the head. Eto was the Outfit’s gambling kingpin on Chicago’s North Side, controlling operations along Rush Street, policy wheels in Black neighborhoods, Chinese games in Chinatown, and the Puerto Rican “bolita” numbers racket. His empire generated millions of dollars each year, placing him among the highest-ranking members of the Outfit. But success had its price. In 1980, the FBI caught Eto in a sting, and his Outfit bosses grew nervous—especially since he had ties to a cocaine deal with the Genovese family. Invited to dinner by a mobster who had never broken bread with him before, Eto knew it was a setup. Two gunmen shot him three times in the head. Miraculously, he lived, and his survival changed the history of the Outfit.
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[00:00:00] Hey, y’all, you wire tapers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.
This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City. Missouri Police Intelligence unit detective with his own podcast. Now, believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for quite a while. Guys, if a lot of you guys have been following me for five, six years, you know, guys, you know, I was one of the first guys that did this podcast this kind of a podcast.
And so I have with us today, one of the, maybe the most recent iteration of a Mafia podcast. I have Dan O’Sullivan welcome, Dan. Thank you, Gary. And I like you staking your territory, you know, like that I’m I’m a Johnny. Come lately. It’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m a og. You’re the og. Exactly. I’m og.
Yeah, right. I mean, I’m an associate. You’re the godfather here, you know? And there you go. We gotta get the pecking order down. This is how. As was said to me by a historian, you know, the mob makes discipline in the military look like nothing, you know, so, yeah. However it [00:01:00] works, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. That discipline is, and there’s no appeal either, right?
Yeah. So anyhow Dan and I, I think you’re gonna have a partner in that. You’re gonna have a podcast called The Outfit. Is that the name of it? That’s right. The outfit got, which is, go ahead. You got it exactly right, Gary. Yeah. We me and my co-host, Alana Hope Levinson our new podcast, the outfits launching August 14th and just every week we’re doing a different mob story that kind of explains something about, you know, America and, and you know, so whether it’s how the milk wars in Chicago led to us having expiration dates on milk cartons, that’s a crazy story to, you know.
Who we’re gonna talk about a little bit the history of Japanese Americans in the US or. Americans in Russia during the nineties and seeing that transition of democracy and the mob there. So we just we’re having a lot of fun doing that. But it’s great to be on your [00:02:00] show. I, I’ve loved your show for years, so really an honor to be here.
Well, thank you so much. You know, I when I do a program here in the city, I usually started off with a comparison of, I want you people to remember all Italians are not criminals. Yeah. And, and what happened during. The turn of the century is really, has happened here recently. Mm-hmm. What happened was, all these people from a really poor country, Southern Italy and Sicily, came to the United States.
They just wanted a piece of the pie. Right. They just wanted to, to have a, a way to get by. They wanted to earn, you know, earn a living and, and get a meal, and they weren’t able to do that. They come here. At that time, the Irish and the English and the Germans, we had all the good jobs, right? We had all the police jobs, the fire jobs, they were squeezed out. They really could hardly get that kind of a job. And so they had push carts and, and you know, spaghetti joints as they used to call ’em restaurants, you could always do that.
But they brought this thing from the old country called the Mafia, [00:03:00] and you’ve got all these young men who are bright and, and. Aggressive and, and you know, and then prohibition comes along and they take it. Yeah, they take it and they run with it. And, and you know, the same way today you got all these Hispanics come up and you got this narcotics thing, and, and they’re, you know, they don’t, you know, we’re keeping ’em squeezed out for the most part.
They don’t speak the language and look a little different, so you’re kind of squeezed out. So it is not comparing, not exactly apples and oranges, but there’s a lot of similarities there on newly arrived immigrant populations. And they’re not all criminals. It’s such a good point that this repetition just, you know, I mean, look, I’m a journalist.
I’ve covered the mob. I’ve written about it and, and tried to get really educated on it. Just you see this cycle over and over again. You know, like you said, my last name’s O Sullivan, the Irish. By the time the Italians and Jews started coming more. Numbers to the us. Well look at Chicago. The Irish first off had been gangsters too, but they had just clammed up the ladder a little bit where they [00:04:00] controlled the political machinery.
They controlled police, fire departments, these civil service jobs. So what was left, you know, by the time these guys came along, it was more just the same way, the more criminal thing. And you know, if you look at the stats today, I believe, I believe immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans.
Yeah, true. So, you know, because most of them are coming here to work, you know? Yeah, I know. So yeah, it’s, it repeats itself. It’s absolutely true. Yeah. It wasn’t, I think it was Mark Twain said, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it rhymes. That’s a, that guy the pride of Missouri, right? I mean, or is it Missouri Pride of Missouri?
Gotta quote him. Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, Dan, so let’s talk about you know, some of the things you’ve done in your career. You’ve done a variety of things in the news and, and media. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve done in your past. Yeah, so I, I, we were talking earlier, I started out as a sports writer actually, which is, I, I was always interested in the mob for reasons I’ll, I’ll maybe get into, but doing sports [00:05:00] writing, I realized you kind of brush up against organized crime just in the course of doing that, you know?
Yeah. So I wrote a piece, God, over 10 years ago now about. Labor exploitation and pro wrestling and you know, that that was run a bit and still to a degree is, is run a bit along underworld lines, you know with these sorts of shady syndicates all over the country. And, and over time that changed with the WWF and WE but still very dangerous for the guys involved.
