Mafia Shootout in Kansas City

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. The Kansas City Mafia enforces their rules on bar owners like Ferris Anthon even when they have to resort to deadly and drastic measures. In this episode, we recount the harrowing experience of Sheriff Tom Bash, a fearless lawman in Jackson County, Missouri, during the 1930s. Witness the gripping account of Sheriff Tom Bash’s confrontation with the Kansas City Mafia in a deadly ambush, showcasing his valor and dedication to upholding justice. Through a riveting shootout, Sheriff Bash emerges as a local hero, shining a light on the pervasive mob activities and corruption of the era. Despite facing legal challenges and political interference, Sheriff Tom Bash’s legacy of courage and integrity perseveres, symbolizing the unwavering fight against criminal influence and the steadfast commitment to the rule of law.
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Introduction to Kansas City Mob Incident
[0:00]Hey, all you wiretappers out there, and this is going to be a special bonus episode about a Kansas City mob incident that had never happened before, and it’s never happened since. Here’s the situation. An armed police officer is taking his family home after an evening out, and he drives right in the middle of a mob hit. Now, what are you going to do? Oh, my God, I got my family here. This guy he was a sheriff and and i’ll i’ll go back over a lot of this because i did this before i did this story before but i need to do a little opening a new opening because something else would happen anyhow what i want to do is give a shout out to a couple of gangland wire fans i met the other night now steve saint john my friend steve saint john’s been on the show several times you know he’s the guy that that actually my squad worked on him helped put him in the prison forgot God, he was there about 10 years and came back out. He’s gone straight, done pretty well. We’ve become friends. So he asked me to go to the Kansas City Goats game, which is our arena football team. His son, Stephen St. John, is like the top sports radio broadcaster. He has a show, Stephen St. John Show, here in Kansas City.
[1:15]And so we’re watching the game. It’s a lot of fun. And all of a sudden I look over and I see to my right, there’s this beautiful girl or woman coming up. She’s got blonde hair and she gets closer. She’s got these beautiful green eyes and she’s smiling and looking at me and nodding like she knows me. And I’m thinking, I don’t know this. Who is this? And so she gets right to me. She stops and sticks out her hands and introduced herself as Connie said. She was a longtime podcast listener. She grew up in Kansas City. She grew up over what we call the Northeast. Her family knew some of these different mob associated people. And so I’m trying to keep my composure. And man, beautiful girl. She thinks I’m cool because I have this podcast. But it’d be that I’m not. I’m not. Steve’s sitting over here. He’s cracking up because he knew this was coming. He had run into her. He knew her from somewhere else. And he ran into her at the concession stand. She’s working at the concession stand as a fundraiser for St. Pius, which is the big premier Catholic high school. And so lots of times they’ll take over a concession stand and run that stand and they get to keep all the profit out of it.
[2:27]So we talked quite a while she tells me a couple stories about you know growing up over in northeast and then she has to get back up the concession stand and i had to go up i went up the concession stand later on and she’s oh come here you know you can’t buy anything i said well you know i don’t mind no no come here i said what do you want so she gave she gave me a big one those great big salty pretzels which is what i want and a coke and she kissed me on the cheek too then later on i’m I’m sitting, I’m going back, I’m going back down to my seat. And a guy appears, his name’s Luke, and he was talking with her. And he said, oh yeah, he said, I listened to that podcast too. So he came down and we chatted for a while. So big shout out to Connie and Luke, a couple of Kansas City podcast fans and St. Pius Catholic High School supporters. And thanks to Steve St. John and his dad, Stephen St. John, for the tickets. And I had a great time, brought my old partner, Bobby Arnold, me and Steve St. John and my old partner from Intelligence Unit, Bobby Arnold, another retired copper, Frank Armillio, whose son is actually the works at St. Pius and play golf with him all the time. So we all went to the arena sports football game, the Goats. And don’t forget to check out Stephen St. John’s radio sports talk show in Kansas City.
[3:53]
Story of Sheriff Tom Bash Begins
[3:53]That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, guys. This is going to be a story about Sheriff Tom Bash. He was the sheriff of Jackson County, Missouri, in 1933, during the Depression, right after the Prohibition, when the Tom Pendergast political organization and the Kansas City Mafia joined together and basically ran the whole city and the whole county. Now, Bash, it was not totally sold out, as you’ll see from this story. It was a different time, folks. It was a totally different time. Just because you were connected to the political organization did not mean that you were totally owned by the mafia in Kansas City. But yet, you might do some things for the mafia in Kansas City.
