River Quay

Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailHere is a story I have not told. Not really about the Mafia, but about the River Quay. Back in 1972-73 a few of us started working for the River Quay Merchants Association. Ray Karnes, Doug Perry and I all were young police officers working out of Central Patrol. Somebody, Ray Karnes I think, made a connection with the Quay Association and they hiring us to walk around the Quay on Friday and Saturday nights. For a young police officer, getting paid to walk around an entertainment district in uniform was the greatest off-duty job in the world. We got paid to break up fights in bars! At the end of the shift, we went to Poor Freddies where Fred Bonnadonna would pay us cash money out of the till. Since the statute of limitations is up, you know none of that money ever hit the IRS form.

I was the only one who made it to retirement. Ray quit and went to work with his father in western Kansas and made money. Doug Perry’s story is a tragic one. Doug was a great copper and had a brilliant career ahead of him. He married a beautiful girl, Virginia, and they had a three young children by the middle 1970s.  I remember one time Doug found a source who claimed to know about guns being sent to Ireland and the IRA. As part of his proof, this source obtained a machine gun and gave it to Doug as evidence.  Doug contacted the ATF and put the machine gun in the property room. I don’t know what happened after that, because on September 6, 1978, Doug was directing traffic around an auto accident on the Lewis and Clark viaduct. Specifically, on the south bound ramp to I-35. I can’t drove that stretch of road with thinking of my friend Doug Perry. An 18 wheel truck came off the viaduct onto the ramp and did not see Doug. He was killed instantly. A huge loss to his family, the police department, the city and society in general. Doug had been a medic in Vietnam prior to joining the Department. Just before he was killed, Doug had been buying up mid-town real estate and rehabbing the property into nice rental spaces.

4 thoughts on “River Quay”

  1. I’m sorry for the loss of your friend, it sounds like you would have gone on to have some great adventures with him.

  2. liked your new article today,sorry for the loss of a good friend.
    hope to read more soon.
    infi on tony gizzzo,mother birthplace,etc

    1. Sorry, I have a guy working on more information on the hearings. I have not had time to check into Tony Gizzo. I will try to get onto that by the end of March. I did find his testimony, but not in KC. I found his testimony in Washington DC. He seemed to know every major mobster in the US. I know he appeared to the the boss, but in my experience when a guy is very vocal about who he knows and how connected he is, he is not really the boss. We had a guy named “TurK” Harris in KC. He would go around and tell people he was the boss. This was an intentional effort to deflect attention from Nick Civella.

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