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Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia as he interviews Kansas City Massacre expert Terence O’Malley. Today is June 18, 93 years after this event. This episode delves deep into the manhunt for the suspects, Pretty Boy Floyd, Verne Miller, and Adam Richetti. The Union Station Massacre was a significant event that shook the law enforcement community. We learn about the aftermath of the massacre, including the actions of infamous criminals like Pretty Boy Floyd, Adam Ricchetti, and Vern Miller. The narrative takes us through the events following the shootout at Union Station, including the individuals’ escape, pursuits, and ultimate fates. The intricate connections between different gangs, mobsters, and law enforcement agencies become apparent as we uncover how the Lazia gang aided Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Ricchetti and later met tragic ends. Jimmy Needles LaCapra’s testimony sheds light on the inner workings of the criminal underworld and its interactions with law enforcement during that turbulent period. The relentless pursuit of justice and the repercussions of the massacre are explored, highlighting the intense crackdown on notorious criminals of the time. The episode also touches on how the Union Station Massacre differed from other criminal events due to the involvement of law enforcement officers, leading to heightened scrutiny and backlash against organized crime. Through historical accounts, personal anecdotes, and detailed investigations, we unravel the complexities surrounding the Union Station Massacre and its impact on the criminal landscape of that era. The final episode concludes with reflections on the significance of these events and the lasting repercussions felt by those involved. This comprehensive exploration offers a fascinating insight into a critical moment in criminal history and the relentless pursuit of justice that followed in its wake.
Find Terence O’Malley’s documentaries at Black Hand Strawman.
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Transcript
[0:00] So welcome back, wiretappers, to the third in this series on the Union Station Massacre.
You know, we’ve been through the day before and all the stuff that happened the day before, how they almost got caught in some little town down in South Missouri as pretty boy Floyd and Adam Reschetti are coming north.
We learned what a drunk Adam Reschetti was and what happened when they got here in Kansas City, their hideout that’s still here in Kansas City.
There’s a really nice house over there in what we call the Brookside neighborhood.
And we learned all the shooting that day and how the guy they tried to break out of custody got killed himself.
There was a mix up with guns that day and four officers got killed.
It was just it was crazy that day. I really appreciate y’all tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this.
As I said, Terrence O’Malley is a great storyteller.
[0:53] Terrence O’Malley has the quintessential documentary that he made years ago about the Kansas City mob from Black Hand Days to Straw Man, which is the title of it, Black Hand Straw Man.
Straw Man is the skimming from Las Vegas capers.
And if you want a copy of that DVD, it’s not streaming anywhere.
Get a hold of me, and I’ll get with Terrence, and we’ll make sure you get a copy.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and on with the third and final installment.
The Big Shootout at Union Station
[1:21] So we have this big shootout at Union Station.
So what’s going on afterward, right? Well, fascinating.
It’s really interesting. They go back to the house at 6612 Edgevale Road.
And of course, the law enforcement authorities have no idea who did this.
They don’t have the first clue who did this. So they start conjecturing, you know, it wasn’t Harvey Bailey, was it, you know, the Maubarker gang, you know, was it Alvin Creepy Karpis, was it my guy, you know, Wilbur, the tri-state terror under Hill.
Anyway, what happens is this is really amazing.
So later on that evening, Johnny Lazia, he’s back at the Harvey restaurant, Union Station.
[2:08] He’s holding court. as if nothing happened. And of course, he may have been doing this to make it look like a deal. I didn’t have anything to do with it.
When Vern Miller goes and sees him again, and he’s terribly upset.
And he said, they started shooting. We didn’t start shooting.
But once they started shooting, we had to start shooting. And God, we didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m sorry about that.
And Vern Miller or Johnny Lassie is like, okay, well, you need to get out of here. You need need to leave.
And they said, we’ll take care of pretty boy Floyd.
OK, but you need to get out of town.
[2:43] And so sure enough, that’s what Vern Miller did. Now, exactly what routes he took and what car he drove and all that stuff, we don’t know.
But what we do know is that the Lazia gang had been keeping a beautiful Buick automobile under wraps that they had stolen or somebody had stolen in St.
Louis and brought to Kansas City.
And they were just keeping it for a special purpose, whatever the need might be, that they would need a stolen automobile.