[4:36]It’s never as black and white as what many times the popular media may depict in real life, these connections. I was recently asked some questions about the Kansas City police in the 50s and 60s. And I knew some of these guys they were talking about and some of the reports about them. And, you know, as I explained to this guy that’s writing a book about the, he’s calling it the, I think the mob and the Kansas City police or something like that. I said, you know, it’s not exactly black and white like we like to think. It’s a lot of gray areas in there. A lot of people may do some things, but wouldn’t go. But so far doing other things, I would never cover up a murder, for example, but they certainly may turn turned a blind eye to an ongoing regular gambling game because, you know, they may have relatives that like to go to that gambling game. So anyhow, this is going to be the story of Sheriff Tom Bashand a particular incident in his life that shows you that he personally did not walk away from everything that was mob connected. He was from a farm town just outside of Kansas City, kind of a well-to-do farm family. He was a good shot. He’d been a hunter all of his life. He was of course approved by the Tom Pendergast Organization.
[5:51]He was kind of a man about town, shall we say. He could hang with the swells, as they used to say back in those days. August 11, 1933, he and his wife, Jenny, had gone to an ice cream social, a lawn party and an ice cream social at a kind of higher-end residence in Kansas City. It was a fundraiser for the ladies’ auxiliary of what was known as the Cooperative Club. I don’t know what that was. that didn’t last in the present time. But it was a fundraiser for residents of the girls’ home in Jackson County for wayward girls and girls that had been abandoned. And they had a guest, a teenage girl named Melva Taylor, who was going to go home with them and stay overnight at their house. I’m not sure what their connection was. I think she was a daughter of a friend or something. And I think maybe they didn’t have any children, he and his wife. So about midnight, after attending this ice cream social and lawn party.
[6:52]Tom Bash agreed that they would escort the money to some safe place. They’d been raising money all night, probably like a golf tournament. A lot of you guys have probably played in golf tournaments where there’s constant selling of this and selling of that. And it’s always cash, so I’m sure that’s what was going on back then. They didn’t even take credit cards, of course, back then. So they would have raised a lot of cash. And Tom Bass said, I’ll escort the money and whoever had the money to wherever they were going to get it safe. And then he turned and headed south toward his house from where they were. He lived in what was known as the Troost Avenue, which was kind of a big time street back then. Now, it eventually became the dividing line between black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods for a long time. Now those lines are starting to blur again. in. But 3400 Block of Troost is about where he was, Armor and Troost, which is the same as 35th Street. And following him, he had an old Dodge. And following him were a deputy, Lawrence Hodges.
[7:56]And then they had Jenny Bash and Melva Taylor in the car. And he had guns aboard the car. I think he was a typical lawman of any time. Well, most of the time I was on the police department. If I I was out moving around the city. I had some kind of a gun around me. They happened to see a car. They first drove around the block looking for any kind of surveillance or anything, which is kind of interesting that there’s no explanation in the accounts of that, why they were so safety, security conscious that they would maybe look for a tail and see if anybody was sitting out front of the sheriff’s house. Went on, came back around, and as they came back around, all of a sudden they heard gunshots ring out. And then they heard a woman scream, and then there was more shots.
[8:42]Bash pulled over the car. He had a deputy with him. They jumped out and said, you know, hey, man, we’re running into something. We better be ready. This was about Forest, which is one block east of Troost. It was a bar right there. This was kind of an entertainment district, if we will, around 35th and 34th and Armor Boulevard and Troost. There was also a lot of these big apartment buildings that people lived in. They were almost like hotel apartments, more like a big city back then where you had doorman down in front. And they had apartments all about five or six, maybe eight, ten floors of apartments.
