Midwest Illegal Gambling

Downstate Gangsters

By Bill Monson

When you say "Illinois gangsters," most people think of Chicago and Al Capone. But there were gangsters downstate, too, some so tough that the Windy City mobsters hesitated to move south.

Perhaps the toughest gang of all spent World War II just 45 miles from Galesburg down U.S. 150 in Peoria. This was the Shelton Gang, led by brothers Carl, Earl and Bernie Shelton.

The brothers were Wayne County farmboys who drifted into the rackets in "Bloody Williamson" County down in Little Egypt. Site of wide-open gambling, bootlegging and prostitution, the area was as wild as Chicago ever was. Fed up with corrupt politicians and law enforcement, the citizens almost welcomed an invasion of the Ku Klux Klan in 1923 which tried to do by vigilante action what the local authorities refused to do. The Shelton brothers sided with the law breakers and "Bloody Williamson" earned its name.

Within a few months, the county coroner filed 153 cases of death by "person or persons unknown." Eventually, the Klan lost. By the time it did, the Sheltons were top dogs in Little Egypt and moved their headquarters to East St. Louis. Their stranglehold on that city was not broken until the mid-30s but remained strong elsewhere.

In the meantime, Peoria was the wildest city between Chicago and St. Louis. Various gangs, including the remnants of Capone’s, tried to take over the city’s vice rackets. Clyde Garrison, a local gambler who had Peoria politicos in his pocket, tried to resist but didn’t have the firepower for gang warfare. He invited the Sheltons north as his partners. Garrison would handle the politicians; the Sheltons would provide the muscle.

In 1940, Republican Dwight H. Green of Chicago was elected Governor of Illinois, breaking eight years of Democratic control in the state. Green, who came to fame as part of the team which successfully put Al Capone in jail, ran as a reform candidate opposed to campaign corruption and alleged tolerance of crime and gangsters by Chicago Democrats. However, when the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, he proved unequal to the task of containing corruption. The war put money back in people’s pockets for the first time since the Depression started; and they spent it wildly. Peoria ran wide-open and so did other Illinois towns (including Galesburg). The Sheltons were so strong that they ran Capone’s mobsters out of Peoria; and in retaliation, the Chicago gang put a $10,000 price on the heads of Carl and Bernie. At the same time, the Chicago mob took over East St. Louis and moved in on Little Egypt.

In 1944, Dwight Green narrowly won re-election as Governor. Some say it was contributions from gangsters which helped him over the top. By this time, one-third of Illinois counties (including Knox County) had gambling of some kind.

Peoria also had prostitution, which shamed some citizens so badly that they managed to elect a reform mayor, Carl O. Triebel, in 1945. The Sheltons tried to buy him off but couldn’t. Carl Shelton decided to retire to his farm in Wayne County and left Bernie in charge (Earl had never been much involved in the Peoria operation, preferring to operate from his home territory in Fairfield.) With the end of the war, Peoria became tamer; but there was still gambling, and Bernie got most of the take. Then the Sheltons’ enemies began to make their moves. In October 1947, Carl was shot to death in an ambush near his farm. In July 1948, Bernie was cut down by a sniper’s rifle outside his headquarters in Peoria. Their deaths had two results. There was a shakeup in gang operation throughout Illinois and a media frenzy about corruption which extended all the way to the Governor’s office.

Green ran for a third term in 1948 and was expected to benefit from popular Republican Thomas Dewey’s campaign for the Presidency. But the media fallout from Peoria led to statewide investigations which connected Green and Attorney General George Barrett with corruption. Voter anger in Illinois was reflected in the fall election. Green lost to underdog Adlai Stevenson by over half a million votes. Barrett was also defeated in a Democratic avalanche which won all the state offices and elected University of Chicago Professor Paul Douglas, a Democrat, as Senator. The ultimate loss was Tom Dewey’s, who lost Illinois to Harry Truman by the slim margin of less than 37,000 votes. (This led to the famous Chicago Tribune front page headline "Dewey Defeats Truman.")

Even in death, the Shelton brothers made their impact on the state. Outraged, their enemies began wiping out anyone associated with them. Even Earl was wounded in an assassination attempt at his Fairfield club in May 1949. In June 1950, Roy Shelton, who had never participated in his brothers’ criminal activities, was gunned down on his tractor at his farm in Wayne County. Another attempt on Earl and also his son. When Earl’s home was dynamited in November, the Sheltons gave up. Earl and the remaining family members left Illinois for Florida. Earl died at 96 in Jacksonville in 1986.

Still their enemies persisted. The Shelton Illinois properties — oil wells, clubs and farm buildings — were torched or dynamited. People who tried to farm Shelton lands were shot at. Even minor associates were killed.

Eventually, nothing was left of the Shelton empire but legend.