Obviously Hulk Hogan just passed away and, you know, kind of. And embodied it shifting from like a carnival thing to big business. But so I remember an outgrowth of that was the former boss of the WWE e Vince McMahon, it’s not well remembered, was prosecuted by the federal government. For trafficking steroids.
And they, it really was prosecuted like a mob case where they got a doctor to flip who was [00:06:00] supplying the, you know, whatever he wanted and shipping it across the country. So. I got into this bizarre story of a stabbing of an NBA player and the, the police subsequently breaking another. This was in New York, subsequently breaking another NBA player’s leg with a baton.
So I just started to drift towards crime. And then a few years ago, I wrote a story for Chicago Magazine. That was the history of the life of Kento, who I, I thought was just a, yeah. Fascinating figure, and I couldn’t believe no one had done a deep dive on him. So I, I did that and and here I am today, now doing, now doing a lesser version of your podcast.
Well, I’m sure it’ll be good. You’re gonna have high production values. I can see that already better than I had, especially when I first started. They’re a little bit better now, but they’re still not really. Good high production values. Well let, before we get into Ken Etto, let’s talk about you. You mentioned you had a personal connection to the mob, your father, and something happened when Yeah.
Where’d you grow [00:07:00] up and, yeah, because you’re not from Chicago, that’s not a Chicago accent, I know that. No, that’s right. And yeah, so I grew up on Long Island in New York originally, which, you know, I was born in 1987, so I was just at the time that the mob was starting to get into trouble on Long Island because.
At the time, I, I was a kid there. They were still very much in control, but the commission trial had happened. These, I grew up with all the, the John Gotti trials and, and obviously Long Island was very important, particularly to the Lucchese family for garbage and, and sanitation. And so my father was a telephone lineman for telephone splicer, excuse me.
He would get irate if I said lineman. He was a splicer for the phone company for first Belan and then Verizon Ninex. But, so he had this very interesting thing of he would go out to these neighborhoods on Long Island that were. Mob neighborhoods where they all lived, like bedroom communities for the mob.
And the first thing you notice [00:08:00] about them is all of the streets, they’re all these cul-de-sacs. And they have names like Anthony Lane or Julia La. They’re named for their kids, you know? Yeah. And when he drives his truck at the opening of the cul-de-sac, you know. It sets off a camera in the house so they know that he is there, you know?
Mm-hmm. But anyway, so he’s working in these neighborhoods and, and one day is up on the, up on the line, and two gentlemen come out and haul him down. Yeah. And say, where’s your, you know, where’s your id? ’cause they thought he was FBI. Yeah. And, you know, he had to say to these two entrepreneurs I’m not.
And but then shortly thereafter, you know, to fit in the theme with the podcast. He opened up a box at the top of the pole and saw a device he’d never seen before. Ah, yeah. And it had a little label on it like. Got any questions, call this number. So he just closed it and went on his way, you know? So that was the [00:09:00] environment I grew up in where, you know, it was, it was around you like, you know, there was a gangster, he was a front guy for them on the sanitation where everything he owned had a shamrock painted in front of it, you know, so just, it was around you, you know, and I thought.
What the hell are these guys up to? You know? Yeah. It was pretty ubiquitous in, in New York City and and that area, it was just, it was unbelievable. It seemed like the control that they had over everything. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was just unbelievable. But anyhow, so let’s say you did a, a deep dive on Ken Ito.
Yeah, my friend Ken Ito just a bit. Let me let me share a picture here of there’s our friend Ken Edo. Or Edo. Yeah, that’s us. What you learned about him? Well, as you can see here, he has some head pain and the reason for that he is, he has the rare disti, he has the rare distinction, not only of being the only Japanese member, Japanese American member of the Chicago outfit.[00:10:00]
But the only one I’m aware of who was shot three times in the head and survived. And so. I mean, if you’re interested, obviously check out the story and we, we cover it in the second episode of my podcast. But Ken Etto was a, a gambling kingpin with the outfit on the north side along the Rush Street corridor, the nightlife section.
And he was really, the outfit’s emissary to minority gamble. So he had a lot of interests in the mostly black policy wheels on the south side. In the Chinese gambling setup along the Chinatown 26th Street Corridor. But then his biggest moneymaker was bda, which was a, basically a numbers game, but was very popular with the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, which is very large.
And you know, so the numbers would be drawn in San Juan. The bets have be placed all across the city. He, and he’s the overseer of all this. And it was bringing [00:11:00] in millions of dollars a year, you know this was big money. And you know, it was described to me by a prosecutor who, who worked on, on Edo that he, you know, was as high in the outfit as a, as a non Italian could go.
And the outfit was kind of interesting in that they actually had a fair amount of non Italians and upper Yeah. Upper level management. I’m, I’m, I’m, as you well know of course, but, but obviously, you know, they’re usually, they’re Greek, they’re poles, they’re Yeah. You know Jewish. Ja Jewish, yeah. Right, exactly.
And, and, not Japanese American. This is a one of a kind guy, so, yeah. You know, so he, he would go around the country setting, setting up gambling operations and but in 1980, the FBI pinned him a little bit, they got a snitch in his, in his belita operation, and were able to place him in a motel room where he was doing the count for that week’s take.
