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In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tim Richards, a former St. Louis intelligence officer and author of Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie. Tim brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge from his years investigating the mob and navigating the thin line between law enforcement and organized crime.
We dive deep into the history and dynamics of the St. Louis crime families and their ties—or lack thereof—to Kansas City and Chicago. Tim reveals how the St. Louis mob and the Syrian mob were into labor racketeering, ghost workers, and union control, profiting off federally funded projects.
Click here to buy Crooks Kill and Cops Lie and to see all of Tim’s books
• Listeners will hear gritty stories about:
• The interplay between Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago mob families.
• The “Syrian” mafia’s role in local unions, vengeance, and violence.
• St. Louis mob figures like Paul Leisure, Mike Trupiano, and Jesse Stoneking.
• An unforgettable encounter with Trupiano during a traffic stop.
• The challenges police faced without legal wiretaps, relying instead on FBI intelligence.
• The ripple effects of mob influence reach as far as Las Vegas gambling operations.
From bloody reprisals to uneasy alliances, Tim shares not just history but lived experience—vivid accounts of hit jobs, betrayals, and the complexities of policing organized crime. As he reflects on how law enforcement strategies and technology have evolved, Tim leaves us with a powerful reminder of the mob’s enduring mark on Midwestern history.
If you want an insider’s perspective on St. Louis mobsters and the Midwest underworld, you won’t want to miss this one.
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This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore.
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0:03 Welcome to Gangland Wire
1:02 Exploring Kansas City and St. Louis Mob Ties
4:19 The Influence of the Chicago Mafia
8:56 The Aladdin Hotel and Skimming Operations
11:41 A Deep Dive into Paul Leisure’s Fate
15:12 The Old Italian Mafia and Its Tactics
23:09 Changes in Policing and Mafia Control
24:54 Personal Stories from the Streets
27:43 The Rise and Fall of Jesse Stoneking
33:05 Reflections on Organized Crime and Histor
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. I have another former intelligence unit detective, Tim Richards. Now, you know, and if you don’t, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m sorry, guys. Some of you all may be new listeners. I’m Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Got this podcast, Gangland Wire. We deal with the mob. And I worked a mob in Kansas City, and Tim Richards worked in it in St. Louis, just across the state. So welcome, Tim. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I’m really glad to have you. I was really glad to find this book. I’ve been working on a book myself. So I’m looking at your book, seeing how you did certain things and then going back to mine. And my story is a little bit different, I guess, but different, but the same. You know, we had very similar experiences, guys. When Tim and I first started talking on the phone, you know, it was like, oh, my God, that’s like I was talking to another guy in the same unit, you know, because we had the same kind of experiences.
[0:59] Some of them we’ll talk about, some of them we won’t talk about on here. But we’re going to talk about the mafia primarily. And Tim, what I always found interesting, even back then in the 70s, there seemed to be little to no relationship or connection between Kansas City and St. Louis crime families. Do you remember that like that? Yeah, I recall that. We knew that Nick Zabella was a powerful guy in the families. But we never really saw anything that he was insane. St louis the chicago mafia controlled st louis with some help from detroit the detroit mafia.
[1:37] They the chicago mafia came in here in the late 50s when they were rebuilding downtown st louis and they built the poplar street bridge which was called the tunnel project, they came through east st louis with a guy by the name of buster workman who controlled everything in East St. Louis, and they used ghost workers. It was a federal-funded bridge-building event, and they used ghost workers there, and these guys were getting rich. And in the meantime, they came over to St. Louis and infiltrated our two labor workers, 110 and 42. They also infiltrated 562, which is a five-fitters union, a very wealthy union, and they had them for decades. And they apparently Eventually controlled them 110 was controlled totally And 42 was controlled totally By the Chicago mob.
[2:34] 562 eventually went under It was controlled totally by the Chicago mob And The Chicago mob ran everything here, Allegedly Some dabbling by Detroit I don’t know how they worked that out But Detroit had some function here But um, Yeah, Tim, you go in your Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie book, guys, and I recommend you get this if you want an inside look at the St. Louis Police Intelligence Unit at Police Intelligence Everywhere, why this book will give it to you. And you have a second book before we get too far into this. Hold that one up. I couldn’t find my copy. It’s over across the room somewhere. This is actually the sequel to Crook’s Kill, Cops Lie. Okay. It’s just another St. Louis Intelligence book. The unit was referred to as Intel 210, which was the code name for the unit within the police department. And this is my second book pertaining to the St. Louis Organized Crime Advice. This goes deeply into the intelligence unit and what we actually did and the things that went on between cops and crooks and FBI agents. And we were whores for the FBI.