Readers wanting more information should try "Bloody Williamson" by Paul Angle, "Brothers Notorious" by Taylor Pensoneau or "Butcher’s Dozen" by John Bartlow Martin.

Cicero and the Frolics catered to the gambling, strip club and brothel trade for many years. The Frolics-Aiuppa connection is mentioned in dozens of books and articles. One 1954 Chicago Tribune article mentions that Aiuppa was arrested at the Frolics nightclub in a gambling raid, and that he described himself as the manager of the club. Also in that article the Tribune reported that Sheriff Richard B. Ogilvie took jurisdiction after he charged Cicero police had failed to close gambling joints and vice dives. The article said that the Frolics at 4811 Cermack Rd. was operated by Cicero "gambling boss" Joe Aiuppa, and was ordered closed for not displaying its state liquor license. Olgilvie said Aiuppa and Sam [Momo] Giancana, now the top man in the Chicago area crime syndicate, control gambling and vice operations in Cicero. [Giancana was Front Boss of the Chicago Mob from 1957 to 1966.]

Dave Brown, a researcher on Chicago gambling and a chip collector provided this information:

Frolics was at 4811-4813 W. Cermak Rd, in Cicero, and was open at least 1950-1961. It could have been around longer, but for sure it was open during that time frame. Frolics was also a strip club and handbook [horse-racing bookie place]. The gambling would have been in a back room or upstairs. If there was "heat," they had other locations nearby they would move the gambling to. Aiuppa was arrested at a dice game there in 1954 and claimed to be the manager. The FBI considered Aiuppa to be the owner of the club, but there most likely would have been a front man. Gambling in that spot goes back to the Capone era. In the 1930s it was known as the 4811 Club and the 4813 building was the Minerva restaurant, owned by Fenton Mangan. In 1934 the Minerva was the site of the Fred Goetz hit. Goetz was one of the St Valentines Day Massacre shooters.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF AIUPPA:

Starting about 1925 Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa was linked to and worked with John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, John Moore (a/k/a Claude Maddox) and the Al Capone gang. He was a gunman and driver for Capone, and was given the territory of Cicero to run. Aiuppa gradually rose up through the ranks to the top of the Outfit, operating several gambling establishments in Cicero, Illinois. This included book making and underground casinos with secret entrances. Auippa would become the perennial number two or three man in the Outfit, working out of the spotlight under leaders such as Sam "Momo" Giancana or Tony Accardo. In Jason Mulligan's list of bosses, Aiuppa is listed as "Front Boss" of the Chicago "Outfit" from 1971 to 1986. In June 1975, Aiuppa may have participated in the decision to kill Giancana. Some crime figures claimed that the CIA killed Giancana due to his role in the failed assassination plots against Cuban President Fidel Castro. However, there is no evidence to substantiate those theories. The FBI suspected the Outfit killed Giancana because he refused to share his offshore gambling profits from Mexico. Other Giancana allies (such as Johnny Roselli) were killed around the time of Giancana's death. In 1986, Aiuppa was convicted of skimming profits from five Las Vegas casinos and received 28 years in prison. That was (the caper involving the Argent Corporation, the Teamster's Pension Fund loan, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, etc.). It was rumored that Aiuppa ordered the execution of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro in March 1986 in retaliation for this sentence. Spilotro had been Aiuppa's representative in Las Vegas and Aiuppa supposedly blamed him for his skimming arrest. Spilotro and his brother Michael were found beaten to death and buried in a cornfield only four miles away from a large property owned by Aiuppa near Morocco, Indiana. Aiuppa was released from prison at age 89. On February 22, 1997, Joseph Auippa died of natural causes in Las Vegas. In the film Casino, actor Pasquale Cajano's character, Remo Gaggi, is loosely based on Aiuppa. The cornfield murders of the Spilotro brothers is also recreated in this film. He died in 1997, age 89.

Article courtesy of Robert Eisenstadt’s Antique Gambling Chip Site

From an article by Robert “Tree” Sweeney about his life in East St. Louis

http://riverweb.cet.uiuc.edu/IBEX/index.html

There was another famous incident between my dad [Bob Sweeney] and Carl Shelton. Shelton was in St. Mary's hospital, recovering from an operation. Sweeney hated the Sheltons and did everything he could to rid the town of them. When he found out Carl was laid up in the hospital, he said "What is that blankety blank son of a gun doing in my town?" He rushed down to the hospital and dragged Shelton out of his bed and booked him on another one of those trumped up charges. Both Carl and the hospital threatened to sue Bob Sweeney over that incident but the charges were thrown out of court. The Shelton Gang was ruthless and had been featured in an article on gangsterism that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. As a kid back at Central High, I remember seeing a Ripley's "Believe it or Not" story about how the Shelton gang carried out the first and only aerial bombing attack in the U. S. when they flew over Charlie Birger's roadhouse near Marion and threw bombs from the open cockpit.

