During the late 40’s the government banned all gambling devices around the country.Legend goes that the Luciano family big shot Frank Costello,known as the “King of Slots” made(or stole) some creative alterations to evade the authorities and legal problems in New York City and the national mob followed his “new invention”.The trick was when the player dropped a nickel and pulled the handle, a candy or a bubblegum dropped out,turning the slot machine into a vending machine. If three identical objects showed on the machine,also fake coins known as slugs would be ejected.These could then be exchanged for cash.In the early 1950’s Vogel,Larner and the Outfit were involved in all kinds of vending machines,from candy and soda to coffee and condom machines.In March of 1950,the feds discovered that Vogel’s gang was now dealing contraceptives and has these machines dispensing condoms in various taverns,dancehalls and clubs.Vogel was jokingly referred to as “Birth Control Eddie” by the feds and the press.

But gambling was legal in some jurisdictions like Vegas,Nevada and since it was legitimate to place a gambling device,the national mob started to invest in building their own casino’s.So Larner saw another opportunity to expand his slot machine business big time.He traveled to Vegas back and forth and smuggled many of his slot’s and took over many independent operators with his “muscle” crew.The real source of income for the Outfit’s owned casino was table games,while Larners slot machines were placed in the casino’s to amuse the wives and girlfriends of the table players.It was not long before the slot machines became a significant source of income for the casino.Soon the problem was reversed by instead of having to report excess income from vending machines to cover illegally earned income, the trick now became skimming, or showing less income from gambling operations that were actually received, in order to avoid paying taxes on that income and to pay off investors who were not on the corporate rolls.This operation made a lot of cash for Hy Larner,Vogel and the Outfit in general.

When the Kefauver committee came to Chicago in 1952,it placed the spotlight on many high profile gangsters,including the Outfit’s ultimate boss Paul Ricca.The purpose of the questioning in Chicago by the Senate's Kefauver Committee was to establish the links between the Outfit and Florida gamblers and politicians stemming from many criminal operations.By the mid 50’s there was a “changing of the guard” among Outfit members.A lot of gangsters died from natural or unatural causes. On February 21, 1956 one of Larners mentors and also one of the bosses of the non-italian faction,Jake Guzik died from a fatal heart attack.Murray Humphries became the boss of the non-italian faction and Larner’s boss Ed Vogel was second in command.But now Ed was 60 years old and was slowly fading away from the business but because of his connections,he still maintained control from the shadows.

By this time there has frequently been an unsubstantiated link between some of the manufacturers of coin-operated vending and game machines and the Chicago Outfit. It was thought that juke boxes, pinball games and vending machines were the domain of the mob,by placing those machines in protected businesses, the Outfit shared the take with the manufacturer.Allegedly after Costello’s idea,the same vending and pinball companies soon started making coin-operated slot machines, some of which vended gum and candy and also ventured into the gambling realm.Both Vogel and Larner had an idea to open their own mob controlled association and to gather all of the coin machine operators, manufacturers and distributors under their rule.

So in December,1955 they created the Chicago Independent Amusement Association or the CIAA.They saw success because in 1956 the association has grown steadily and their membership numbered almost 100 operators and distributors.This was over one third of the total industry in Chicago.The association also made arrangements to work together with the Recorded Music Service Association and the jukebox operators and distributors.The Outfit placed Sam Greenberg as president of the association and Hyman Larner as its executive secretary and general manager.Larner played it smart by changing his name into Thomas “Red”Waterfall and hide his real identity.The association also had dealings with the Local 134 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,a racket union,which was headed by Tom”Juke Box Smitty”Smith,a long time Outfit associate in the juke box business.It was Larner who decided that Local 134 should be brought in to make the operators to join in and pay tribute.The association also handed out union labels to be placed on every machine but in reality there wasn’t any union contract.Plus the new operators could not get in the union unless they had label on their machines from the Electrical Workers Union. Of course, if someone managed to survive without a union label box,the locals glass windows would pop suddenly, or it would suffer electrical problems from “unknown” origins.

The dues in the association were upped almost 600 per cent and no money from the dues ever found its way to the union members.The Local 134 was like a sponsorship for the association and it was a private deal between Vogel,Larner and Tom Smith.Old man Vogel became head of the Apex Amusement Company and pulled the strings from the shadows.Through violence and intimidation they forced many operators to join their union and association.Every operator payed from 1 to 10 dollars per machine,weekly and if someone didn’t pay up,he or she was visited by guys like Jim Rini or Alex Ross.Rini and Ross were hired by the Local 134 as “union inspectors” and were paid $150 a week.Larners associates would usually enter a joint ,saying they cannot have machines from different companies in the same joint.They gave the owners a card from the CIAA,with Thomas Waterfall's(Hy Larner) name and number on it.These guys made so much terror around Chicago and also spreaded a lot of fear among coin machine operators.Once Jim Rini poured down so much acid over some slot machines that the acid dripped down on the electric wiring and short circuited the power and blew the electric door of the joint.