Mm-hmm. So he was gonna go away for a year or two, but and he was gonna go, he, you know, it was no problem to him. [00:12:00] But his bosses were nervous. He had been funneling his money into a cocaine trafficking deal outta New York with the Genevese family, so they might have been fearful about that coming to light.
And so they set him up to be killed which he knew was coming. He knew when they invited him to dinner with the north side crew chief that they were gonna execute him ’cause he’d never been invited to dinner with this guy, even though he is worked for him for 20 years. And so the two hit men shot him three times in the head and ran.
But it was a 22 that either had defective ammo or. We still don’t know exactly. So it was like the bullet went in the head, went under the skin and glanced off the skull. So none of them cracked the skull. So he played dead, woke up and said, oh my God, what do I do now? And that was funny story. He went to a pharmacy, got them to call [00:13:00] 9 1 1 2 cops pulled up and he made the rookie ride with him in the ambulance to the hospital.
’cause he was worried they’d come back to finish him off. Yeah. And after I published my story, that rookie cop reached out to me. Oh, did he? Oh, really? It was the coolest thing. And and and emailed me and said, you know, I just. Was in my first year, and here this guy is, he also, he also mentioned he couldn’t hear me because he, he was deafened by that.
So so yeah, but I, I, I know that you, he was subsequently turned as he, as he you know had no other choice really, but I believe pops up. I realized in the course of writing the story in, in. Maybe to me the most amazing, some of the most amazing mob trials in US history. The straw man trials. Yeah.
Did you work on those or were you in Yeah, see, the straw man cases were wiretaps. Which involved Chicago Outfit and Milwaukee and, and Cleveland and [00:14:00] Kansas City skimming money from Las Vegas. And so my personal part in it was a lot of surveillance down here in Kansas City from this end of it and mm-hmm.
And then, you know, as they were making the cases more at the, the higher levels of the criminal justice system, reading those wire taps and, and, and all that, like, if, if Tuffy would then all of a sudden give up one bank of phones and wanna go to another, then we’d get the call and we’d go. You know, we’d, we’d be part of a big team that would get on him again and find those other phones.
Mm-hmm. And believe me, it was a huge effort. Both the, both twice that we had to do that. You know, like two planes and it one in the air all the time, and then one ready to go, like 25 agents and officers on the ground. It was. It was amazing. We had special code words, ’cause that was before you had digital radios because you didn’t want anybody to overhear what you were doing.
And Yeah. And it was you know, it was, it was a heck of an effort on the bureau’s part. And they just, they put together a heck of a case and, and then they started bringing, I think they brought Jimmy [00:15:00] Ano from, yeah. California, la Yeah, la. ’cause he had been involved in some of the teamsters were doing, you know, they, they used Teamsters money to, to buy into the, you know, finance those casinos.
Then the casino owner had to kick back money. That was, that was how it worked. They didn’t really own the casinos, they just helped finance ’em. And then the guy kicked back money and if he didn’t kick back, you know, he would, he would’ve been a dead man. Or as it turned out, you know, that, it’s really interesting, I think.
Alan Glick, who got the biggest loan from him, $62 million. He comes back and testifies and, and a friend of mine who was an original case agent on it, bill Ousley, on the Strawman caper, he’s retired, so they, he glick is not in witness protection. He doesn’t have any official. Protection. So he hires Bill Ley to drive him back and forth to the courthouse from his hotel and kind of do a little security around him during that time when he was in town.
It was not a bad idea. Yeah, [00:16:00] really? Yeah. Yeah. But Ken Edo, he testifies and, and here’s what understand that, that you run into this, that, that he used. Lemme pull up another picture here. . They used this picture, yeah. For him. Did you run into that? The, the, they call it the last supper? Yeah. Yeah. That photo. I mean, that’s just a historic photo. I forget who had it in their house. That the FBI rated it. Yeah, I, I do too. I, I forget, but whoever it was the other gentleman who were still alive in that photo were, let’s just say not happy with him because you know, what we have here is the hi upper hierarchy of the Chicago outfit.
You know, Aupa Turk Tolo. There’s a cardo up front. There’s Joey Lombardo in the back, and, and it’s just all the, oh, and Vincent Solano, yeah. Is sitting third from left. That was Ken Otto’s boss who ordered him hit. So you have here just the creme de la creme of the [00:17:00] outfit at a time before I think they’re, everyone in the photo is now dead, but, but yeah, there you have it. Right? I mean, all the claims that Acardo was totally retired, you know, out the window with that photo, right? Yeah. So, and, and Joey Lombardo’s standing, you know, which is always funny to me that he wasn’t quite at the table yet, you know? Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Or some supposition.
He’s only one wearing a suit. There’s some supposition that this was after his making ceremony. I don’t know, but that there’s some supposition because he’s got the suit on, nobody else does. That’s interesting too. And, and Chicago often was slightly down on, on having the ceremonies be elaborate. Yeah.
So, yeah. I think Lombardo just wearing a suit to, I forget which restaurant it is. It’s somewhere on the northwest side, but just wearing a suit to that place might’ve been enough and say, all right, you’re good now. You know? Yeah. They don’t, they don’t really do it like New York with the burning of the saint and all this stuff.