[3:48] We did all this shit. And the FBI would come over to our office and glean it all. But we didn’t care. We enjoyed what we were doing. And we got to know these FBI guys, and we didn’t mind helping them. The thing is that we couldn’t get legal wiretaps. They could. And so we gave them information, whatever they needed. But anyway, both of my books pertain to that, intelligence and how the unit cops and the FBI and the other feds worked together trying to get these guys together.
[4:20] It’s interesting. In St. Louis and Kansas City, from looking at your book, it was basically the same, different than in other cities, I think.
[4:30] We really worked closely with the FBI also. And like you said, we were their go boys. We went out and they said, hey, we got this going on. Why don’t you go check this out? Well, see the FBI, they have these high level sources because they’ve got all this power and all this money to spread around. And, you know, they can kick a damn grand jury indictment aside if they want in order to put pressure on somebody. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have any local wiretaps. We finally got a law. We ran one here and it was, I tell you what, you never want to do a wiretap unless you got a huge, huge, huge budget, which we never do. So, you know, it’s the same way here. It’s really interesting, you know, the talk about the labor racketeering in particular. You go into that pretty in depth because there’s more than just Chicago and more than Italian mafias. And then you had the Syrian mob in St. Louis that got heavy into union racketeering. So it’s just a really interesting mix down there, Tim.
[5:32] Well, the Syrian mob, it was named, it was actually Lebanese. Oh, that’s right. The FBI named it the Syrian mob, and it stuck. The newspapers picked up on it. We picked up on it. It was referred to as the Syrian mob. But they were political people. They were all politicians and business people within St. Louis. And the Leisure, Paul Leisure, Anthony Leisure, Paul Leisure was a hitman for years for the Chicago mafia here in St. Louis. But Tony Giordano, they wanted to kill another Syrian guy by the name of Jimmy Michaels for control of a 110, local 110.
[6:11] Anthony Giordano told him to lay off of him because the Chicago mob told him, we don’t want him killed. He had worked with them, for them, for years over in East St. Louis for Buster Workman. So Anthony Giordano told the Leisure to lay off of him. The reason they hated him so much is because some Michael’s family killed a Leisure guy over in East St. Louis was back in the 50s shot him in a bar and got away with it and killed him and so there was there was a feud there between the two Syrian families the Lebanese families so the feud just festered and festered and festered and they wanted to kill jimmy michaels for two reasons revenge and control of local 110 jim uh anthony giordano died and that left jimmy michaels wide open so they blew him up in broad daylight with a car bomb on i-55 during rush hour and uh, But then this gang war broke out. Then the Michaels retaliated and blew up Paul Leisure in front of his mom. So I was at both of those scenes, certainly. They’re in my book. My picture’s in the book at the scene.
[7:21] But it was an interesting time there. And the politicians were scurrying because they’d been in bed with these people for the last 30 years. I bet, yeah. I mean, yeah, they were scurrying. And it was just really crazy. There was another Lebanese family by the name of Webby, Sarkis Webby Sr. Was a lawyer and a very influential guy. And he owned the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. And they were skimming the money there. Somehow, this is how the Detroit Mafia comes into this. The Detroit Mafia, the New York Mafia, and the Chicago Mafia were skimming funds from Sarkis Webby’s casino. And they would meet up here in St. Louis and divvy up this cash money. And we had gangsters coming in and out of here, like you would not believe it, from New York City, big gangsters.
[8:11] But it was just crazy how they were going after the skim money. But Sargis Webby, they indicted him and Mike Trippiano, who was the head of the mafia here, and they had one local 110. And they indicted them. And they also indicted Sargis Webby Jr., the son of Sargis Webby. And the dad died. Sargas Lombi died before he could go to trial. But little Sarg did not, and he went to prison. He did a hard time for a lot of years down in Florida. He’s out now. He’s a big-timer, influential guy. And that was for skimming from Aladdin? No, it was a cable TV show.
