1943-1944

Had it not been for a shifty plan Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo and/or his attorney, George Bieber dreamed up, the Mobster might’ve gone to prison at age 37, in 1944, for illegal gambling.

Cigar Store As Front

A high-ranking Outfit member, Accardo had been operating a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at 192 N. Clark St. in Chicago, Illinois. Interactions with bettors had taken place there via phone in the Drive Inn Smoke Shop on the first floor. Wires from 25 phones had occupied two upper floors ran and connected to a switchbox in a single room on the fourth level.

Following a successful police raid of the Ogden in November 1943, Accardo and nine of his employees were indicted and arrested.

Fancy Legal Footwork

Subsequently, the state of Illinois and Accardo/Bieber agreed that Accardo would join the U.S. Army and, accordingly, the district attorney’s office would nolle pros (not prosecute) his case. The parties cemented the deal in court.

As required, Accardo reported to the local draft board just days later. However, he shared with them his criminal history and standing in The Outfit. He “was summarily rejected by the Army as morally unfit,” according to The Chicago Syndicate website.

This stratagem resulted in dismissal of the charges against Accardo (and the others) and his avoidance of military service to boot.

Sources

Accardo

1935-1965

Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too.

Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s Bosa brothers:* Nick, defensive end for the 49ers and Joey, outside linebacker for the Chargers.

Individual Participation

As early as 1940, Accardo and some Outfit partners owned and operated the prosperous Owl Club, an illegal casino-nightclub in Calumet City, Illinois, on the corner of Douglas and Plummer avenues.

The Mobster-gambler also ran book, oftentimes under the name Joe Batters, a nickname Al “Scarface” Capone had bestowed upon him for his prowess in thrashing people with a baseball bat. In the early 1940s, for example, Accardo conducted a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at 192 N. Clark St. in Chicago’s Loop.

Not only was Accardo an operator of games of chance; he also was a player and thus, a gambler in both senses of the word. Reportedly, he was one of the best patrons of his own joint, the Owl Club. Even when he older and less mobile, he kept up the activity, placing bets via the telephone.

Group Activities

While underboss, Accardo shifted the Outfit out of labor racketeering and into other areas of organized crime, including gambling. He pushed the syndicate into three specific areas: slot machines, wire service and casinos.

Slots: The Chicago Mob broadened its footprint by placing slots in various establishments beyond the main street gambling house. These included gas stations, restaurants and bars and the group’s favorite targeted outlet, social clubs and fraternal organizations. The Catholic War Vets, the American Legion Posts, the CIO Steel Workers Club, the Polish Democratic Club, and the Italian American Republican Club, are just some of the many local ones.

After successfully flooding its territory in and around Chicago with slots, the Outfit expanded geographically. It hit the neighboring cities first, then nearby states and eventually Nevada.

“Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines,” wrote John William Tuohy in the article “Accardo.”

Wire Service: During the mid-1940s the Outfit took over the Continental Press Service, the wire service that distributed race results throughout the U.S. It did so by killing the operator, James Ragen, after he’d refused to partner with the Chicago Mob.

Once under its control, Continental “became so big and lucrative that an investigating Senate committee later called it the ‘life blood’ of the syndicate,'” reported the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 18, 1984).

Casinos: Three, during the 1950s, the Outfit pursued gambling in a bigger scale. It moved into owning stakes in and skimming millions from casinos. It stuck primarily to legal gambling jurisdictions, first Havana, Cuba, while that lasted, and then Nevada. For instance, by 1961, Chicago owned controlling interests in the Riviera, Stardust, Fremont and Desert Inn, in Vegas.

Despite having a major hand in the Outfit’s gambling (and other lines of business), Accardo always denied being one of the organization’s members never mind a boss. Instead, he claimed he merely was a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.

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* How Accardo and the Bosa Brothers Are Related

Sources

Frost, 1936

1906-1967

Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry.

Here we present the “work” (criminal) highlights of Frost, tracking him geographically through Illinois, then California and, finally, Nevada.