Love that. Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] But Lombardo captured on those. I, I love, I remember one of the movies he did, the documentaries has some of the Lombardo wiretaps, which I think are like the best recordings of, of like, of him talking to that attorney in St. Louis. Yeah, more shinker. That’s it. And I, I think that’s some of the best insight you can get into how these guys operate.
You know, those wiretaps, those those threats that they make are so subtle. Yeah. That, you know, things like, well, you know, you don’t wanna go along with this. You say you’re 72, well, you know, you wanna get to 73. You know, like, you know Right. The Allen doesn’t wanna do anything, but you know, the people that got a piece of Allen, they might wanna, they, they can do things, you know?
Right. Real indirect, like that. And so it’s, it’s amazing. You know, another thing he, you know, they use this picture, then he could point out this guy. They didn’t make him into the mob. Right. Into an organization for Rico. And Yeah. So he can [00:19:00] point ’em out and say, this guy is this guy and this guy is this guy.
And you mentioned about the belita. Well, he, he talked about Aupa and he said that APA sent him in the early sixties to St. Louis to set up mm-hmm. A oli operation and teach them how to do it. So it’s he just buried them with his testimony as to who they were. Oh, that’s it. And you know, the FBI files anto.
It’s amazing. They, they talk I the number of places, to your point about how difficult the surveillance is, they’re following him. He was setting up gambling operations in Hawaii, in the Dominican Republic, in Florida, in new, or like, it was just all over the country. And and I think his greatest. Utility in the straw man trial was being able to say that IU ppa, at least on the Chicago side, was, was at that point administering the Vegas skim with, with the cooperation of the VEA family.
So so that just put ’em away. I mean, that, that finished him, you know. He buried him. I bet [00:20:00] there, sorry. Of course, that those two guys that, that killed him was it Ja, Jasper Campe and Gattuso, I think was his name, John Gatso. He ended up dead pretty quick, if I remember right. That’s right. I mean, so that was, you know, I knew the story was interesting, but the thing that really amazed me was the aftermath of it was astounding in that immediately after Edo.
Was shot, survived, and was turned in the hospital by the federal prosecutor Jeremy Margolis. Part of the way that they turned Edo was saying, listen, we have to get to the two gunmen who tried to hit you because they’re gonna get hit next. You know that, you know? Yeah. To, to sever. The ties and also to punish them for screwing up so badly.
So Edo gave up the names. Campisi was older, he was the, the soldier. He was a juice Sloan man. Gattuso was kind of a associate and there was speculation that doing this would get him [00:21:00] made. He had married into a mob family. His wife was the daughter of a mobster, but he was. Really consigned to just running restaurants and in particular shaking down gay bars and bathhouses in Chicago on the north side.
And so they, they, they threw ’em in the MCC in the South Loop and gave them huge bail and, I think I was the first to report this, that something that happened while they’re trying to turn one or both of these guys is they found that Campisi had hired another inmate to Shank Gattuso In prison.
Yeah. Or in jail. With a, with a piece of like an air conditioner or something. And they tried to use that to convince Gattuso. Like, because obviously if Campisi kills Gattuso, he can say to the guys, I dealt with it, you don’t have to kill me. Right? Yeah. And it didn’t work. Campisi thought he’d got a pass.
Gattuso just, he was so enmeshed in the world that he didn’t have the strength to do it. And, so then the big [00:22:00] twist was they somehow made bond these massive bonds. ’cause the outfit wanted them on the street and then hit ’em. And then it, I think, you know, I’ve seen the, the photos of, of them being pried out of the trunk.
This was the summer of 1983 in Chicago, and they were about twice the size they were when they went in. Oh. So it was a nasty, you know. It was not a quick death, you know? Yeah. So, so that was the punishment there. Those Chicago guys, they like to torture. It seems like I had that Frank Calabrese Jr. On here one time.
I said, what’s up with you guys? Yeah, you’re always wanting to torture people and then kill ’em. Why don’t you just kill ’em? He just drunk. He didn’t know. I don’t know. So unfortunately, it’s not like he can ask his dad. Right? But no, not now. Even know if his dad was alive, he couldn’t ask him. They’re not speaking right.
You know, one of those riffs. I mean, but that’s a perfect example, right? The, the calibrate they, I mean. You know, interestingly [00:23:00] not guys who were on the radar for that until the Family Secrets trial. Yeah. I mean, they were Jews, they were juice loan guys and tough guys, but I think they were not considered, it was not thought that they were such prolific hitmen, you know?
And you know, in my reading on it investigation, I’m not sure everything that, that Nick Calabrese said was, was a hundred percent I. His account of the Spilotro killings I wonder about, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, but you know, was it really seven top outfit guys killing the, you know, I don’t know, but yeah.
We’ll never know for sure, I guess, you know, so that’s, that’s I guess, the best account we have. But perfect example, the, the trunk music, you know, the, you know, nasty ways to go, leaving him in a trunk, you know, that that was a Chicago specialty. Yeah, it was. We, we’ve had a few here in Kansas City, left at the trunk, but also had quite a few blown up.
They don’t, they didn’t seem to do bombs much in Chicago Nuts. Since the Capone days, but that [00:24:00] is true, isn’t it? That Kansas City was, why, why do you think that was? If, if anything, I mean, in in general, the US mafia, I think tends to shy away from that, the bombs. Yeah. They, they do. And, and here’s why. Because of collateral damage, you’ve gotta be able to control the detonation.