[8:56] Oh, scam. Another scam. They were going to allow, okay, this is when cable TV just began. And they wanted to come into St. Louis. And then these two guys, these two gangsters said, yeah, you can come into St. Louis, but this is our town. And you’re going to have to pay us. So they had it all on tape. And they all went down. They did not convict Trupiano, Mike Trupiano.
[9:24] But everybody else got convicted on it. And, uh, well, of course, Sarkis will be seeing your diet before he could go to prison. Okay. Little Sarkis, little Sarkis will be went to prison, but, uh, that that’s what they went down on. Uh, it wasn’t the skimming and it wasn’t anything else that they had all the dastardly things they had done. It was for something stupid, like being greedy and one, one thing there, it were the cut of the cable TV money. And now that’s, that’s, that’s how they went down on it. So you really had three, uh, Lebanese blood, blood families, separate blood families. That were then connected with the Italian La Cosa Nostra Mafia in many ways, both in local schemes and national schemes. Yeah, back to the only two because Sarga’s way to senior was part of the leisure gang. Okay, I didn’t realize that. He was allegedly the guy that was keeping the peace. He was an attorney. He was a smooth guy. And little Sarga’s way to junior is a smooth guy. I mean, you know, he drives nice cars and he’s a wealthy guy now. And he always was a wealthy guy. He grew up in Las Vegas. He was a St. Louis kid who grew up in, his daddy owned a casino in Vegas. So you can imagine how he grew up. Yeah, yeah. Hell, he’s a scratch golfer.
[10:39] You know, he has women. I mean, he’s a guy that people would look up to. But he’s not a gangster anymore. In fact, I don’t think he ever was a gangster. He was just a kid that wanted to be tough. and he wasn’t something. He’s a small guy. But the reason they got him instead of the daddy, it wasn’t the daddy died. But the reason I got him is that they had his phone tab. They owned a hotel here in St. Louis called the Mayfair. And they were all afraid of Paul Leisure because he was a monster. He had killed 20 people for the Chicago mob. The Chicago mob would call telling Leisure, I don’t want this guy here. They’d go to Paul Leisure. We want this guy here. He killed 20 people for them. So they were all terrified of him And he was crazy Besides that he was nuts I wanted to stay on the good side of Paul Leisure, And so Paul Leisure called him on the phone At his Mayfair hotel And they had just a casual conversation And Paul Leisure said I quote He said give me two
[11:39] .45s And I’ll shoot it up with these damn St. Louis cops I’ll kill a man And Little Sark said bye bye birdie And all that stuff was taped So in the meantime All right.
[11:51] David Leisure, who actually pulled the pin to kill Jimmy Michaels on I-55, he’s the one that pulled the trigger on it. And everybody knew it. Well, he was hiding out because there was an arrest warrant for him. He was hiding out. So he went down to the Mayfair Hotel and Little Sargast, what, he hit him. He hit him in a, the police came in looking for him. And they hid him in a laundry, a big laundry, hotel laundry basket type thing, and put blankets and stuff on top of him. Well, everybody knew that. And so Lil Sark went to prison for all that, aiding and abetting, running his mouth. What they did, they said, listen, you can plead guilty, or if you want to go to court, you can go to trial. And he had a good lawyer. And they said, but we got this takeover. You’re talking to Paul Leisure about being a tough guy. You know, and Lil Sarg said, yeah, I’m a tough guy, man. I’ve killed people before. I’ve done this and I’ve done that. I’m a street. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. But he talked all that bravado on this tape. They were going to play it for the jury. And so I’ll plead. So he pled.
[12:57] And that Paul Leisure, didn’t he get his legs blown off also? Yeah, he got one of them blown off. I was there when he was still in the car. He was living with his mom. If you believe that, he lived with his mom. It was a nice beautiful day fall day in St. Louis and a call came out for an explosion I drove down there immediately and he was still in the car and his mom was standing outside the car he was a big, powerful, mean guy, man, talking to his mother. It was pitiful. It was just pitiful. She was standing by the car and she had heard the explosion. And as one of his legs was gone, his fingers were all mangled and gone. There were dogs in the neighborhood grabbing his fingers. Grabbing his fingers. Yeah, grabbing his fingers. We were trying to get the dogs out. Get out of here. Get out of here. Oh, my God. And the car was blowing the smithereens, man. And it was a nice neighborhood. Oh, yeah. But when everybody said, everybody said, get those dogs out here. He’s eating those fingers.