So they gave that car to Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Ricchetti, and they also gave them a number of weapons and said, get out of town.
And that car was later found in Ohio, burned with at least one, but I think two bodies in that automobile.
It wasn’t Rich Eddie or Pretty Boy Floyd, but it also shows that they did something to somebody.
[3:35] Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Ricchetti make their way up to Buffalo, New York, and they have with them, accompanying them, a couple of ladies from Kansas City.
The Baird sisters, I believe, Rose and Bula Baird were their names, and they were sisters.
And again, Pretty Boy Floyd and another cohort had killed their husbands some while back in Kansas City to get rid of them, get them out of the picture.
And so now you got Adam Ricchetti and Pretty Boy Floyd with these two ladies, and they go. And under aliases, they rent an apartment in Buffalo, New York, and they just hang out there.
[4:18] And they just lay low. And so that is, you know, sometime from June, June, July, you know, however long it took them to get up there and situate themselves.
They remained there all the way until October of 1934.
So they remained there for approximately, what would that be, 16 months.
He was the problem. Adam Ricchetti, nobody knew who he was, but everybody knew who, They had heard of Pretty Boy Floyd.
But meanwhile, Vern Miller makes his way back to the East Coast where he hooks up with some of the characters for whom he had done some dirty work in the past and tries to get them to help him.
And I believe that the fellow that he hooked up with is a guy named Abe Zwilman, Abraham Zwilman.
And he was connected with Lepke Buckhalter, if you know these names.
Lepke Buckhalter was supposedly the chairman of Murder Incorporated.
He ended up being put to death in an electric chair.
He was a very bad person. But anyway, I think his name is Zwilman, Abe Zwilman.
He provided safe harbor to Vern Miller and fixed him up with a false identification as a optical salesman, a glass salesman, you know, for glasses, reading glasses and vision glasses.
[5:46] And so – and then sent him out on the road, you know, as a traveling salesperson.
So if he got stopped, he’d be able to show police, well, this is what I do. I’m selling glasses.
Well, meanwhile, Vern Miller’s wife, and I’ll say putative wife with her, too, because who knows what their legal relationship was, but she makes her way to Chicago.
[6:11] And she was actually a fascinating lady. Her name was Vivian Vi Mathias.
She was the girlfriend of Vern Miller, and she started off her life as a farm girl in Brainerd, Minnesota.
And she met Miller at age 19 and stayed with him for seven years as they moved from place to place as Miller plied his criminal ways.
And she had a daughter named Betty that lived with Vern Miller at the Brookside Bungalow home at 6612 Edgevale Road. And so Vi Mathias has returned to Chicago.
And so the FBI is staking out her apartment because they know Vern’s going to get a hold of her.
They just know it. So they’re just biding their time.
And so this is Halloween 1933, and the FBI is all positioned outside of Vi Mathias’ apartment.
Apartment, and sure enough, Vern Miller shows up in his new disguise as a traveling salesman, and they report the FBI’s watching this, and they see him go up into the apartment, and they report back to Washington, D.C., and they said, we got him.
And D.C. says, are you sure it’s him?
[7:23] And the field guys go, well, we’re mostly sure, yeah, we think it’s him.
And they said, well, no, you can’t do it until you’re totally sure.
And they said, well, we really think it’s him. Well, not until you know it’s him.
Well, that bit of indecision was just enough so that Vern Miller was starting to leave the apartment when all of a sudden he sees two men down the hallway starting to walk toward him and he gets spooked and he starts running down the middle stairs of the apartment building.
And meanwhile, there’s other agents that are coming up on the elevators.
And so this big, nobody covered the stairs, nobody covered the stairs and gets away.
But a huge shootout in the middle of the traffic of rush hour in Chicago on Halloween.
And Vern Miller commandeers a car. We would call it, you know, carjacks a car today and makes his getaway.
And it was a big, big, you know, blown opportunity by the FBI.
And it It brought a lot of indignity to J.
[8:31] Edgar Hoover. And he wasn’t – I think Melvin Purvis was the one who was in charge of the operation. That’s right. He was a Chicago agent. Yeah.
And, boy, that was kind of – because Melvin Purvis, who should have had a fantastic career with the FBI, was forced out of the FBI by – Because of that blown – Yeah, that.