And, and that’s why I always think maybe Kansas City had something to do with the Lty Rosenthal out in, in Las Vegas because of the bomb. Oh, interesting. Right. We, we had a guy here in Kansas City, I don’t know who he was, we never figured out who he was, but he said about three, they, they’ve got two of ’em.
They didn’t go off. Mm-hmm. One of ’em was discovered and the other one was. Wasn’t, you know, there was a wire that wasn’t quite right and they were by the same guy and then another one did. They all used like about 25 sticks of dynamite Way too much. But they were set Yeah. In places that probably nobody else was gonna get hurt, although they could have.
Mm-hmm. They really could have. They were taking a big risk. ’cause that’s, you know, that’s. You killed some little [00:25:00] kid walking by with a bomb. Right? Oh, man. Right. Lose all your support from even the, the, the neighbors and stuff that they’ll, they’ll be talking about you then when, when you do that. But that’s that’s the deal.
We, we had a few left in the car, but they just shot ’em and left them in the car, you know, I mean, or anything. We, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, you know, it’s, it’s. This is, this has worked for years, right? Yeah. Yeah. So who, who else are you gonna talk about on there? What you got on, on, on tap?
I got some notes here about Gus, Alex, and Oh sure. Some of them you’re gonna talk about those guys. The, the non Italian members, which I, as you mentioned earlier, I think is really interesting about the outfit. That, that is such a good point that, you know, the outfit from the beginning was sort of, I, I mean there’s always been collaboration, particularly with Jewish mobsters in, in most of the mafia families.
But but yeah, I always thought the outfit was really distinct and those are two guys I definitely would like to talk about because they both have interesting stories. You know, Gus, Alex being a [00:26:00] Greek, you know, son of a restaurant owner, like you mentioned, right. Restaurants being this important nexus for Yeah.
For how these guys meet and associate, you know, Tony Spilotro, same deal. You know how he met a lot of his crew Right. Hanging out at, at restaurants and so Gus, Alex, you know, son of a Greek diner owner where every, all the guys came in the Greek diner. Yeah. And that was how he got hooked up. And then, you know, he was the most important.
Downtown connection guy, as they said, administering the bribes to the politicians in the first ward. And I mean they had control of, at at least one city alderman and multiple west side districts and a congressman well into the eighties. So that is quite an achievement, you know? Yeah. And that was really, really down to Gus, Alex’s administration.
And you know, I think it speaks to the fact that these guys. I think more so than New York, they just saw if you can make money for us, we don’t care. You know, if you’re of use to us, we don’t care. I [00:27:00] mean, yeah, Harry Aleman, who I know you’ve talked about, was half Mexican and he, you know, he was essentially a made man.
I don’t think he quite was, but he essentially was. And you know, who else Lenny. Patrick, I mean, Lenny. Patrick, another fascinating one of. Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago had this whole Jewish crew that just ran it as their fiefdom and and, you know, Dave Yaris and these very scary loan sharks and, and and, but Lenny Patrick was turned as well.
So that was a big, big achievement. So yeah, so talking about those guys, I mean, I, we just did an episode on a guy that I, I wonder if you ever brushed up against, which is. William Hanhardt, the chief of Detectives. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I read, not personally, but yeah, he was got a little bit before my time, but mm-hmm.
I did the story on him. That guy. Oh my God. I’m curious what, what your thoughts are, because we got into this discussion of, you know, policemen and I’m curious what your thoughts are on him [00:28:00] as a, as a police officer in particular. You know, and, and guys, what’s interesting if you don’t know William Hanhardt, he was a Chicago cop who had risen.
And he was the chief of detectives. Yeah, actually he was. Mm-hmm. By the end, which, which, whether, you know, police hierarchy or not, that’s big. You the chief of detectives, a big city department. That is big. That’s, that’s better than being a chief for some people. Yeah. And, and, and during his rise he had to, he was a hero policeman as young.
He got in shootouts and Yeah. With people and, and killed him. And, and you know, who knows? And, but he, once they had a policeman that was, hillsdale policeman or a suburban policeman that was killed and kidnapped and killed, I believe, after a car check by a couple of, well, a couple of amans understudies that, yeah, that he knew.
So Hanhardt then, you know, he was gonna solve that and he solved it, you know, lty split because he just went to his mob guys and they knew, and, and mm-hmm. You know, he solved that in, in no time. So he was [00:29:00] that kind of a guy. But yet on the other hand. By the end, when it came out, he had a crew working for him of jewelry thieves and it was really slick.
Some of those things they were doing like jewelry salesman convention, they all keep their, their jewels, their, their samples in the hotel lock boxes, and then they’d do something to. So they get the clerk out of there and they go in and hit all those lock boxes. Yeah. And he did several slick things like that.
And, and nobody knew. I mean, they always, everybody was always a little bit suspicious of him, might think, but on one hand. On another hand, you know, he had the kids and everybody, you know. Was part of the community, an important part of the community, and it’s I just almost, it’s like he was a dual personality.
I think only in Chicago maybe could that happen. I don’t, I’m sorry, Chicago, but No, you’re absolutely right. Come on, train of corruption that has ran through, you know, it’s like part of the charm of Chicago. I always say you can’t have a big city unless you got a little corruption. And, and [00:30:00] Chicago’s a really big city, so you got a lot more corruption and, and somehow this guy.
