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In Miami's Dade County, Sheriff James A. Sullivan's assets had soared from $2,500 to more than $75,000 in his six years in office, and a deputy testified that a fellow deputy had delivered to the sheriff's wife $36,000 in payoff money from gamblers. Over on the west coast, Tampa's Sheriff Hugh Culbreath was apparently in business with the top underworld boss, "Big Red" Italiano, let his brother run a book right in his office. An accountant for the racketeers in the Cuban bolita (a version of numbers in which small numbered balls are shaken up in a burlap bag) told the committee that one weekly expense item meant money for the sheriff, scornfully designated in the books as "Cabeza de melon" or "Melon-head."
Inviting Burglars. In New Orleans, Kefauver drove into town past big neon signs advertising Costello's swank Beverly Club. New Orleans is the domain of Costello's partner, "Dandy Phil" Kastel, and of Carlos ("The Little Man'') Marcello, a squat Sicilian who controls the racing wire for Chicago's Capone syndicate. Marcello is a partner with Kastel and Costello in the Beverly Club, owns a jukebox company, slot machines and a fleet of shrimping vessels. Last year he publicly pistol-whipped a man in the heart of New Orleans, but not a single witness to the event has yet turned up.
One Louisiana sheriff grudgingly admitted that he had between "$10,000 and $15,000, mebbe," stashed in his bedroom, protesting, "Lookahere, you're just inviting burglars." Over the denials of New Orleans' Sheriff John Grosch, his ex-wife told Kefauver that Grosch had $150,000 stowed in a strongbox, that panderers and racketeers used to bring the money to the house in bundles of dirty bills.
The Bag Men. In big cities, it is the police captains who wax rich. In New York, police officials began resigning in droves when a bookmaker named Harry Gross threatened to sing (TIME, Feb. 5). In Philadelphia, one witness testified that the bag man for Police Captain Vincent Elwell came into the station house each month with his pockets bulging, that the total take amounted to $152,000 a month for the city's 38 districts.
The committee probed other payoffs that had reached to the state level. In California, the committee said, representatives of Attorney General Fred Howser had set out to organize protection for all slot-machine and punchboard operations through the whole state. In Missouri, the state government "narrowly escaped falling under the control of gangsters" in 1948, the committee declared. Former State Attorney General Roy McKittrick testified that the late Charlie Binaggio offered him $50,000 to withdraw his rival candidacy to now-Governor Forrest Smith, told him: "I have to have a governor." After election, Binaggio was seen so often leaving Governor Smith's office that reporters dubbed him "BackDoor Charlie." But Binaggio failed to get a wide-open state from Smith; for his unforgivable failure, he died untidily at the hands of his bosses. Said Estes Kefauver: "I don't think we have hardly scratched the surface in showing up officials who are actually linked to and supported by organized gambling."