And then also he was starting to become as well or better known than J. Edgar Hoover.
I’ve read that. Yeah. Yeah, and Director Hoover just couldn’t abide by that.
And was Vern Miller, was he connected to the Chicago mob?
Yeah, he was. So they probably provided him some dirty work for them.
[9:10] You know, you never know about these things because it’s kind of like, well, what have you done for me lately?
And frankly, you being one of the most highly sought after men in the country are not doing us any favors by showing back up on our home turf.
And having a shootout with the police.
Right. So I know the guy, Abner Longheese Willman is the guy that helped.
Longheese Willman. Yeah, that’s right. And they’re East Coast mobsters.
They’re East Coast. I mean, just as a little bit of a footnote, Abner Longheese Willman was killed for assisting Vern Miller.
He was executed, not by authorities, but by the mob.
You know, he did something on his own that he shouldn’t have.
But by this time now, in October on Halloween of 1933, he has this big shootout in Chicago. So he goes on the lam again. Where does he go?
He goes up to Detroit. He had those connections with the Purple Gang in Detroit, which was the syndicate or the mafia kind of Jewish gang.
[10:10] That’s what it was. In the United States at the time. Perhaps.
And so – but they did not appreciate Vern Miller’s appearance there in the Motor City.
And so they did not treat him kindly. And, you know, Miller brought unwanted heat on the Purple Gang in Detroit and essentially was brutally disposed of.
His body was badly beaten and found naked and bound with clothesline and wrapped in cheap blankets and found in a ditch about 11 miles from the heart of Detroit in 1933.
[10:44] And it appears that he had had his skull bashed in with a hammer or some other type of blunt instrument because there is a death photo of Vern Miller. He was murdered.
So he was tortured for being a bad guy by bringing on heat locally.
So in November of 1933, they know that Vern Miller participated, but he’s dead.
And so now they’re trying to piece things together. Meanwhile, they’ve arrested Vi Mathias, Vern Miller’s girlfriend, but she was a tough gal and she would not testify.
She was tough. And they did all kinds of things. They put a school pigeon in her jail cell to try and befriend her and get her to talk that way.
And she never really did spill the beans, but she went to prison for several years because of her association with Vern Miller.
So now you got pretty boy Floyd and you’ve got Adam Ricchetti still hiding out in Buffalo, New York.
Stir-Crazy in Buffalo
[11:43] In October of 1934, so approximately 16 months after the Union Station massacre, they are going stir-crazy in this apartment, the four of them.
They barely stand each other any longer, and they play cards, and the women read gossip magazines, and they listen to the radio, and then they play cards, and then they read gossip magazines. and they cook.
And they’re just, you know, if they want anything, they send the girls out to the grocery store to buy stuff, always with cash.
And so they’re just, it’s a terrible life. It’s miserable.
[12:22] And finally, pretty boy Floyd says, who wants to go home?
And they’re all like, I do, you know, all of them are like, yes, let’s go back, you know.
And so sure enough, they pile into the automobile pretty boy floyd sends one of the girls out to go buy an automobile and pay cash for it and they’re on their way back to the midwest when they’re when pretty boy floyd’s driving and it’s a it’s early in the morning about three or four o’clock in the morning and all of a sudden he he has an accident he hits something and so they’re all assembled there on on the roadway when Pretty Boy said, all right, well, here’s the plan.
We’re going to send the girls back to town to get a tow truck to come back and help fix our car.
And Adam and I will stay here and we’ll just wait. So the sun comes up.
Farmers are up early in this section of Ohio.
[13:18] East Liverpool, Ohio is where this all kind of goes down.
Pretty Boy and Adam Ricchetti kind kind of scoot up the hill from where the car is on the road when the local police get a report of some suspicious-looking characters that are on, you know, hillside there.
And the reason why is because Adam Ricchetti and Pretty Boy Floyd, you know, they’re in dress shoes, wearing three-piece suits, and, you know, they’re not out there camping.
The sheriff decides to go and investigate it, and he’s walking by, and he’s trying to act nonchalant, and, you know, and he says good good morning to him.
And they exchange a couple of pleasantries when Adam Ricchetti says he’s the law and he pulls a gun out on him.
And this local sheriff, he too pulls a gun and he and Adam Ricchetti are having a shootout with each other. Meanwhile, pretty boy Floyd just runs.