[13:53] And then it’s his mom standing there and he’s in the car going, mom, mom. It was pitiful, man. It’s like a friend of mine told me, he said, you got shot in Vietnam. He said, you know, when you get shot, he said, the first thing you do is call out for your mother. He had his right there. And I’ll tell you what, after all that crap that he had pulled before he got blown up, they didn’t even give him. Local 110. They gave him local 42, which is a lower local. And so he was, he was a, uh, uh, an organizer for local 42 and he had his brand new helmet on white helmet. He had it in the car and it said, Paul, these are organizer local 42. And, uh, so I grabbed it. I grabbed, I globbed onto it and I took it to the office and I put it on filing. And it was going to be in my memorial you know and uh i i came back to work one day and the damn thing was gone i said what happened to paul leisure’s helmet and they said oh the fbi came in and got it i think you liars man somebody took that home somebody took it home yeah yeah some captain or major, said i want that yeah i want you got it sir yeah yeah you know how it goes shit rolls downhill as.
[15:13] Well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about then the Italian mob and it goes way back. Uh, to the thirties and, and, you know, Prohibition and all that ends up with Giordano was, uh, the boss for quite a while. And if I remember right, Giordano and Truppiano, what Mike Truppiano was the last, basically the last boss, I think Italian of La Cosa Nostra. Uh, and they have some connection with Detroit and he come, didn’t they send that kid down there from Detroit? Was he a nephew of Giordano? Yeah. Yeah. He was a nephew of Giordano and he came from Detroit. He still was controlled since Giordano died. And so they said Mike Truppiano. But he was still controlled by the Chicago mafia. How that worked out. I think I heard somewhere that Iupa had to approve of Truppiano then taking over. Yeah, yeah. And Truppiano was not known to be a really skillful mafia boss is my understanding. No, he was pretty inept. I had dealings with him personally.
[16:18] I got to the point where I got tired of following these guys around, so I’d pull them over and talk to them. And one time, the New York Mafia was in town. I can’t remember their names now, but they were high up on the Mafia scale. There were two guys in my unit that did a lot of undercover stuff, and they would stay out at the airport. So they saw them come in, and they followed them, and they went to a house. I don’t know whose house it was. It could have been Giordano’s house in South St. Louis County. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t John Vitale’s. Anyway, they had a big meeting there. And Chupiano was chauffeuring them. And so these guys that had been surveilling them got me on the air and said, would you do a car check on Mike Chupiano? Fine, I’d do some car with him. I said, yeah.
[17:08] So I pulled him over on a busy St. Louis street. They were on the way back to the airport. And I made him get out of the car and Trippiano was furious these were high ranking, guys you know he was furious and I said who got in the car with you and he said they’re friends of mine I said get out of the car everybody get out well one big guy who was in the front seat got out I don’t remember his name, but then this big other big Monty guy just sat in the back seat they all had, real expensively dressed so I said give me your ID and he said I don’t have an ID And he went like this, and he had this black suit on with a red silk on the inside of it. I bet it cost $2,000. Anyway, his airline ticket was in his pocket. And I went, oh, you don’t need an idea. And I know who you are now. I said, what’s your name, man? So I just, I got their names and days of birth and everything. Well, it upset the FBI. I was, I got called into the office. He said, did you do a car check on Mike Trippiano? I said, yeah. He said, who do you have in the car? I was really at least hots from New York city in there. He’s big time house. And, uh.
[18:17] He said, well, there was a guy there. And I said, who’s this guy? He said, he’s an FBI agent. He didn’t introduce him to me, the FBI agent. He was furious. He was furious that I did this. I don’t know why. Apparently, one of them was probably a snitch, this young agitator. And they didn’t want anybody messing with him. But it was crazy, man. You could throw a rock around here and say, listen, hit some goddamn FBI guy or hit some organized crime guy.