But did his whole career like that and, you know, must, it must have made a lot of money. I just, I don’t know. I mean, you get to a certain level, you get on the police department, you can about get away with anything, to be honest. If you get, if you’re well liked, you get to a certain level, you can just about get away with anything.
So that had to be how he was. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right. And, and he, he came this close to being the superintendent of, of the entire police department. You know, so he really and, and really the only thing that derailed him, which I found amazing, was, and he’s chief of Detectives at this time.
He was subpoenaed to testify. In Tony Spiro’s murder trial in Las Vegas for the defense. Oh, yeah. And he, he testifies for the defense knocking down their main witness Frank Colada as unreliable, which, look, I, he sort of was, you know, but in this case, Spilotro was guilty and [00:31:00] you’d think a chief of detectives is gonna say, oh yeah, he’s believable.
And so then he retired not long after that. And, and but as you said, you know. It’s funny, when we were working on this episode, I was doing the research and looking back and the, the federal prosecutors said, you know, the, the heist of this jewelry ring started in 1984 at the earliest. But I went back and I found all these jewel heists using the exact same mo you described of.
You know, getting in for the hour, the jewelry salesman was out of his hotel room. Getting it out. Yeah. Or, or, or getting a skeleton key made of the safety deposit boxes in the hotel and getting out. And the cop, who’s always quoted in the story is Sergeant William Hanhardt, Lieutenant William Hanhardt. And we’re talking from this, from the 1960s, so, wow.
You know, it makes, makes you wonder, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, as you said, chief of Detectives, it’s, it’s, and he made a, I forgot he made a cameo in the [00:32:00] Kento story. I remember speaking to. Elaine Smith, who I think you might have interviewed, right? I interviewed her, she’s FBI agent that she was this really interesting story.
She was on vacation when they shot Edo, and then he wanted to talk and they called her and she said, said I dropped everything and flew right back. Right? Great lady. And, and and she became Cato’s handler. And but I remember she, she told me the time I talked to her that Hanhardt started calling around that night.
About the Edo shooting. Ah, yeah. Just subtly asking, so where’s he, you know, where’s his hospital room? Where’s he being Yeah. Kept right now. Yeah. And so, but, but before you knew it, Kento was on a naval base to recuperate, you know. Oh, really? Yeah. So, you know, just another dark. Sinister aspect to Hanhardt, you know?
Yeah. Really, I tell you, there’s nothing like having the chief of detectives on the hook for you if you’re gonna run some organized crime. But I [00:33:00] mean, as you said, Chicago doesn’t, I mean, you know, Capone had the mayor back in the day, so you know, it’s we’re we, we stand on the shoulders of giants, I guess, you know?
Yeah. Really. Yeah. Yeah. It’s I, I, you know, and, but yet there’s a lot of good Chicago policemen out there. You know, there are, yeah. More, many, more than there are this bad seed. So, you know who, who knows? Probably the majority of ’em. I did this one story about I think it was their intelligence unit actually that did it.
Yeah. They found a mob gambling game and they, they like. I could just, I could read in the article about it and, you know, they did exactly what we’d do. You know, they watched it for a while and they see mob guys show up and so they watch it a little while longer and they, they get somebody that can tell ’em, yeah, that’s a gambling game in there.
And they wait till a couple of the, the outfit guys are there and then they. Swoop in with a search warrant. Yeah. And take everybody down and, and they got a whole bunch of bookmaking records and loan shark records as usual. So, yeah. So, you [00:34:00] know, they’re it’s not totally corrupt, it’s just, you know, there were, they had their moments.
No, and it’s an important point, you know, I mean, there was something that was interesting was seeing. A, an interesting thing and I think 19 78, 19 79 play out where Hanhardt got promoted to deputy superintendent. Then a new chief comes in De Leoni, who was a very honest cop. I think he’d been a ho chief of homicide, and the first thing he does is move hanhardt out to traffic.
Yeah, yeah. Saying. I like the, he doesn’t say it explicitly saying, yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. You know, but then very, and he moves an honest guy, Duffy in to, to be the, the chief had, I think the deputy superintendent. But but then an interesting thing happened, which is the outfit’s, political connections, got those guys out later in the year and got hand hard his job back.
So, you know, a constant struggle. But yes, o obviously those guys were honest and the way we know [00:35:00] that is they lost their jobs, you know? Yeah. Unfortunately, you know. Yeah. That’s what, that’s what we call sidelining somebody. You sideline them. Oh, he was terrible. I mean, this poor guy, Duffy, he was like, he was, oh, he moved up to running a the overnight shift on a station on the north, you know, just Yeah.
Siberia, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been there once. Oh yeah. So I went to dog watch Metro Patrol once. Lot of dogs to watch. Oh man. Yeah. Well that, that means you must have been doing something right. You know? Well, I must have. I must have. Oh, well. I just put it down to some commander wanted his own boy in there in my job, and, and it didn’t gimme time to go find a new spot to land in, so everybody thought I was about to get indicted.
Right. You’re right. It’s like, is that what it looks like? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I just made it in the background. That’s when I decided I’m gonna go to law school and [00:36:00] quit and leave after 25 years. Yeah. That’s so, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, there you go. Right. That’s the way to look at it.