He just goes. The sheriff was about to kill Adam Ricchetti when he gave up.
He threw down his weapon and he he gave up.
And so now they had Adam Ricchetti, a few hours, and they figured out who they had on their hands.
And then, boy, then massive, massive manhunt for pretty boy Floyd there in Ohio.
[14:34] And and he’s on the run for like two days and they can’t find it.
But meanwhile, Melvin Purvis is coming in from Chicago and they’ve got, you know, 200 or so people. Pretty boy Floyd on the run.
And he he finally shows up at this one lady’s farmhouse and he’s starving.
He’s he’s just he begs her for a piece of meat. He just says, you know, I’m so hungry.
And so she feeds him a meal, you know, a really good meal. like, you know, meat and potatoes and green beans.
And I think he had, you know, like pumpkin pie for dessert and he just loving it, you know, and declared that to be the best meal he’d ever eaten in his life.
And so now he is going to take one of this, you know, nice farm lady’s cars.
Ellen Conkle was her name, and make his getaway. And as he is sitting in the car waiting for these other farm people to get in the car with him, who he has talked into driving him into town so he can get transportation, the police, all the authorities all start to arrive at the farm.
And so he gets out of the car.
Showdown in East Liverpool
[15:42] And when the lawmen pull up, they can see behind a chicken coop.
[15:47] Pretty Boy Floyd’s feet going back and forth, back and forth.
And then, you know, they yell to him to stop and pretty boy floyd just takes off across a prairie toward some woods he’s going to go back in the woods and try and escape that way when the lawmen tracking him just shot him in the back from behind they were able to you know get a couple good shots off and they were they shot him so they rushed up to floyd and they take him and they drag him over to like an apple tree and they put put them underneath this apple tree.
And they said, are you Charles Arthur Floyd?
And he goes, yeah, I’m Floyd.
And they said, tell us what happened at the plaza in Kansas City.
That’s what they used to call the Union Station. They used to call it the plaza.
Yeah, the pretty boy Floyd.
They said, tell us what happened in Kansas City. And pretty boy Floyd said, I’m not telling you sons of bitches nothing.
And then he dies. Now, years later in the 70s, Time Magazine did He had an article with one of the lawmen that was present who said that one of the other lawmen put a bullet in pretty boy Floyd, executed him.
[16:56] Because, again, Pretty Boy Floyd could not resist Kansas City, the temptation and the lure of the prostitution and the gambling and the alcohol and the great music that was available here. He just loved Kansas City.
Well, he was put into a box and he was shipped on rail through Kansas City and it was shipped to Oklahoma where he was buried.
So there you go. Now you have Vern Miller dead and you have pretty boy Floyd dead, and the only guy left is Adam Ricchetti.
He refuses to ever say anything about anything other than to protest his innocence.
And they have a trial that was prosecuted by a U.S.
Attorney who would later run against Harry Truman in the 1940, Harry Truman’s 1940 election.
And they managed to convict Adam Ricchetti and they killed him.
And I believe Adam Ricchetti was the sixth person to die in the gas chamber in Missouri.
He was killed on October 7th, 1938.
[18:04] And he basically was the fall person for the Union Station Massacre.
But you may be wondering, OK, but still, how did they connect pretty boy Floyd with Vern Miller?
You know, where is that nexus? I’m not hearing that. There’s still a disconnect here, right? You know, so.
Only through the mob, but the mob’s not talking. Right. So how do they do it?
Well, it’s a crazy story.
The Assassination of Johnny Lazia
[18:26] But on July 10th, 1934, at about three o’clock in the morning.
[18:33] Johnny Lazzia is living on Armor Boulevard and he pulls up in his automobile being driven by Charlie Carolla.
And Johnny Lazzia is in the backseat and his wife, Maria, is in the front seat.
And he gets out of the car in front of the Park Place apartments there on Armor Boulevard.
And as he’s getting out of the car, machine gun blasts and shotgun blasts from about 20, 25 feet away of these guys hiding behind a wall rip through Johnny Lazzia.
And he screams at Corolla to get Marie out of there.
And meanwhile, Johnny Lazia is lying on the ground, screaming in utter pain, writhing in pain.
Someone please help him. Please help him. They take him to St.
