(8 of 9)
Then in Chicago, another committee investigating team learned from a mobster that Harry Russell was a longtime partner of Tony Accardo himself. Later, checking the records of the Erie & Buffalo policy wheel, the Chicago team found a 1949 income-tax report made out by Accardo and Guzik as partners. They were getting $278,666 from the wheel, the report showed, but investigators were more interested in another item further down. The partners had claimed a loss of $7,252 on the S & G Syndicate in Florida. That frugal claim was the first solid proof that Russell had muscled in as a Capone syndicate frontman.
The Texas Trail. The Chicago syndicate's interests are not confined to horse racing. A hood named Pat Manno, who is vice president of a Chicago auto-sales company, in his spare time, is Accardo's specialist on policy. Manno also travels for the syndicate. The committee confronted him with a wire recording of a conversation he had been trapped into by Dallas' Sheriff Steve Guthrie in 1946. Manno had gone to Texas to see Guthrie, then sheriff-elect, about a "program of horse-booking, slot machines, dice, numbers, everything."
Guthrie: "I want to get this straight. The only thing you expect from me is protection on gambling, nothing else?"
Manno: "Something I'm against, that's dope peddlers, pickpockets, hired killers. That's one thing I can't stomach, and that's one thing the fellows up there—the group—won't stand for, things like that. They discourage it."
Guthrie: "Do you think that there's any way that they can find out that there's a tie-up between here and up there in Chicago?"
Manno: "We're not going to come from Chicago down here."
Guthrie: "In other words, they'll all be local boys?"
Manno: "All local fellows ... All we are doing is bankrolling him . . . and keep the—like he calls—the muscle men . . . These people can be called in too, you know."
All-Star Finale. That was about all the committee needed to confirm its worst suspicions of the extent and brazen confidence of the Chicago syndicate. Next week, in the wind-up hearings, Estes Kefauver will bring his roadshow to New York, where an all-star cast, including Frank Costello, Joe Adonis and Meyer Lansky, unhappily awaits him. Then the committee will sit down to write its final report.
What has the committee accomplished? To those who never believe anything until they see it on television, it has shown the new, bland face of igsi's overlords of crime. It has stirred up local crimebusters, lit at least a flash fire under many a city police department.
There have been other, more tangible results. Since the investigation began, at least a dozen sheriffs, deputies and police officers have been removed from office or indicted. The committee has cited 14 witnesses for contempt of Congress. Though the first test case, Harry Russell, was dismissed by Federal Judge F. Dickinson Letts, Kefauver hopes to do better with the rest. There are warrants out for the arrest of 17 others who failed to appear, including Guzik, Fischetti and Kleinman. The Bureau of Internal Revenue has filed tax liens against those who admitted to more wealth than their income taxes showed.