You got your pension and your, I got my pension. Went to law school, practiced law for 20 years, and here I am. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the father of the MOB podcast now too. Another, there you go. String to your bow. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, it’s, it’s so is there much of a Kansas City, I mean the, the organized crime element in Chicago?
To my understanding, as much as it exists now, there is still some, it’s mostly in the suburbs. Is there, is there much in Kansas City left at this point? Yeah. Not really. There’s, yeah, three, there’s three or four guys. All with you know, some of the, the, the familiar names, you know Ella? Mm-hmm. Kainos God, I think maybe, yeah.
Kaino and kind of familiar names are still out there. They still, you know, they, you know, people will be able to see ’em at a restaurant or something, you know, having [00:37:00] breakfast together, but, you know, mainly they’re old guys and Right. You know, like as old cops would get together for coffee or whatever, and you just don’t hear, I, I, I know they.
Like this one has got, you know, he’s got investments in you, his buy here, pay here, car dealerships. That’s, mm-hmm. That’s something that, you know, it is. I, I, I went after those as a lawyer and, and you know, it’s like, you know, I just could consistently get clients and make money off these, buy here, pay here, car dealerships, uhhuh, that’s what they do.
And, you know, it’s, it’s like loan shark, it’s legalized loan shark, you know? Right. Payday, payday loans, title loans. They’re doing that kind of thing now. And you know, like. Having oh like a, a, a big produce stand and just other businesses Yeah. That that are kind of your, your normal kind of, some of ’em are kind of gray area businesses, like the the loan pri subprime loan people.
It, it’s so amazing, isn’t it? The, the. So many of the rackets are semi-legal now in, in some sense. Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. [00:38:00] Like, I’m just thinking about that as they’re building one of the printing plants for one of the downtown newspapers is becoming a casino. Right, right. In the West Loop. And it’s like, I didn’t realize that.
Wow. You know, so that, I think it’s a Bally’s casino’s gonna be right there. Yeah. Across the, from the loop. So, yeah. Y you know, I mean, it’s, it’s the mafia dream, but they’re not the ones, I don’t think. In charge of it anymore? No, no. I did, I did some work for the Missouri Gaming Commission. We’ve got one, two, we got three or four in Kansas City, and the deal was in Missouri.
They got two in Kansas. The three in Missouri had to be within a thousand feet of an applicable stream. It started out they had to be a boat on the, on, on the river. Oh, right, right. The river. It’s too dangerous. So we’d move ’em off. But I did work after I started practicing laws. For ’em. And they run a tight ship, man, nothing is gonna get by them.
Yeah. Nothing is gonna get, they’re really rigid and, and they enforce those rules [00:39:00] rigorously. Yeah. And if they catch a casino dirty, I mean, they just accidentally let a little kid run down the floor one time. And, and I was doing this kind of a, like a hearing thing, and I, so I recommended like a.
$10,000 fine. Went to the board and they gave him a $50,000 fine. Just bec and it was obviously an accident. We had the, the footage. Yeah. There’s obviously this little kid goes running by the stand that keeps pe, you know, checks people in, ran down the stairs and, and as soon as he got down the bottom of the stairs.
These guards can swooping on this kid and took him off, but they still, they find him $50,000 just for something like that. So they’re really rigorous. And the kid was put on the black book. Right? He can’t ever, I really can’t ever go to a casino. Can’t ever go to a casino again. Right. I, I mean, I don’t know how I feel to be honest about the, the legalized gambling.
If you watch. I’ve, I’ve watched a lot of Kansas City chief games these past few years and it’s just commercial after commercial is for the sports betting, you know, sports [00:40:00] betting. I know it’s, it’s crazy. These apps and everything and you know, it leads to addiction. I can promise you that there’s a lot addicts, ’cause they just got that action going all the time.
All the time. Just constant action, you know, on every game, every play. Just constant action. And, and we’re about to get that sports book. We had the main sports bookie here in Kansas City. A guy named Pete Simone just died of old age. And, and I had, I had seen him at this one restaurant that he liked to hang out at.
He knew one of the people that owned it, and he was there all the time. And you’d see him meet with different people kinda having these, you know, little quiet conversations. And one of ’em was a, was a guy that, that fell for sports booking. I don’t know, one of the last ones that. Rounds before they legalized it.
Yeah. ‘Cause the FBI doesn’t investigate it anymore and he was in this tight conversation, so I think there’s still a sports book, something. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, with the apps or at the casino, you don’t, you can’t ex exactly extend credit unless it’s with a credit card and. [00:41:00] And plus it’s, you know, it’s, it’s more, it’s there at your local bar or you’re with your friend, or you jump on the phone and do it.
It’s much more convenient. I think that’s, that’s really interesting too, that like, you know, I’m in California and there was a thought that. Legalizing marijuana would take out a lot of the illegal business, and I’m sure it has. Yeah. But less than people thought. You know? I mean, because you’re still going to wanna dodge the taxes.
You still wanna. Dodge all the money that you have to, to pay to do it legally and you don’t have access to. I think it’s starting to change where you don’t have access to credit cards and bank accounts always. So, you know, California’s a big problem with marijuana being grown and national forests and, and yeah.