Joe Hospital, and he doesn’t die for about 12 hours.
Meanwhile, they did multiple blood transfusions of him, and he’s just screaming in bloody pain.
[19:34] Pain and misery before he dies and everybody who’s anybody goes to see him they got armed guards all around the hospital when lazia is suffering there and they of course tom pendergast is summoned and and you know and he said and and dr nigro who was the mob you know of that era he comes on the scene and henry mcelroy is there the city manager i mean everybody’s there and so so So Lazia dies.
It’s like one of the largest funerals that’s ever been held in Kansas City before some 10,000 people turned out for his wake and his funeral.
And so shortly after Lazia’s death, a mob war breaks out in Kansas City because those that are behind Johnny Lazia, they know who killed him.
And it was consisted of a guy named O’Brien out of Chicago, a guy named Little Nuge Laploma, Lapluma who or Lapluma who they never got him.
And then they got another guy named Jimmy Needles.
Jimmy Needles was part of that. Right. Jimmy Needles was part of that whole deal.
And so and then this other guy whose name I want to share with you because he he died a particularly unpleasant death.
[20:56] His name was Jack Gregory, alias Griffin.
Now, he paid for his life for killing Johnny Lassie when the KC mob threw him alive into the furnace of a building.
Oh, wow. And then there was another assassin. His name was Al O’Brien, who managed to escape.
And Al O’Brien actually became a big member of the Teamsters Union in the Northwest side side of the country, up in Seattle or Portland.
[21:28] And then there was a younger guy, younger than him, might have been a son named Chucky O’Brien, who was connected with Hoffa in the 50s.
I think that’s the connection, yeah.
And so Al O’Brien actually had a shootout with Kansas City mobsters in Denver and actually came up on the winning side of that shootout.
But he managed to to make his way to the West Coast and become involved in corrupt union activities there.
And then little Nuge Lapluma, a neighborhood friend of La Capra, also vanished.
And so, you know, there are some that say Lapluma was the actual trigger man who shot Lazio, but there were two of them. And so it was probably O’Brien.
[22:09] Or Griffin. So you have four guys that killed Lazia. They were all involved.
Al O’Brien, little Nuge Lapluma, Jack Gregory, alias Griffin, and Jimmy Needles LaCapra.
And so there’s this mob war going on in Kansas City. They’re trying to kill all these guys.
And they have this big shootout with Jimmy Needles LaCapra in Kansas City.
Well, he decides that he’s going to leave, He flees Kansas City, and he’s going to go seek refuge with some relatives in Argonia, Kansas, which is just to the southwest of Wichita, Kansas.
And so the mob sends three guys down, three young men, and I’m looking at their pictures right now.
Jerome Kreetz, John Pace, P-A-C-E, and in Italian, you would pronounce it Pace, and then a guy named Bobby McCoy. and these guys all went down and they had a shootout with Jimmy Needles LaCapra.
[23:05] The highway patrol comes on the scene and Jimmy Needles LaCapra seeks refuge with the highway patrol.
Please, please, they’re here to kill me. Give me cover.
Give me safety. I’m afraid they’re going to kill me.
And so they take Jimmy Needles LaCapra back to the highway patrol office and then they round up these three guys and they bring them back to the highway patrol office.
So they got everybody that’s involved in this crazy shootout going on back at Highway Patrol quarters there in Kansas when word reaches Kansas City that they’ve caught Jimmy Needles LaCapra.
Well, one of the most corrupt Kansas City police officers then makes his way down to Argonia, Kansas, because he wants to take custody of Jimmy Needles LaCapra.
And when they say, well, wait a minute, under what authority are you doing this?
He says, because it is for crimes against the machine.
[24:04] And they said crimes against the machine. What is that?
And so they will are unwilling to turn Jimmy Needles over to this cop from Kansas City who clearly and we know who he was and we know he’s been involved in other murders that he was going to kill Jimmy Needles.
LeCapra, it’s pretty sure. He was not going to make it back to Kansas City, was he?
No. Well, meanwhile, though, the feds had heard about it, too.
And so a couple of FBI agents go rushing down there and they take custody of Jimmy Needles LeCapra.
And then he gives this incredible statement.