The Lormar Distributing company were making juke box records and was owned by the Outfit.Frontman in this company was Chuck English and Larner had its own shares.English and Larner were forcing juke box operators to buy records from their company.They were also selling counterfeit disks and had a monopoly in Chicago,Wisconsin.Minnesota and around the country. Herman Klebba a juke box and gaming operator was told by Juke Box Smitty to join his Local 134 and pay his “street tax”.Klebba refused and few days later someone visited his joint and 8 of his machines were destroyed.Klebba decided to visit Red Waterfall(Hy Larner) and told him about his problem and Larners answer to Kelbba was that “everybody has enemies”.

The L&S Amusement Company in Chicago operated a route of over 40 games.The CIAA told him that if he wanted to operate the juke box machines he had to pay $2.000,plus the cost of the machines.At first the owners of the company refused but later they payed and also joined Larner’s association.Later three of the company’s machines were destroyed.The damage was done at the time when the company paid its dues to the association.

Later Ross, Rini, Mustari, and Frank Eldorado were arrested by Maywood police in a truck containing 3 pinball machines hijacked from Des Plaines businesses. At the station, Ross asked the cops to call the Crossroads Tavern at 159th & Cicero, Oak Forest, to notify "Red"(Hy Larner) of their arrest.Larner gave the bond money to 'Willie Potatoes' Daddano to bail them out.In 1957,Willard O. Bates, 56,was the owner of the Rio Vista tavern who refused to pay tribute to the association.He was visited by Ross and told him to “fuck off”.So one morning Bates woke up and prepared for work.As he neared his car,which was parked infront of his home in Brookfield,his dog named “Princess” started barking.The dogs warning caused Bates to draw his gun.When Bates opened the door of the car,the dog jumped and caused the man who was hiding in the back seat of the car to shoot at the dog.That gave a chance to Bates to shoot the man right between the eyes.Than two other guys rushed from their nearby parked car with their guns blazing at Bates,but his dog rushed them,again giving Bates the opportunity to fire back so the two man retreated and fled with their car.The two men were Jim Rini and Alex Ross.The dead gunman was identified as Frank”Tommy Leggs”Mustari. Bates shot it out with three guys and was also wounded in the gun battle but nothing serious.Four mounths later Will Bates was gunned down by several shotgun blasts infront of his house.As additional info,Frank Mustari's widow, Ruth, later maried with the infamous Outfit hitman Harry Aleman.Larner was never involved directly in any of the murders.

Remember Molly Zelko and her newspaper with anti-gambling stance against the Outfit? Well in the late 1950’s she started supporting the election of candidates to the city counsel who voted to outlaw vending machines. Also Molly started sending reporters and photographers to investigate all gambling houses in down town Joliet and around the Chicago area. Molly was also obsessed with finding who was responsible for the attack of her business partner William McCabe in 1948. She was hiring private investigators who were driving past the local mob bosses homes on a regular basis and taking down licence plate numbers of their cars which were parked in front of their homes. Story goes that Molly was getting close to finding out who had orchestrated the attack. Molly's family and friends had often warned her about the enemies she made by writing about mobsters and crooked politicians. She also received many threatening letters but she continued with her work. The main mistake was when she started to wrote stories and also made too much noise about the main Chicago guy who was running the slots/juke action and went by the name of Red Waterfall aka Hyman Larner. So the evening on Aug 5th 1957 Molly Zelko was attacked and kidnapped while she was entering her car in front of her home. Her shoes were found kicked off on the sidewalk and her car keys were in their usual place underneath the drivers seat, which tells us that she was attacked as soon as she entered the car. A woman who lived nearby to Zelko’s house said that she looked out the window after 12pm the night Zelko disappeared as she was waiting for her husband and saw four men with a black car removing a bundle from the back of the car, she then saw an arm fall out and realised it was a body. Story goes that the hit was orchestrated by Willie “Potatoes” Daddano on the orders of Hyman Larner. Zelko’s body was never found and remains as a mystery even today. Later her business partner William McCabe died of natural causes in August 1958.

The main suspect in Molly’s disappearance was James Rini because he allegedly confessed to the FBI that he was one of the kidnappers. Rini had Robert Kennedy’s team digging up holes in a Joliet farm field, looking for Molly's grave but found nothing. Story goes that Rini later recanted that he made up the story so the authorities would stop questioning him about the case and to reduce his previous sentence for providing vital informations. Also story goes that Rini laughed about that for decades, probably all the harder because he was actually involved in her kidnapping and murder.


James Rini on the left

Business was booming for Hyman Larner. By now he also opened his own oil firm called the Salinas Basin Develpoment company with its headquarters in a building at 165 E.Ontario and he also he had another office for the amusement association.Larner operated the oil firm under the name Edward Jarvis.He used his real name only when he made other oil investments,for example in Texas.He had two partners in this investments,business man Rue Manken,who was laso involved in the amusement association and also Outfit big shot Ross Prio. Larner had a another partner in his real estate and oil empire and that was Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld,a jewish gangster and racketeer from Minnesota who was a real genius in organized crime in Miami Beach and Havana, Cuba.

Besides his apartments in Chicago and a $50,000 home in Florida,Larner also owned six cars(two Cadillacs and three Mercury’s and another car which I don’t know what model it was,he rented it for $1.000 per day) and two big yahts.He was living like a king and in fact there was only two guys in the Outfit that lived like this,Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo,the Outfit’s top bosses.