Chicago, 1906-1930: Murder Charge By Age 30

Though Frost was born in California, he spent most of his youth in Chicago and eventually became part of its North Side Aiello–Moran gang (Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and George “Bugs” Moran), which was involved heavily in bootlegging during the 1920s. Frost, who used the aliases Eddie Ryan, Frank Bruna and Frank Citro there, was arrested three or four times for disorderly conduct but wasn’t charged.

Also, Frost was the primary suspect in the November 16, 1928 machine gun murder of John G. Clay, head of the Laundry and Fyehouse Chauffeurs’ Union. Police theorized that Moran ordered the hit because Clay was thwarting Moran’s attempts to muscle in on the cleaning and dyeing racket in The Windy City’s West and South Sides, Alphonse “Scarface” Capone’s territory. Though Frost was arrested for the murder, he wasn’t charged.

In a supposed act of retaliation by Capone, some of his soldiers, disguised as police officers, lined up and machine gunned down six of Moran’s men on February 14, 1929, nearly wiping out his crew. Initially, Frost was thought to be among the victims of what was dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Afterward, Frost switched his allegiance to Capone.

When Chicago Tribune crime reporter, Alfred “Jake” Lingle was murdered June 9, 1930, police traced the gun, left at the scene, back to Frost but determined that a Leo V. Brothers was the shooter.

Frost

Los Angeles, 1930-1934: Not Staying Out Of Trouble

Frost was indicted by a grand jury for accessory to the Lingle crime because he presumably had guilty knowledge of the killer(s) and their motives, but he was in Los Angeles at the time, using the alias Frank Foreman. He was captured there on July 1, 1930, arrested, returned to Chicago and placed in the county jail. After five months, though, he had to be released by law, so he got out on a $20,000 ($309,000 today) bond.

In March of the next year, Frost testified at Brothers’ trial. Also called to the stand was a witness who said he saw Frost and Brothers flee the scene in different directions after Lingle was shot. One detail the witness recounted was seeing Frost help Brothers light a cigarette afterward so Brothers didn’t have to take one of his hands out of his pocket.

The trial of Frost, for his alleged involvement in Lingle’s murder, was scheduled for April 28, but it never took place because the witnesses disappeared. Frost was back in Los Angeles when he learned, in June, that charges against him were dropped.

In September, Frost was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with a scheme to extort money from the widow of soap magnate, Leo Bergin. Bergin racked up a gambling debt of at least $6,000 ($102,000 today) in a days-long dice game run by representatives of New York gambler-Mobster Arnold Rothstein. Bergin wrote some checks for what he owed but later stopped payment on some. Before Rothstein’s men could collect in full, Bergin died, so they went after Gladys Bergin for payment. Due to lack of evidence, Frost wasn’t charged.

The following year, 1932, in February, a patrol officer pulled over Frost, who was working at the time as a bail bondsman. A search of the new car he was driving yielded a fully loaded, 0.45-caliber automatic pistol. Frost also had with him a letter from a “Ben” in New York, possibly Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, which read in part, “Other people out there are trying to keep out of trouble, but are always in touch with New York. Glad you have gone into the bonding business, as that is good cover for the business you are in.” Frost was found guilty of carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. Because he then failed to appear at a hearing of arguments concerning a possible new trial, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

A month later, police in San Francisco raided an apartment in their investigation of a $100,000 ($1.8 million today) jewelry robbery and took the four men inside to the station. Frost was among them. It resulted in a vagrancy charge (that later would be removed) and him being returned to the City of Angels. He was sentenced to six months in the county jail for the concealed weapon offense. Frost, though, disappeared, and a nationwide hunt for him began. Before he could be found, the appellate court reversed his conviction.

Presumably, the man who repeatedly had gotten away with crimes laid low in Southern California for the next few years.