I mean, it’s like a 25 or 30 page statement, the whole story about how Johnny Donny Lazio was there at the Harvey restaurant on June 16th, the night before the Union Station massacre, and how word reached him that Pretty Boy Floyd had arrived in town.
And then when Vern Miller came and how he connected Vern Miller with Pretty Boy Floyd, and that is exactly what J.
Edgar Hoover needed. He needed that as his basically as to wrap up the whole thing, to tie kind of tie it up and put a bow on it and say, this is what happened. We’ve got our story.
[25:17] Now, I believe Jimmy Needles LaCapra.
And the reason why I do is there is no way that the first one wasn’t that intelligent of a man, you know, limited education.
He was a street thug. He was a boxing promoter. He was trying to move in on the rackets.
You know, he wasn’t that impressive of a character, and there is no way that he could have given the depth of detail in his statement that he gave recounting all of the events both before and after the massacre if he did not have personal knowledge of it.
Yes, he was there when Vern Miller came.
[25:56] He says he was there when Vern Miller, and it would make sense because he used to be part of Lazzy’s inner circle because he was Sam Scola’s cousin, Sammy the Hog, Scola.
And then what happened was Jimmy Needles LaCapra hooked up with this O’Brien guy and this Griffin guy, and they wanted to muscle in on some rackets that Lazzy had, specifically specifically a restaurant bar that they wanted to take over, and Lassie wouldn’t let them do it.
And then they wanted to take over some of the unions in town.
So Jimmy Needles LaCapa really provided the answer that J. Edgar Hoover needed for the.
[26:38] Union station massacre and let me tell you why i believe it i mean first of all i believe because, the detail that he’s got the recollection and the specific small little details, he just could not make this stuff it would have been impossible for him to give that depth of detail with all these different characters and all this timeline and all these specific things that he knew about you know like the stolen car from st louis he knew about that they met yeah when they They gave Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Ricchetti weaponry afterward.
They did it at a drugstore that was a notorious mob hangout on the North End here.
He specifically said it was my cousin who gave, you know, Sam Scola is the one who gave him these guns.
Well, here’s what really seals the deal for me, is that when they caught Adam Ricchetti in and around East Liverpool, Ohio, in October of 1933.
[27:33] Excuse me, I’m sorry, October of 1934, so 16 months later, he had on him a .45 semi-automatic gun, pistol.
Well, that pistol had been stolen from the Kansas City, Kansas, U.S.
Armory in 1932.
Right. And it was Lazia’s gang that stole them. Right.
And how do we know this? Well, because several of the guns were used in the shootout on the Armor Boulevard with Sheriff Bash.
That’s what Charlie Gargano was shooting at Sheriff Bash with.
That’s what they killed the guy that they were going after. after.
Adam Ricchetti has this stolen weapon that Lazia’s gang had broken into the armory.
There is no way that Adam Ricchetti would have had one of those 45s with the serial number from the U.S.
Armory on it had Lazia’s gang not given it to him.
It clearly establishes a nexus between between Pretty Boy Floyd, Adam Ricchetti, and the Lazio organization.
[28:39] And then you bring in Jimmy Needle’s story that corroborates so much of it that I do think, frankly, that they did get it for the most part.
I do think that they got it right. I think so. Plus, he wanted protection from the FBI at that point in time. He had to have it.
And I assume they gave him some kind of protection? Not a lot.
No. They gave him enough protection so that Maurice Milligan.
[29:07] Who was the U.S. attorney at the time, cut a deal and said, well, we’ll give you protection if you’ll testify.
And he said, all right, I’ll testify. So he testified and they said, okay, your protection’s over.
[29:19] That’s all we got. That’s the U.S. attorney for you, man.
[29:23] They’re done with you. They’re done. They’re done. Back then, especially. Well, there was no witness protection program. It didn’t exist.
And so Jimmy Needles LaCapra, he starts heading heading back toward the Northeast.
[29:36] And he’s later found shot and killed in New York.
And that’s simply because they just, you know, they’re not going to, nobody’s going to provide safe harbor to, first of all, he’s a rat.
And they killed, Johnny Lazio was the recognized, the syndicate recognized Johnny Lazio as a thorn.
You kill the head in Kansas City, you’re going to be in trouble.
So don’t expect to get any protection from the rackets back.
I’ll tell you that he was shot at at the base of his skull on or around August 26, 1935, near Plattsville, New York.