The two biggest gambling establishments back in those days were Bowman's (on Collinsville Ave. across from Southern Illinois Bank on Broadway), and Vic Doyle's Ringside (on West Broadway, next to Bush's Steak House). Doyle's place had about seven or eight craps tables in operation at the same time. Every morning, after dad dropped me off at school, he went to Bowman's and Doyle's to collect their receipts from the day before. The money was in leather brief cases and dad would take it for deposit to First National Bank on Missouri Ave. He received a hundred dollars a day from each place for doing this. It was common knowledge that dad was handling all this money, but no one ever tried to rob him. For about five years in a row, Roy Bowman bought dad a new Fleetwood from East Side Cadillac on 11th and St. Louis Ave.

Monday, April 24, 2006
TJ GREANEY ~ Southeast Missourian

Every town has that other side. For every workaday community there is always that smaller zone where the rules -- even if they still apply -- may not be enforced so strictly. These are the places where people go to drink, where they go to dance, and sometimes where they go to break the law. For Cape Girardeau, this place has always been East Cape Girardeau.

"It's true up and down the Mississippi Valley from Minnesota all the way down to the Gulf," said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University. "People who live on opposite sides of the river have much in common, but there is always one dominant city. There's never enough economic growth to support two dominant economies, so the one that's the first to develop services and industry tends to dominate the region, and then there's always the place on the other side."

These other places, said Nickell, are usually the ferry points of old. Because ferries ran at intervals and because delays due to ice or mechanical malfunction were far from uncommon, these places had a captive audience in travelers.

"It's very common that people are just waiting. So stores pop up and places to drink a beer might pop up and before long it's 'do you want to play a little dice while you wait,' even maybe 'would you like a little company while you're held up?'"

Nickell said this phenomenon is as old as the river settlements themselves. He points to Quincy, Ill., and West Quincy, Mo., to St. Louis and East St. Louis, Ill., to Memphis, Tenn., and West Memphis, Ark., as examples of these parallel economies.

East Cape Girardeau Fits The Bill

In 1905 the following item ran in Cape Girardeau's Daily Republican: "The 'lid' is firmly on in Cape Girardeau, and no spirits are sold here today, Sunday; still, those who have a taste for something stronger than lemonade take the ferry across the river to Illinois, where liquor is served from an unpainted frame building standing among the bushes and trees; the ferryman does a booming business."

For much of the 20th century, Illinois' more liberal drinking laws drew thirsty Cape Girardeans to the east side.

Playground

Retired Southeast Missourian reporter and longtime Illinois resident Ray Owen said in the 1950s, the Purple Crackle, which opened its doors in 1939, was the area's foremost landmark. "I heard about it all the time when I was in the Army," said Owen. "People would say 'Oh I know where you're from. Have you been to the Crackle?' They were from all over but they'd definitely heard about it."

They weren't the only ones.

Legends like Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Woody Herman made the Crackle a preferred tour stop on the Memphis-St. Louis-Chicago circuit.

The Crackle in those days was the classiest joint around. "You walked in, people were dressed in coat and tie, like you would to go to church today," said Jerry Ford, who first played the Crackle as a 15-year-old trumpet player. "It had nice carpet, nice lighting. You just knew you were in a nice place."

Depending on the era, the dining room would be filled with the melodious sounds of orchestras led by men like Herb Suedekum, Bill Brandt or Jack Stalcup. Band members in matching brown polyester suits swayed to the rhythms and dancers jittered, jived, swung or rumbaed late into the night.

It was, say many, something that does not exist today; a playground for the whole family.

"The Purple Crackle was a place where little girls first danced with their fathers and little boys first danced with their mothers," said Ray's wife, Sally Owen, also a former Southeast Missourian reporter. "The ladies 'salon' had a really nifty perfume machine ... as kids we loved going to the restroom armed with change from our parents and coming out smelling like fancy skunks."

Local families also got their first taste of exotic cuisine at the Crackle, thanks to the area's only Chinese chef-in-residence.

Gambling

But this opulence landed in East Cape Girardeau for an unsavory reason. "The reason these places could afford the big groups was three paces out the back door; that's where all the gambling was," said Ford.

In a smaller structure behind the Crackle, through the lounge and past the ever-present piano and guitar duo of Eddie and Vi Keys, was where revelers looking for a different type of fun went to find it.

"You'd never have known it was going on unless someone told you, but if you went into the lounge and asked the bartender where the action was, he'd tell you ... it wasn't a secret," said Ford.

The gambling room was out back for good reason.

"None of these places would have the back rooms attached to the actual establishment, that way you could get separate business licenses for the two different places," said Owen. "And if they ever got busted, you could just say 'bye bye' to the manager and start over."