Reno, 1935-1967: Focus On Gambling, Business

Frost next turned up living with his wife in The Biggest Little City. Only five months later, in April 1936, he was arrested for allegedly stealing $125,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of jewelry from a New York City store that January. For the story, see next blog post, Reno Mobsters Aid Gangster From Chicago, Raising Suspicions.

In 1938, the owner of a New York clothing store, Cy Kronfield Inc., sued Frost for $630.85 ($11,500 today) for not paying for goods and services it provided to him between 1933 and 1939.

Using the name Frank Foster, Frost was arrested in Elko, a city about 300 miles northeast of Reno, in May 1940 for attempted burglary of the Reinhart general merchandise store. Two months later, he was arrested and served 30 days in jail in Reno for “prowling through parked automobiles” (Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 10, 1940). In June 1941, he was arrested for petty larceny after getting caught trying to sell children’s clothes he’d stolen from somewhere.

Frost reportedly ran or helped run the race horse pool at Graham and McKay’s Bank Club for several years, after which he opened and operated his own book, the Reno Turf Club.

In 1947’s first half, Frost applied for another gambling license from the city, this one for a new entity, Washoe Sports News, which was to supply race results from the Trans-America News and Publishing Co. wire service to local outlets. On behalf of Capone, Siegel was tasked with forcing bookmakers on the West Coast to switch to Trans-America from Continental Press. While the city council was mulling over whether or not to eliminate the existing cap on the number of race pools allowed in Reno, because granting Frost the license would’ve exceeded it, Trans-America went bankrupt and folded after its primary owner-operator was murdered. Soon afterward, Siegel was killed, too, and Frost withdrew his gambling application.

In 1951, Frost sold the Reno Turf Club. Afterward, he returned to working at the Bank Club, supposedly wrapping money. However, members of the Nevada Tax Commission, the entity which in 1947 gained the task of issuing state gambling licenses, saw him overseeing a game of faro there once. Because of his criminal background, the commissioners didn’t want Frost involved with running the gambling in any Silver State casino.

However, they spotted him again doing just that, counting money and giving orders at Reno’s Palace Club. After a related brouhaha, the casino banned him from working there in 1953, and after that, according to Frost, he no longer could get a job in the state’s gaming industry.

Dorothy Frost

In 1955, Frost’s wife Dorothy, a Manitoba, Canada native, took her life by overdosing on sleeping pills.

His Final Years

The widower remained in Reno and was involved subsequently in some shady business dealings, which came to light through various lawsuits. Frost held and breached the lease on the Mt. Rose Sawmill. In an incident that led to a lawsuit, Frost physically prevented a competing lumber firm (Frost owned the Nevada Pine Mill and Lumber Co.) from taking from the sawmill wood it purchased. Also, he was sued for failing to pay for lumber he bought from a Lake Tahoe man.

In another arrangement, Frost was a co-partner with McKay and Marion T. Weller in F.M.W. Drilling Co. In 1957, an employee sued F.M.W. for not paying him $1,650 ($15,000 today), the remainder of wages due him for building an oil derrick.

In 1961, a Frank Frost appeared to be working at the local Buick dealership as the assistant general sales manager. It may or may not have been him.

The Mobster Frost, who’d left a trail of crime in his wake, passed away on April 1, 1967 at age 68 in Nevada.

Sources

Bally Bell, 1938, Bally Manufacturing Co.’s first slot machine

1963-1970s

With assorted help from Mobsters starting in 1963, a small Chicago, Illinois-based pinball game maker, which had begun as Lion Manufacturing Co. in the 1920s, grew into the world’s largest slot machine developer, Bally Manufacturing Corp., by the 1970s.

And those underworld relationships later would damage its image and jeopardize some of its existing operations overseas and expansion plans for Nevada and New Jersey.

“Bally Manufacturing is one of the National Crime Syndicate’s more visible operations,” Pacific News Service reporters wrote in a May 24, 1974 article (The Capital Times).