[9:25]
Gunfire Erupts on the Streets
[9:21]They would have daily trash pickup at each apartment building. They had these half-louvered doors that you could open your door and open your window, window but still be secure to have a wooden louvered door that would let air go through your apartment they were kind of interesting old apartments still a lot of them down there and a lot of people live in them there they went way down now they’re they’re on their way back of course it’s becoming a hip place to live so they jump out tom bash has a shotgun a right what we call a riot gun and the deputy had his 38 caliber revolver they started toward the noise his wife Jenny Bash and Melva Taylor were told to get down on the floor. So Ms. Bash threw her arms over the child and told her just to be quiet and lay quietly on the floor. You can imagine their hearts were just beating like hell when a crazy ass husband and his deputy jump out with guns to go into some kind of a possible gunfight. As they’re walking toward armor and truce, they’re about, oh, I’d say 50 yards away as they get up to this area where there was a joint right there and a, oh, there was like a athletic club right there. It had a swimming pool in it. They used to give scuba diving lessons back in the late 60s and early 70s. And then they went to have this one joint called the merry-go-round. I remember going there, say 1963, 64. A Buick all of a sudden.
[10:47]Pulled out, headed north on Forrest toward Armour and was going straight into the Bush Auto. And one of the passengers reached outside the Buick with his gun and started firing it at Bice’s Dodge.
[11:01]Bash was out on the street by this point in time. Here this guy is shooting at the car with his wife and that little girl in. He pulls up his shotgun and starts blasting away at the car. And he hit the driver right away was a guy, as it turned out later, named Sammy Scola, Sammy the Hog, who was a driver for the top mob guys in Kansas City at the time, and he blew off the driver’s head. That guy was done. He never even moved after that, is my understanding.
[11:28]Cranked another shell in the chamber and started firing again, hit the windshield, hit a passenger. The gunman’s car, the Buick crashed off into the sidewalk and into a light post right there, and almost on top of the sheriff’s car with Ms. Bash and Melba Taylor in it. It had to be crazy. A third gunman came out of nowhere, started running at Bice, firing a revolver at him, but missed with every shot. Bice leveled his shotgun at him, and all of a sudden, the gunman dropped his weapon and started pleading with Bass. Sheriff Bass says, oh, don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot me. My God, man, don’t shoot me. The sheriff was a good guy, apparently. I don’t know. I might have gone ahead and had that hammer dropping down by this point in time. But he lets him give up, puts him under arrest, grabs the pistol laying on the ground. And the fourth, there’s a fourth man out running across armor on foot, firing at the deputy, a man named Hodges, who engaged in a gunfight with him and and chased him between a couple of houses. He drops his pistol along the way, and he ends up disappearing. They don’t find him.
[12:37]Hodges finally quit chasing him and went back to the sheriff to make sure he was okay. He found the rot revolver that had been dropped, handcuffed the gunman already, or I think the sheriff already had him handcuffed by then, went back and checked on his wife and the little girl, and they were okay. And, of course, by then, people had poured out of all those apartments. The whole traffic clogged Armor Boulevard, they said, and all the people coming out of the apartment to see what was going on. And, of course, they called the Kansas City Police and I’m sure other deputies down there and have a crime scene and a car and a dead body. And what they would find out as they get into it, they find that they had stumbled into a classic mob hit. Now, this was the heyday of machine corruption and mob corruption.
[13:22]And it’ll be years before there’s any real ability to bring any of the perpetrators to justice. Now, remember, there’s one under arrest. As it turned out, there was a minor gangster named Ferris Anthon who had ended up getting on the wrong side of a mob faction that was challenging the authority of who was the guy that was the mob boss at the time, Johnny Lazia. And Johnny Lazia was so powerful politically and with the mob that he would be the one that gave the okay for the Union Station massacre to go down. They went to John Lazia, this Vern Miller went to John Lazia and said, you know, we need to break our friend Frank Jelly Nash out because they’re taking him back up to Leavenworth to the penitentiary. And they’re coming through Union Station here in Kansas City. And he gave his okay and helped him get away. Johnny Lazia also had a office in police headquarters right down the hall from the what they called the director of police at the time. and he really had say-so over who was hired and who was fired and what the Kansas City Police Department did.
[14:28]Anton had been a bootlegger and an arsonist during the prohibition and kind of got his feet on the ground and got a name during that. He was a known arsonist. He had a nickname because he was from Kansas City, Kansas, called Tony Kansas. He did a lot of his operating over there, but he had interest in taverns and restaurants all over the city. He owned a thing called the Arena Buffet at 15th and Truce and the El Travatore Cafe close to Armour and Troost, which was probably where he was coming from, where they jumped him up. He was involved in a mob faction headed by a guy named Joe Lesko, and their political connection was a guy named Casimir Welsh, who was a Pendergast kind of rival, but not rival. They had their own little Eastside group, and Lazi’s group was what we call Northsiders. They had been challenging Lazi’s dominance in bootlegging and other racketeering activities.