Now, here’s the thing I’ll tell you, that people who want to argue the conspiracy about how this whole thing went down, I mean, that’s fine.
But until you read all of Jimmy Needle’s statement, I included a couple of key pages of it in my book. Yeah, and I do things like that because I know people are interested in this stuff, and they’ll get out their magnifying glass, and they’ll look at what this says.
But these are only a couple of – like about a 30-page statement.
And so if you don’t read that statement, you don’t know what you’re talking about is my feeling about it. How did you find that statement?
Was that in the Freedom of Information Act or in archives? It was provided to me by the FBI.
[30:53] The FBI gave me all of their files that they had related to the Union Station Massacre.
And then also Bob Unger and I, we swapped a lot of it.
We had a blast working together.
It was kind of funny. He and I met at a restaurant bar on the plaza.
And, you know, I told him about my project. I was going to be doing this film and how I really could use his help. And he said, you know, he goes, I’ve been just such a fool.
He goes, you know, I really probably should have been capitalizing on this more.
And I said, well, so over drinks, we made this deal together.
And I mean, we had about a four hour conversation. It was a blast.
And he’s a good man. And so he’s a professor at UMKC. Yeah, I believe he’s emeritus now.
And and so and I think he’s doing other writings right now.
But anyway, so Bob basically opened up his file to me. And I used him as a consultant on my film and then also I used him as an interview subject on the film.
And so he does a great job of telling a lot of the story in the film.
[31:59] So thanks a lot, guys. That’s the third and final installment of the story of the Union Station Massacre. You know, we’ve heard of the St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre.
And somebody asked, why was there such a outcry about the Union Station Massacre at the time, whereas there wasn’t such an outcry on the St.
[32:17] Valentine’s Day Massacre? Well, because in St. Valentine’s Massacre, there was only other gang members that got killed.
That was the Bugs Moran gang. A lot of them got killed, and it was a Capone gang, or Capone hired the Egan’s Rats to come up out of St.
Louis or Detroit, wherever they were at at the time, and do that St.
Valentine’s Day massacre.
But the Union Station massacre, law enforcement got killed, and it just flew in the face of all organized, you know, the justice system at the time.
You know, everybody was kind of laissez-faire, like, oh, well, these traveling bank robbers, you know, they’re just robbing from banks.
Gangs it’s depression everybody needs money they’re like going out and giving money to poor people supposedly and they weren’t really they were some of them might have taken it back to their families but but mainly they were just living that life you know of a bank robber of a gangster you know a gangster gets a lot of money goes and gambles and drinks and whores around till he spends it all and then he goes gets some more money that’s just that’s the way of a gangster that’s just the way it is so this has been that story and and that story after those four lowmen got killed by those four gangsters boy i tell you what the hit the fan they crack down and that’s it’s shortly after that they of course they get pretty boy floyd they get adam rachetti verne miller gets killed before they can get him they jelly nice is already dead.
[33:37] The heat was on on Dillinger, and Dillinger gets killed. Who was the other one?
There was another one real famous when they got killed.
Machine Gun Kelly. All these guys, you know, the FBI and local law enforcement really went after these guys after they killed four law enforcement officers, old Bonnie and Clyde.
They killed a couple of Texas State Troopers down there.
And boy, when they caught them, there was no mercy, no mercy at all.
That was like an ambush in the Gaza Strip or something by the Israelis, man, when they walked into that kill zone or over in Vietnam.
And when they walk in that kill zone, that’s it. You know, it’s done.
The Brutal Aftermath
[34:14] So that’s kind of the end of the story. Thanks a lot to Greg Scavuzzo, one of our longtime YouTube fans, who actually his ancestor, Jimmy’s Needles La Capra, was involved in this and the aftermath of it and got caught up in it and ended up getting killed himself. But anyhow, guys, I really appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed these three bonus episodes.
You may have already heard them a long time ago on my audio app.
They’ve not been on YouTube.
If you didn’t want to listen to them, you didn’t miss anything because I threw these all up as bonus episodes, you might notice.
So thanks a lot, guys. And don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Hit that button down below. And don’t forget to tell your friends and put it on your Facebook page and tell everybody you know about it because we want to get as many listeners as we can. Thanks a lot, guys.