INVESTIGATIONS: After Kefauver

Oregon state police and liquor agents swooped down on 100 taverns and roadhouses in Clackamas County one night last week, confiscated 115 gambling devices and arrested 87 men & women. “I can’t understand this!” cried a waitress at one of the joints. “We’ve always been tipped off before.”

The big Kefauver crime hunt was over —at least for the time being Senator Kefauver himself relaxed, showed his daughter how to ride a pogo-stick. The country still had crime on its mind, and if half the activity of last week was genuine, it was going to make life a little less comfortable for the gamblers, extortionists, hoods, crooked cops and corrupt politicians whose faces or names flitted into view of the Kefauver committee’s TV cameras. It was, of course, a big “if.”

The loudest noises came from New York. Some of them:

¶ The Brooklyn district attorney reopened the ten-year-old case of Abe (“Kid Twist”) Reles; there was even talk of exhuming Reles’ corpse. His mysterious plunge from a hotel window one day in 1941, while under police guard, blew up a perfect rap against Murder Inc.’s Executioner Albert Anastasia. William O’Dwyer was Brooklyn district attorney at the time. Anastasia went free, and still is. Last week immigration authorities arrested one of Albert’s five brothers (they all jumped ship to enter the U.S.) on illegal entry charges.

¶ Abraham Goldman, one of Mayor Impellitteri’s deputy chief police inspectors, retired suddenly, after being identified as a crony of one of Racketeer Frank Costello’s shady and powerful pals.

¶ New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who declined to testify before the Kefauver committee because it would not appear before him at Albany, decided that a crime probe was a pretty good idea after all, if he was running it. He set up his own five-man crime investigating committee, gave it $250,000 and subpoena power and told it to look into ties between crime and “any unit of government anywhere in the state.” He also ordered a special grand-jury investigation of Saratoga Springs, the horsy spa only 30 miles from the governor’s mansion where gambling has been going on for years, though the governor seemed surprised to hear about it.

Elsewhere:

¶ The Illinois legislature prepared to set up a crime commission of its own. Texas, never a state to do a job on a small scale, established two little Kefauver committees, one for each house of the legislature.

¶ In St. Louis, the Feds closed in on well-heeled James J. Carroll, one of the biggest U.S. bookies, but they had to reach for an obscure, never-used and relatively mild gimmick in the tax law to do it. Carroll was arrested and charged with 26 violations of a tax provision requiring formal reports of payments of more than $600 to individuals.

¶ In New Orleans, a federal grand jury indicted five men for contempt of Congress for their refusal to answer some of the crime investigators’ questions. Among the defendants: Dandy Phil Kastel, Frank Costello’s New Orleans gambling partner, and Carlos Marcello, described by Kefauver as “one of the most important criminals in the country.”

¶ In Washington, twelve more, including Costello and New York-New Jersey Racketeer Joe Adonis, were cited for contempt by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate. The Senate extended the Kefauver committee’s life for 30 days to give it time to write its final report.

¶ In Chicago, tough Tony Accardo, reigning boss of the old Capone mob, bought himself a magnificent 22-room mansion (original cost: $500,000), in the swank suburb of River Forest, hired 20 decorators to fix up the place.

¶ In Miami Beach, Racketeer Frank Costello gave a 2½-hour audience to Walter Winchell in a Roney Plaza cabana. Costello thought that big-time gamblers like himself could be driven out of business only by legalizing gambling: abolishing horse races or ball games wouldn’t do the trick. “The Weather Bureau says tomorrow will be sunny,” explained Costello. “So you’re a long-shot guy and you take a price it will rain. Isn’t everything in life a gamble?”