[18:43] You mentioned John Batali. Tell us about John Batali. He was kind of the Italian mafia’s union guy, if I remember right. Well, you see, back in the day, the unions, they were a plum that they wanted to control. Oh, yeah. They were mostly controlling gambling and prostitution. And I’m sure back in the day, like in the 70s, when I first became a cop, the black people were all addicted to heroin, white heroin. I was in a mid-city area. They were all addicted to everybody you stopped, everybody you had dealings with, was having withdrawal from white heroin. Now, the white heroin was coming from Europe. And it wasn’t a situation like it was coming from Mexico or whatever. That’s brown. That’s brown heroin. And everybody said the mafia didn’t deal with white heroin. Well, I don’t believe that, man. I mean, all these guys were addicted to white heroin. And what they would do, they would buy this heroin from, I presume, a representative of the Chicago Mafia. And then they would cut it, and they’d have their own business. And they were killing each other left and right with machine guns, just like it is today. But they were killing each other left and right over, you know, the money had gotten screwed up. But everybody that we dealt with was screwed up with white heroin. And I’m sure that was part of John Vitale and Tony Giordano.
[20:07] You know, I met Tony Giordano one time. When I first became a cop in the 70s, we had a towing service. Most of those kind of places were run by the Chicago Mafia.
[20:18] And they were city organizations, and they had city employees, but the Chicago Mafia ran them. And one time, what they would do is they had a scam where they would tow your car, and they wouldn’t let you have it back. and if it kept it for a certain amount of time, they could apply for another title and it would be their car. And so they were doing this. And this was 1970. And Tony Giordano was one of the guys and he had another gangster with him whose name I can’t remember right now. And they ran this towing service called Metropolitan Towing for the city.
[20:55] And so they played this scam where they wouldn’t get people’s cars back for a certain amount of time. I don’t care what you brought in there. They would say, that’s not good enough, that’s not good enough. People were turned away. So a Catholic priest had his car towed, and they towed it to Metropolitan Towing in my district at Duncan and Van Aventer, is where the lot was, and he was, The Catholic priest didn’t have his priest outfit on. Dollar, yeah. Yeah, and he went in there to retrieve his car, and they wouldn’t give it to him. And he got upset about it. Tony Giordano pulled a sawdove shotgun on him. He said, either you get out of here, or I’m going to blow you in half. He didn’t know he was a Catholic priest. Well, the Catholic priest had influence. He had people that—anyway, he got his car back, obviously. But then they said, oh, my gosh, there’s a problem at Metropolitan Towing. I don’t know what it is, you know, these politicians. So they put a cop sitting in front of Metropolitan Towing 24 hours a day. And I only had like, I had like six months on the police department. I was one of the cops. I had to sit in front of this place for eight hours a day in a police car. So I said, Rose, downhill, man. Yeah. I said, what if I got, what if I have to use the restroom? He said, well, okay, we’ll let you go in there and use the restroom, but don’t you go in there for any other reason. And you come out of there. I said, all right, fine. So I went in there. I went in there. And hell, I hung out in there. And Tony Giordano and his other car thief, I can’t remember.
[22:22] Well, Tony Giordano was real talking to him. He was saying, like, yeah, when I was a kid, man, I got arrested. They didn’t have juvenile. They just put me in with the regular guys. And I grew up tough and blah, blah, blah. He was talking. He was all the time talking. And there was a room there. I can see. They had this full of golf clubs in bags. And he said, are you?
[22:43] Guns and clubs, officer? Yeah, I know. Oh, yeah. They had Phil for these clubs. He said, hey, you play golf? I said, sure, I play golf. You want to set a golf club? No, man, I don’t want any golf clubs. I mean, it was crazy, man. You know, they were so used to giving cops or whatever, anybody, whatever they wanted. Especially back in the sixties. He came on in the early seventies. That’s when things kind of started changing.
[23:07] And I know you went, saw those changes. The older guys that were like the generation before you, when you came on as a young troop, you know, you know, it was different and we changed things, you know, we quit doing a out of that stuff and things modernized real quick but there was always a rub between those older guys and us younger guys we started getting federal money for one thing for cars yeah guns and uniforms and and yeah then eventually we started getting some pay raises and pay raise pay yeah but the old guys that i when i came on they’re the old guys that were there they were crooks i mean they were they were as big of crooks as the gangsters yeah i heard one guy say you You know, we used to make $100 a month and all you could steal. Yep, yep. They were crooks, man. Yeah.