You know, so, and it’s really bad for the environment, so, you know, but I, I, I think you’re right about the gambling being the same way potentially, but me. With a wider pool of customers, which is an [00:42:00] unforeseen development. Yeah. You know? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That merri, I understand that. In, in California even, they set up a store that looks just like a dispensary.
Yeah. And yet it just doesn’t have the license. And so they’re, they’re, it’s like whack-a-mole. You run around, knock one down and go, there’ll be another one going up. We have some interesting ones here. You know, like we have the, the, for whatever reason. The shadiest thing here are mattress stores that pop up.
They’re in business for a little bit, and then they’re not in business anymore. I’ve done a little digging to try to figure out what’s going on with these, but there is some sort of front yeah. Of, of just putting up money and then moving on to the next one. So if it’s, if it’s that or something else, I, I’m not sure, but yeah, you’re absolutely right.
The, the vape stores, the, the dispensary is legal or not. It, it, it is a thing and it just goes to show that. The hustle never ends really. You know, it never ends. I don’t know if the mob’s involved in that or not. I’ve not [00:43:00] seen any evidence of it, but I’m kind of a little bit, you know, away from that. And nobody is investigating the mob anymore.
Right. I don’t know if you really realize that there’s no one squad here in Kansas City. Mm-hmm. Organized crime squad. I don’t know about Chicago. They may still have a few agents assigned. I’m sure they do in New York, but all the rest of the cities, the midsize cities where we had a family, I bet there’s not above.
Squad that’s assigned to that. I’d be willing to bet. New York is the only one that still has that. I don’t know that for certain, but given Chicago, it’s really a bunch of old men in the Western suburbs at this point, with one exception of. I find this very interesting. I remember John Bender, who you probably know yeah.
Mm-hmm. Talked to me once and sort of tipped me off about this. There is one crew of somewhat younger guys of sort of affiliated with the outfit who were robbing stash houses on the west and south sides of Chicago. [00:44:00] Dressed as Chicago police, and that was kind of a throwback, you know, that’s kind of a vintage, yeah.
Kind of crime. But it’s interesting too that they’re going after, you know, Chicago is, I mean, to your point. Historically. Now the, the biggest crime organization in Chicago, besides some of the street gangs, would be the Sinaloa cartel. Yeah. And they’ve never set foot there. You know, it, it’s, it’s just kind of amazing.
But you know, I, I kind of felt Chapo Guzman should have been tried in Chicago, but you know, that was his headquarters. But, that’s Chicago, it’s Chip on its shoulder versus New York. It’s an old story, you know? So really is, is there somebody, is there a decent book on that or, or anybody that’s done anything on the Chapo El Chapo in Chicago and on up into the United States?
I was thinking about doing a story about the cartels. There was a great book about. Yeah. Here it was by no, a guy named Noah Horowitz. I can send that to you. Okay. [00:45:00] Do that please. He wrote a really good bio about him and I remember there was another one that was fantastic about Chapo Guzman, the, the, the cops breaking his cell phone system because he was, I mean, again, to talk about wiretapping.
Chapo Guzman had his own cell phone network built for him by these tech wizards. It was really quite an amazing technological achievement, and there was a great book I, I’d have to look up about how they broke that. And it’s really more like breaking another country’s codes or signals. It’s really quite amazing.
So that is the level of s the level of sophistication. But yeah, I, I, it’s El Chapo the untold, untold story. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Interesting. Alright, well got anything else you wanna say there? Dan Sullivan, Gary, it’s been, boy that’s me. You know, I. They came here [00:46:00] too late to be a, an Irish hoodlum, but you know, you know, they came in the fifties, it was over, you know?
Yeah. It was pretty well over a little bit in New York, the west east, but but it’s pretty well over by then. That’s a good story. Yeah, I know. That was sort of the last gasp though, and I, I guess Whitey Bulger in Boston, but yeah. But no, I, I, I, it’s such a pleasure to be here. I’ve enjoyed your podcasts and your movie so much over the years, so I.
Please. I would love to, to come back anytime and, and if you’re interested at all, at any of this, you know. Yeah. Our podcast is coming out August 14th. Everywhere podcasts are available, the outfit and still trying to figure out why exactly the Chicago mob named its. Self, the outfit, but one of those things.
Good question. Yeah, I like that they’ve got the, the combination in Detroit or the partnership, I think, and, and we, we used to call ourselves the click. Yeah. But it didn’t really move on up into the sixties and seventies. I, I talked to an old mobster who was talking about trying to get a [00:47:00] loan to open a, he said it’d been the first Taco Bell in Kansas City said I would’ve made a fortune.
And he said I couldn’t get any money. And I went to the clique. I said, what do you mean the clique? He said, you know, the mob guys? He said, but they wouldn’t have any money either. And so since then, I’ve seen it in some old reports called it the clique, but that, you know, more into modern times, they, I don’t know, they didn’t really call themselves anything.
It didn’t seem like FBI started calling ’em the outfit. But I, I think it’s sort of this thing like in Sicily, Cosa Nostra, just like. A very vague way of describing this thing, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, like in New England it was just the office, you know, as bland as could be, you know? So. Oh yeah, that’s right.
It was the office. Yeah, I remember that. That was patriarch and them. Interesting. Another great story. But anyway, that’s us. That’s the outfit. So thank you so much for having us. I know Sullivan, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure, Gary. Anytime.