Mafioso Investors

Lion/Bally Founder Raymond Moloney, Sr. died in 1957, after which his sons, Ray, Jr., and Don took control of the business as president and director of sales, respectively. By 1962, the company was foundering. To help, Sales Manager William T. O’Donnell contacted Abe Green, reported front man for Gerardo “Jerry” Catena, then underboss of the Vito Genovese crime family in New York. Catena’s company, Runyon Sales, was involved in pinball distribution in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut and was Lion/Bally’s largest distributor.

Catena

Together, the following group bought Bally for $1.2 million ($10 million today), incorporated it and ousted the Moloneys:

• Jerry Catena (originally held an 8.3% interest, later 12.5%)
• Abe Green
• Barnet Sugarman (another Catena front man and Runyon Sales partner)
• Sam Klein (a Catena associate)
• Irving Kaye (a Catena associate)
• Louis Jacobs (his firm Emprise Corp.* financed the transaction)
• Frank Prince (an associate of Jacob)
• William O’Donnell

O’Donnell took the helm of Bally in 1963 with primarily East Coast mobsters as its investor-owners.

Mob-Linked Employees

• Dino Cellini: He was a top lieutenant of gambling chieftain Meyer Lansky and sold/distributed slot machines for Bally between 1964 and 1973 in London then the Bahamas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He sold the machines on behalf of the group of Mobsters, including Lansky, who owned the Colony Club in London, of which Cellini was the manager and actor George Raft was the front man. Prior to that, Cellini had worked in the 1950s for Lansky at his Riviera casino in Havana. 

• Michael “Mickey” Wichinsky: He had connections with Catena and other unsavory men during his hugely successful stint as Bally’s slot machine distributor in Southern Nevada beginning in 1964. Wichinsky’s nephew, Robert Petrin, was married to Catena’s daughter, and Petrin held a stake in one of Catena and Green’s enterprises, Automatic Merchants Co., in New Jersey. When Nevada gambling authorities appeared for a random audit of his Bally enterprise in 1971, Wichinsky telephoned Petrin.

Wichinsky admitted having business or social contacts with and/or catering to various alleged Mobsters, such as Cellini, whom he helped land a job representing Bally in Rome. Wichinsky, however, denied ever knowing or being affiliated with Catena.

• Joseph D. Testa, Jr.: This Chicago Mobster and reported close friend of Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio, Outfit enforcer and hitman, claimed to be selling slot machines for Bally in Australia, but O’Donnell denied that was true when government officials there confronted him about it. Australian gaming authorities spotted Testa in Sydney several times, the first in 1969, sometimes in the company of local mobsters. As such, regulators concluded Testa was there on behalf of one or more U.S. syndicates to strong-arm into and monopolize their country’s slot machines industry.

Mobs’ Funding Vehicle

The Teamsters Union’s Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas Pension Fund, or Teamsters Pension Fund (TPF): Known as the Mob’s bank, the TPF was a major source of capital for Bally, providing it with a series of loans.

After Bally went public in 1968, the TPF itself and several of its trustees bought shares in the corporation. When the TPF loaned $12 million to Bally in the early 1970s, supposedly to finance building of the corporation’s first major Chicago plant, several fund trustees held Bally stock. They included International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons, Vice President William Presser and TPF Asset Manager Alvin Baron.

When other individuals pursued financing through the TPF for hotel-casinos, the trustees allegedly pressured them to buy the slot machines for their resorts from Bally. This was because “Bally’s 42,000 slot machines in Nevada casinos bring in over $250 million [$1.3 billion today] a year, helping the National Crime Syndicate make payments on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund provided for casino construction over the last 15 years,” wrote reporters Lowell Bergman and Dee Stevens (The Capital Times, May 24, 1974).

Downsides To Affiliations

Bally’s relationships with organized criminals repeatedly dogged the corporation, first becoming a problem in 1969 when it applied with the Nevada Gaming Commission to assume distribution of its slot machines in Nevada. 