[15:26]Lazio Group had decided at this point in time that they needed to make an example out of somebody, and Ferris Anthon’s number, his number came up. He was put on the spot, as they called it back in the day. Figured once they killed Ferris Anthon, then the rest of this Lusco crew and Casimir Welch would get the idea and fall in line with Lazio. Anthon was heading home. He was along with his wife and his mother, Ella Betts, and his seven-year-old little brother, Elvin. They’d been at the wrestling matches downtown, stopped off at the buffet. Mainly, they sold alcohol at this buffet. This is just like the last year of Prohibition, I believe. I think it ends in 1934, and this is 1933.
[16:12]They’d kind of driven around Kansas City. His wife would tell the police later, said he was in high spirits and didn’t seem to have any worry about anything. thing. They live in, like they explained about these apartments down here, cavalier apartments where a lot of people would, you know, they’d have like five and six bedroom apartments and doorman and trace pickup and kind of a higher
[16:33]
Ferris Anthon’s Murder
[16:32]end buildings at that point in time. He had parked next to a nightclub. Apparently they were waiting on him as he, his passengers, his wife and kids got out, whoever else that was with him, his mother got out and they started walking into to their apartments as he locked his car, a Buick approached, somebody jumped out, walked toward him and started shooting at him with a .45 caliber pistol, fired at him five times and he dropped dead on the ground. Wife and mother and little kid ran off and ran inside the Steuben Club, which is still open.
[17:08]Now, the two men, there were two other men in this Buick, and they sped off, leaving a couple of guys, as it turned out, on the street. They were maybe panicked by seeing all the residents come out and see what was going on. But that’s where they flipped around, went around the corner and ran right dead into Sheriff Bash and got in a gun battle. Now, Bash killed two people in the car. That was Sam Skola. I mentioned him. The other one I forgot to mention before is Gus Fassoni, who was a nightclub operator and kind of a passenger in the car. Now, the two men who were out in the street that actually did the hit, that they got in a gun battle with, they were the important ones. They were the heavies in Kansas City Mob at the time, Charlie Gargotta, who will end up being killed in a mob hit in 1951, I believe, in the murder of the two Charlies. He was like kind of the underboss, if you will, and a close associate to the mob boss, John Lazzia. He operated the Chesterfield Club downtown where supposedly the waitresses wore only clear plastic aprons and shoes. First totally nude bar in Kansas City, maybe. I don’t know. And the other guy who ran off, the deputy chased and got away, I have a connection with. His name was Gatano Lococo or Tano Lococo, who was another, you know, what we call the Five Iron Men during the Prohibition time, or the Sugar Shack gang, or the Sugar House gang, rather. They were the main bootleggers of that point in time and ran the mob in Kansas City.
[18:37]Now, when they start questioning Gargotta, he’ll claim that he’d just been visiting a woman at Cavalier Apartments thereby and was on his way out when he ran into this shooting, and he pulled his gun to protect himself. And it’s reported that as he was being driven into the police station, one of his guards.
[18:56]Struck something in his coat pocket. Apparently they had not even shook him down or had not even frisked him at all. And they found a 45 caliber pistol fully loaded, which had not been drawn. Now he’d had another gun that already ran out of bullets. And he just threw that down at the scene when the sheriff took him into custody. During this time, the authorities, as they searched the crime scene, they found five other 45 caliber automatic pistols. And these were the Colt 911s that the U.S. Army used. Later it’ll be learned that these weapons all been stolen from a National Guard armory over in Kansas City, Kansas about a year before.
[19:30]Ballistics tests showed that several of them had been used to shoot at Anton. I guess they shot at Anton and then threw those guns down but then had other guns as they ran off, which kind of makes sense. Typical mob guy, when he used a gun in a hit, he wants to get separated from that gun as quick as he can. And back then they didn’t have the forensics to do all the DNA and even fingerprinting. They could do fingerprints, but they weren’t very good at it. And it’d be unlikely that you would get any prints off of it. Plus, they would have owned the Kansas City Police fingerprint guy. Anyhow, Sheriff Bish, of course, the newspapers report this and he’s like a local hero. And he’s just proven to everybody that regardless of his ties to the machine, the political machine, he will enforce the law. Harry Truman, who was a Penn and Tom Pendergast favorite, was the Jackson County chief executive. He made a public statement, says, the county court is proud of you.