[23:55] Oh, well, that was the good old days, as they say. You know, I had this one intelligence guy who was one of the early members of the intelligence unit that was first, I think, the first one or first one of two selected because he was known as such a straight arrow guy. And he told me a story. When he came on, they assigned him with an older policeman. They didn’t, when they break in, you know, you just get, you know, dried. This guy tonight and he rode the west 12th street car where there’s a lot of joints and said that guy you know he drank all night and he took money all night and then the end of the shift he said he counted out the money on the on the bent seat and said and pushed part of it over said here this is yours and ray said i told him i said yeah i don’t need that man it got on out he said they’d never assigned me to ride with anybody again i’m a one-man car from then on so.
[24:44] Yeah, man, being a cop was wild back in the old days.
[24:50] It was crazy. It was a great life, though. I tell you, I had a great 25 years myself. It was interesting. Paid me to do some of that stuff. You got me nine books. You got nine books out there? I got nine books out, yeah. All right. Well, guys, I’ll make sure I put a link to his author page. That’s the easiest way to find Tim’s books is go to his author page on Amazon. Tim, tell me some other stories that you remember, those kind of little personal stories. Remember anything else about dealing with these guys?
[25:25] Yeah, there was a guy, another, he wasn’t a mafia guy. He was too smart to be a mafia guy. I’m talking about Donald Ray Wolbright. Have you ever heard that name? It sounds vaguely familiar. I may know it from your book. I get so much in my head. Donald Ray Wolbright was the guy that did the burglary on Howard Hughes’ warehouse in Long Beach, California, and stole a bunch of stuff, including a lot of money. He was a safe man. He was actually a car dealer, but he was a safe man. And he went to L.A. and was selling Cadillacs. And in the meantime, he was staking out. He had a long-range plan. It was to do Howard Hughes’ safe. in Long Beach, and he did it. He was a safe cracker. Anyway, he came back to say, well, he stole all this stuff, and he stole these CIA documents pertaining to a Russian submarine that had sunk.
[26:24] And the CIA paid Howard Hughes to try to retrieve the submarine or whatever. Anyway, he had all these documents. It was supposed to be top secret stuff. And Donald Ray Wilbright obtained him in a lot of money and a lot of jewelry, too. And he came back to St. Louis flush with money because the FBI was going to arrest him. And he said, I didn’t donate. I’m in possession of this stuff because a guy gave him to me. But I want to get rid of him, and I’ll sell him back to the government. And so he did. He sold all this stuff back to the federal government because the federal government didn’t want any publicity on it. So he sold all this top secret CIA stuff back to the government for a lot of money. And he came back to saying, oh, it’s flush. Well, the FBI here was furious, man, because they knew Donald Ray. He was a notorious murderer and burglar. He was notorious.
[27:19] And he was just a very successful crook. And so the FBI hated him. So they had to follow him around all the time. You know, whores for the FBI, man. They said, follow Donald Ray Wolbright. And so this is what we did. Like for a week, we followed him around, you know. And he knew he was being followed. And we would write his license plate number down from people he talked to. And then he’d stop and write our license plate number down. Oh, it was crazy. Yeah, I know.
[27:43] So Donald Ray Wobright, he was just notorious, man. And, you know, Jesse Stoneking, did you ever hear about Jesse Stoneking? Oh, yeah, you got a bunch of them in your book. Now I can’t remember, but… Well, Jesse Stoneking is the reason there isn’t any more mafia in St. Louis. He was a notorious murder thief.
[28:03] Professional crook. And he was also a car thief. And he had gone to prison over here in Illinois for some kind of a car theft. I don’t know what it was. And Tom Fox, an FBI agent here, who was really, really smart, and his partner, whose name I can’t remember, they went over and interviewed him. They tried to roll him over. And he said, it isn’t going to work, man. I’m not going to do that for you. But before he went to prison, And he had told Art Burney, who was in charge of, now in charge of the Eastside mob, he took a bus to Orton’s place. And he worked for Art Burney. He said, I’ll go ahead and take the ball on this. But he had two families. He said, you take care of my families. He actually had two sets of wives, kids, dogs, cats, houses. And he said, you take care of my families while I’m going. And I said, we’ll take care of them. We’ll take care of them. Well, they didn’t. And his wives would come to the prison to visit him and say, we’re destitute. Nobody’s taking care of us. Well, it pissed him off. So he got out and he called Tom Fox and he said, I’ll work for you. So they wired him and he went into all these people. He had the reputation that if he walked in a room, Crooks would flock to him, brag about what they’d done. And, uh, it was, it was just amazing.