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* Emprise would be indicted in 1972 with Detroit Mobsters Michael Polizzi and Anthony Zerilli on charges of trying to obtain a hidden ownership of the Frontier hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

** Dino Cellini and Meyer Lansky also would be indicted in 1972, in Florida for conspiring to receive almost $200,000 ($1.2 million today) that players lost at the Colony Club in London.

Sources

1968, 1969

Bally Manufacturing Corp. got its name from Ballyhoo, the first coin-operated pinball machine (a penny got you seven plays) created in 1931 by Raymond Moloney, owner of Chicago, Illinois-based Lion Manufacturing Co. Lion became Bally in January 1932.

The company also made slot machines, video poker machines, video games and state lottery games and at its peak, owned five casino properties. 

In 1969, the British rock group, The Who, gave a shout out to Bally in its song, “Pinball Wizard,” lyrics by Pete Townshend:

I thought I was
The Bally table king
But I just handed
My pin ball crown to him

Even on my favorite table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest
He’s got crazy flipper fingrs
Never seen him fall
That deaf dumb and blind kind
Sure plays a mean pin ball!

Gambling equipment junkyard

1895

Chicago gamblers waged a long, hard legal battle against the law that allowed police and other authorities to destroy casino equipment seized during the execution of a search warrant.

The fight ended, however, in 1895 with the Supreme Court of Illinois ruling that the legislation was constitutional — a major blow to casino operators and owners.

1946

Two brothers — Edward P. and George Jones — freely controlled Chicago, Illinois’ policy* racket for 25 years, beginning in the 1920s.

As a result, the two raked in money, $10 to $30 million per year, in nickels and dimes, primarily from the Caucasians and African Americans living in slums, which turned the siblings into multimillionaires. In one year alone, income from their operation, that spanned from Ohio to Idaho, was an estimated $4.5 million ($45 million today)!

On a Monday in May 1946, Edward Jones’ chauffeur drove him and his wife and cashier, Frances Myles, to Myles’ home. When the limousine arrived there, two masked men carrying submachine guns appeared, hit and grabbed Jones and tried to capture Myles, but she broke free and ran into her house. The abductors forced Jones in their car and sped away. Jones’ chauffeur and wife followed and a few blocks away, alerted police who then pursued and fired two bullets at the criminals. The gunmen fired back, shattering the squad car’s front window, injuring an officer and, ultimately, getting away.

Days passed.

Some underworld members speculated the kidnappers would hold Jones until he relinquished control of his policy business in the Windy City, or if he refused, murder him. In agreement with that motive, police theorized former Al Capone minions had taken Jones.

Their other hypothesis was that ex-cons who’d done time in federal prison with Jones (he served a couple of years for income tax evasion) had snatched him for ransom money. (Jones had been kidnapped twice before but hadn’t reported the incidents to law enforcement officers.)

Five days later, Jones was released. He said he’d been blindfolded while held but had been treated well, hadn’t spoken to his captors and couldn’t identify them.

A rumor then spread that Jones’ mother and sister had paid $100,000 ($1.2 million today) to free him.

Case Turns Cold

Police, as part of their crime investigation, tried to round up and question the usual suspects, 100 of them including former Capone associates, but the big-time players had disappeared. They included:

• Matt Capone (Al’s brother)
• Ralph “Bottles” Capone (Al’s brother)
• Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt
• Murray “The Camel” Humphreys
• Edward “Red” Meehan
• Anthony “Tough Tony” Capezzio
• Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo

Nothing came of the detectives’ efforts.

After the kidnapping, Jones moved into a 12-room mansion in Mexico City, Mexico, from where he continued to oversee his multistate policy enterprise.

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*In policy, also called numbers, players bet on a number they predicted would appear in a specific source on a given day. Originally, operators obtained the winning numbers through lottery drawings but that evolved into using baseball scores, pari-mutuel totals, cattle receipts and other combinations of figures that routinely appeared in the newspaper. Because players could wager nickels and dimes, even those who couldn’t afford even part of a lottery ticket could participate. Therefore, the game became prevalent in poor U.S. neighborhoods.