Owen said he's come across gambling chips from the Colony Club, Thunderbird Club -- both also in East Cape Girardeau -- and Purple Crackle during his time as an antiques collector.

Many believe the influence of the Crackle and other clubs helped them escape many a police bust. "There would be a phone call the day of the bust or sometimes you'd see a handshake between a police officer and the manager where money was exchanged," said one witness.

But the preventive measures didn't always pay off. In 1941, Alexander County raided and seized gambling devices from the Crackle, the Colony Club and two other night clubs. Raids would be periodic throughout the next two decades.

Leland "Freck" Shivelbine, longtime owner of Shivelbine's Music Store in Cape Girardeau and a drummer who played the circuit with the Pete Propst Band, said the raids were often half-hearted at best. "Everybody knew about it, when there'd be a raid, it was pretty clear the people who owned clubs knew too because the clubs would be closed on those days," he said.

The Thunderbird Club was even said to have roulette tables that could flip over to look like pool tables in the event of an unexpected raid.

Mafia influences were widely acknowledged in Southern Illinois. Williamson County to the north was known as "Bloody Williamson," and to the south, in Alexander County, Al Capone had known associates.

Shivelbine also remembers the gambling at many of the East Cape Girardeau clubs.

"In the mid-1950s there, gambling was on the QT. You had to go behind a closed door. You went and knocked and somebody would come let you in. I personally was never much of a gambler. I didn't have any money to play with, but I remember walking back there in between sets and they'd be around a table playing cards," he said. "They had the whole gauntlet of games back then; blackjack tables, roulette, craps tables, slots, but I didn't spend my money on that stuff."

The gambling was not always of the low-stakes variety. Ownership of the Colony Club itself is said to have changed hands during a poker game.

"During goose hunting season highrollers would come here and spend a lot of money," said Joe James, a saxophonist who played with the Herb Suedekum and Bill French bands in the area. "That's the only way the clubs could afford to hire Woody Herman."

Dancers

It wasn't just the gambling and the geese that drew men across the river. "Between Cape Girardeau and McClure there were six or seven nightclubs, and in between East Cape and Cairo there were clubs spaced every so often along the road," said Owen. "At one time or another most of these clubs featured exotic dancers."

Competition for dancers was fierce.

"I can tell you that two or three of the clubs with exotic dancers kept blowing up or catching fire," said Owen. "Now maybe this was a coincidence, I don't know, but most people thought it was the competition over the girls. Because let's face it, there was money to be made. And if you had a nightclub you were in it to make money."

Disagreements over juke boxes and other turf issues came to a head in July 1968 when distributor Howard Baker was murdered by gangsters while driving on Route 3.

This grizzly murder of a well-known Cape Girardean in some ways marked the end of an era. Gambling had dried up in the early '60s, and the days of big bands had given way reluctantly to rock 'n' roll. Families no longer went across the river together.

Over the next decade clubs either shut down or changed their format to accommodate younger crowds, disco and underage drinking. The drinking age in Illinois remained 18 until 1984.

East Cape Girardeau was officially incorporated in 1975, but it never achieved the growth anticipated due in part to flooding concerns and building restrictions.

Today it is still a destination for fun, but now primarily of the adult variety. The Crackle will soon reopen its doors as the Big Blue Martini Lounge; a "gentlemen's club." Many in the community are horrified by the transformation of this beloved landmark. But others say the adult industry is like many others that have come and gone on this side of the river.

"People probably have the wrong idea. You automatically attach sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but this place is family run and family operated. I've never feared for my safety in here," said Bethany Rinacke, an exotic dancer at Hush Puppy in McClure. "We have young couples, old couples, single men, single women. It's fun and it's safe, and it's a fantasy for people. In the end that's what it's about. That's why people come over here." 

Dixon (IL) Telegraph

August 15,1949

Two men have been charged with the murder and another with assault with intent to kill in the death of a Peoria construction worker after a night club brawl.

The victim was Lester P. Hall, 33, employed as a labor foreman for the Wulfes-Jensen Construction Co., Chicago. He died at St. Francis Hospital yesterday after the mass fight Saturday night.

Earl McDowell, owner of the "Talk of the Town" night club, and Alonza Berkley, an ex-convict, were charged with murder. Edwin A. Haussam, a bartender at the club, was charged with assault with intent to kill.

Eight other persons were held with charge.

City detective Fred Montgomery said witnesses told him the fight started when Hall and two companions entered the night club looking for Haussam. Then, he said, the following took place: Hall struck a bartender who stopped them. McDowell rushed up and Hall struck him in the mouth. McDowell knocked Hall down, then repeatedly kicked him in the head while he was down. Barkley hit Hall with a bar stool. Montgomery said witnesses told him Haussam hit Hall with a ball bat, but the bartender said he swung the bat but missed.