[29:19] Even people that want Crooks would go up and say, I did a, I burned my car the other day, you know, because it was in the car I burned. I got the money for, I mean, it was all on tape. All these people went to prison. He even got some guys. I think Joey Ayupa may have gone to prison because of that. But all these dark and nice crime guys took falls. And he did it. Jesse Stumpkin did it. But he robbed a guy, a friend of mine, over in Brussels, Illinois, an old politician. He was really wealthy. And they were gambling together. And he beat him up and took his diamond ring. It was like a 15-karat diamond ring. And they sealed off. It was on an island. And they sealed the island off.
[30:00] And they started taking names to everybody that came out. Well, Jesse Stoneking’s best buddy was there. And they got his name. So the Illinois police came over to our office because they knew we had dossiers and all these people. They said, what do you think it went on? I said, what the hell does Jesse Stoneking? And they said, well, he’s in prison. I said, no, he’s not. I just saw him last week at a restaurant over in Belleville, Illinois. And we used to go over there. There’s this restaurant all the house used to eat at. We’d go over there and glare at them. They’d glare back. But he was over there anyway. Yeah. so jesse i i hated him for knocking that old man over he was a friend of mine so we did a car check he was he was with mike trippiano and they split up and they ran to their cars and took off and so i i told my partner stop jesse’s talking so we stopped him broad daylight, i was mad at him i made him get out of the car yeah and i i told him i said.
[30:52] I said, Jesse, you better carry yourself back to East St. Louis where you belong, man. You don’t belong over here. And I said, and you knocked over a buddy of mine over in Brussels, Illinois. I don’t appreciate that, man. I said, you probably don’t know how I know that, do you, Jesse? And he just looked at me. And I said, you’re going to get hurt real bad if you don’t carry yourself back to Illinois. And he said, well, maybe the FBI would like to know that. And I said, hey, man, I don’t get a damn about the FBI. Are you either? So he took off. I got back in the car. They called me in the office. Did you do a car check on Jesse Stone King? I said, yeah. I said, did you threaten to kill him? I said, no. They said, it’s on tape, man. You did. I said, oh, that’s Jesse Stone King. Yeah. Oh, shit. It was on tape. He was wired, Tim. Yeah. He was wired, man. Oh, shit, Tim. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. I got all kinds of shit for that one, man. Oh, I can imagine. I was in big time trouble. And so Jesse Stone King Everybody wants to kill him For being a snitch He snitched on I don’t know 50 guys 50 guys Including you Yeah including me He got it all on tape He was all taped.
[32:00] In fact he even went to trial And testified it In federal court What he had done And, But he didn’t get Mike Trippiano He didn’t get He didn’t take But the jury wouldn’t go along with it Because I hated Jesse Stone King More than I hated Mike Trippiano Everything was over with And he didn’t want to go into witness protection. He had these two families. You know, he just wanted to live. So he bopped around hiding, and he’d come in and see his families, and he’d go hide somewhere else.
[32:30] Eventually, he ended up in, Arizona, somewhere in Arizona, and he had a car repossession company. And this is FBI information. It was in a newspaper. He was in a car, and a cop, a local cop, did a car check on him. And the guy driving the car got out to talk to the cop, and Jesse allegedly shot himself in the head, committed suicide. That’s a damn lie. And so they put that in the same newspaper. He’s still around here. I’m sure he is.
[33:01] Interesting. So then, yeah, he’s still kicking because he’d be 80 now. Tim, Timothy C. Richards, Cops Kill and Cops Lie and several other books, which, guys, if you want to learn a whole lot more about St. Louis and Eat St. Louis. And, you know, we talked a lot about, guys, if you’re not familiar with the geography of the area, it’s kind of like Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. You got the Mississippi River over there, and then you talked about an island. And I assume that was an island out in the river where they did that robbery. It was way north. Way north up by Alton. And so that whole East St. Louis area is notorious for strip clubs and library racketeering and really more notorious for two-bit criminals. And you can get anything you want in East St. Louis. It’s kind of like KCK. Kind of like a third world country in a way. Definitely. It definitely is.
[33:55] All right, Tim. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for coming on. Okay, Gary. Thanks for having me. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, If you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon just going. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate you all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.