Sources

Photo from Pond5: “”The Road From Coins” by dbrus

In the mid-afternoon of Tuesday, February 2, 1943, smoke emanating from a third-story apartment in Lakeview, Illinois led to the discovery of a woman dead inside — her face, head and neck mutilated, her body burned.

Estelle Carey

She was identified as 31-year old Estelle Evelyn Carey, one of the roommates residing in the unit at 512 W. Addison Street.

Gorgeous Woman, Hideous Crime

Described as “tough as nails” and “beautiful,” Carey worked as the “head dice girl” at The Colony casino in Chicago, at 744 N. Rush Street, had dated the club owner, mobster Nick Dean, and sidelined as a photographer’s model. Members of the local underworld knew Carey as “Nick Dean’s girl” (The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 5, 1943).

“[Dean] had taken her when she was a waitress and lavished silks, furs, jewels and his trust upon her,” reported the United Press (UP) (The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 3, 1943). “He installed her in a Gold Coast apartment and made her the ‘Queen’ of his gambling concession (Feb. 4, 1943).

Experts concluded Carey’s attacker, somebody she likely knew, forced her to sit then battered her face with a rolling pin, shattering her nose; yanked out clumps of her red hair; bludgeoned her skull with a blackjack (a club); hacked her throat with a serrated bread knife; and set her on fire.

“She apparently staggered out of the chair after her torturer and fell to the floor, preventing the fire from spreading above her waistline, but not until she had been severely burned around the legs,” said William Drury, the acting police captain investigating the crime, adding that “she suffered agony.”

Nick Dean

Dean, born Nicholas Deani Circella, was a former Al Capone associate and henchman of William “Willie” M. Bioff, former boss of the Motion Picture Operators’ Union. At the time of Carey’s murder, Circella was serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison for his involvement in extorting money from Hollywood movie executives by threatening labor problems at the studios.

Question Of Motive

At least 5 theories underpinned Carey’s supposed torture and blatant murder. They included:

1) Robbery: Carey grossed about $500 to $600 a week (about $8,000 to $10,000 today) and owned many expensive accessories and fine clothes. Maybe she was tortured for the location of her cash or baubles, the latter stashed in a shoe bag. Also, a neighbor witnessed a man leaving Carey’s apartment by the back stairs at about 2 p.m. carrying two fur coats turned inside out; Carey’s roommate later confirmed the very same were missing. In recent months, more than 50 fur coats had been snatched from residences in the surrounding area. 

2) Information Seeking: Carey may have been squeezed for the location of Dean’s money, presumably a fortune, gained from his gambling and labor racketeering enterprises.

“Dean’s former gambling associates have had slim pickings in recent months and may have believed she knew where the money was concealed,” Drury said (The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 3, 1943).

3) Jealousy: Police considered “the possibility that Carey was slain by a suitor in a fit of jealous rage,” or by the jealous wife of a lover, perhaps, reported the UP (The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 4, 1943). The dice girl was a favorite of the male clientele at The Colony and was known sometimes to have more than one amour at a time.

4) Gangland Revenge: When investigating Dean and his labor extortion racket in 1941, the FBI questioned Carey extensively, and information she provided allegedly had been used against Dean in his conviction. Were his associates now, more than a year later, retaliating for her having cooperated with the agents?

5) Pre-Emptive Striking: Perhaps worried that if the feds interrogated Carey again that she would divulge more about the Chicago Outfit’s two major enterprises — labor racketeering and gambling — the bosses wanted to “cool her off,” thereby preventing her from doing the syndicate harm (The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 5, 1943).

Chicago police pursued all of the above angles yet failed to ferret out the perpetrator. However, their No. 1 suspect was Chicago mobster Marshall Caifano (alias John Marshall), particularly since he was known to use a blowtorch on his murder victims.

The case of Estelle Carey went and remains cold.

Sources