[20:29]Mrs. Bash will give a statement to the press, a simple, short statement. She said, in my husband’s business, there are things that cause a wife to think. I can imagine. I don’t know. My wife would be, oh my God, back in the day. I don’t know. Well, one of the wives, anyhow, Yeah, they might not have stuck by me. Of course, they didn’t anyhow, but I didn’t stick by them. I don’t know which one we’re talking about. Ms. Bash also will report that Melba Taylor, the teenage girl, the young girl, I think she was like 14, said she kept her courage up. She did not cry once and was stoic about the whole thing.
[21:04]
Aftermath and Recognition
[21:05]Later on, Ms. Bash will tell people that she got a telegram from the ladies’ cooperative that sponsored the garden party and said, Congratulations on your brave act. We’ll have another garden party sometime soon.
[21:17]
Legal Proceedings and Corruption Exposed
[21:18]Now, the after effects of this murder are what’s interesting. Now, you would think the sheriff stumbles into it. They got the guns. They got at least one shooter. They will determine that that was Tano Lococo that they chased off. They will not charge him, but they definitely have one of the shooters because the guy gave up and he had a gun in his hand when he gave up. They get ready. They try to go to court in 1934.
[21:46]Jury will listen to testimony from a Kansas City police evidence technician named Leonard Claiborne and he will testify that the pistol that had been placed in his evidence had a tag switched on it and they don’t know for sure which pistol is the actual murder gun and he’ll end up getting fined not guilty. Now, over the next couple of three years, feds will get in on this. They’ll prosecute this Charlie Gargotta for possession of stolen government property. And that’s that .45 caliber pistol that was in his pocket that was stolen from the National Guard armory. Even with Claiborne, It was proven later on that he lied about these evidence tags, that they charged him with perjury. And he testified at his trial that he’d been promised by a department higher up that he would be given a promotion by Johnny Lazia if he helped get Gargotta out of this case. Claiborne’s the only one that really did any decent time. He was convicted of perjury and he got four years in the penitentiary. Gargotta was convicted of the possession of the stolen gun.
[22:57]1934, but that verdict was overturned on appeal. He was charged with assault on Sheriff Bash, but that trial was delayed and delayed and delayed. And the prosecutor, a man named W.W. Graves, who was a Pendergast machine prosecutor, kept asking for continuances. He asked for 27 total continuances. And finally, in 1938, four years later, five years later, he just asked that all the petitions of court and has all the charges against Gargotta dismissed. State officials launched some kind of investigation in the crime in Kansas City, and they created a grand jury who will indict Gargada and the prosecutor.
[23:39]But six years after Anton murders in 1939 and Tom Pendergast goes to the penitentiary, Gargotta will just go ahead and plead guilty just as his trial begins for the second trial on the assault on Sheriff Bash. He gets three years in the penitentiary. He serves seven months and is released from the penitentiary after his sentence is commuted by the new governor, Forrest O’Donnell, which, like I said before, Gargotta and the boss of 1950, Charlie Bonagio will be murdered in a famous murder called the murder of the two Charlies. It’s never been solved.
[24:15]
Sheriff Bash’s Legacy and End
[24:15]Tom Bash will live to 1952, go back to farming in rural Missouri.
[24:22]He had a heart attack in 1952, and that was the end of the murder of Ferris Anthon and justice for the mob under Tom Pendergast. Thanks, folks, for listening. Don’t forget to hit me up and Venmo, buy me a shot and a beer, or you can go onto my website and PayPal and make a little donation there. You know, I’ll have my little final thing here where I talk about different things. But if you have any problems with PTSD and you know, and you’re a veteran, then you know, go to the VA. If not, go to the VA website or just Google VA hospital PTSD, and they’ve got a hotline and they’ve got a lot of resources. And even if you’re not a veteran or if you just know a veteran, you can go there and find the resources. You’re not a veteran, you can go there and find resources. Music provided by our good friend and super fan from Portland, Oregon, Casey McBride. Thanks, Casey.

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