Larner's Florida Home


The younger generation was coming up in the mob world big time so now Larner had to “switch sides” and keep his business in order.In 1957 the Outfit’s top guy Paul Ricca called his underlings at the Tam O'Shanter restaurant and placed Sam”Mooney”Giancana as front boss on the streets of Chicago.Now Giancana installed Fiore “Fifi” Buccieri,Sam Battaglia,Marshal Caifano,Felix Alderisio,Chuckie Nicoletti,Butch Blasi,the English bros and Willie Daddano as overseers of his criminal empire and all of them cooperated with Larner.All of these men were members of the Taylor Street crew or as I call them,Chicago’s West Side Crime Family.Also another member of the Taylor Street crew Rocco Pranno reached his prime time when he met Hyman Lamer.Rocco was one of the best shake down artist's and expanded the jukebox and vending machine operations as far west as Elgin.Larner also met a guy from the old guard and also a long time Capone advisor and financier,Abe Pritzker.

By now Hy Larner was one of the biggest money makers for the Outfit and Giancana knew that.Plus the two knew each other since the old days and were also involved in similar businesses.Giancana was mostly involved in the policy racket,unions and other forms of gambling and was also connected with the dark belly of politics and the government.With the help of Paul Ricca,Giancana had so many government officals in his pocket,that made his predecessor Al Capone look like a joke.By now Larner rose in the mob world and also got involved in the making of the Outfit’s golden era.With Giancana’s blessing,Larner connected with Willie “Potatoes” Daddano,Chuck & Butch English,Joe Gagliano,Dave Yaras,Ralph Pierce and Lenny Patrick who were territorial overseers for the coin machines and gambling rackets.

Back in 1948 when Israel was fighting for independence against the arabs, Meyer Lansky, together with other jewish hoodlums around the U.S.,including Hy Larner, held a fundraiser. Through the New Yorks docks and also through Miami,Florida they smuggled weapons into Israel to help their jewish friends.In reality they sold most of the weapons and made a lot of money.So years now the new order of the Outfit used the same tactics and also expanded their smuggling operations in a new way.

In the mid 50’s Giancana made Hyman Larner his main scout in other countries and also one of his financial advisors and together with two other shrewd Outfit hoodlums,Johnny Roselli and Richard Cain,they wanted to take over the world,litteraly.During this period the Cuban government started having problems with the communist rebels and their leader Fidel Castro.Both sides needed financial back up and also weapons.The mob backed General Batista financially with the profit from the casinos and also backed the rebels with arms supply.The mob made money both ways.Castro already formed a group called "The Movement" which operated along a clandestine cell system, publishing underground newspaper El Acusador (The Accuser), while arming and training anti-Batista recruits.Larner had a few corrupted army officals in his pocket so he started stealing weapons from army bases and than smuggled the weapons in Cuba and sold it to the Cuban government and also the Cuban rebels.The U.S. government saw that there was a rising communist force on the horisont and they didn’t need a communist country near the U.S. borders.So they thought if they helped in the Cuban conflict,the winning group will be on their side.So the Central Intelegence Association also moved weapon and food supplies on both sides and also joined forces with the national mob.So now guys like Larner made money from the Cuban government,the rebels and the CIA also…and on of top that they still made cash from their illegal operations.There was more than enough money for everyone.

One of Larner’s partners,the notorious Chicago mob figure, a veteran who served in the US Army stationed in both Japan and the Virgin Islands,named Richard Cain was a Spanish speaking associate of Batista and Castro.The Chicago Tribune reported that the CIA had engaged Cain,Giancana,Roselli and Larner because of their Havana mob contacts, and also for their smuggling operations in Cuba.Larner and Cain,on the orders of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana started working with the Cubans and the CIA. Cain became a recruiter for Spanish speaking volunteers sent to South Florida and Central American CIA training camps specializing in guerrilla warfare/commando tactics and Larner handeled the financials and smuggling operations.Cain was a big help for this new organization because he was also a electronic surveillance expert who specialized in telephone tapping and many other things. Cain had tapped the telephones of Cuban revolutionary and government leaders on behalf of the Outfit and the CIA.

But things went wrong when Castro's guerrillas increased their attacks on military outposts, forcing the government to withdraw and by spring 1958, the rebels controlled some hospitals, schools, a printing press, slaughterhouse, land-mine factory and a cigar-making factory.By 1958, Batista was under increasing pressure and as a result of his military failures the CIA and the mob ceased supplying him with weaponry because they saw whos goin to win the war.The CIA instructed General Eulogio Cantillo to oust Batista so Cantillo secretly agreed to a ceasefire with Castro, promising that Batista would be tried as a war criminal,however Batista was warned, and fled into exile with over US$ 300,000,000 on 31 December 1958.Castro ended the ceasefire,took over the country and ordered Cantillo's arrest.Fidel Castro has won the war.Now the mob and CIA thought that they had Castro in their own pocket but they thought wrong.Castro turned his back at them and closed every casino in Cuba thus closed all of their operations,legal or illegal.All of the mobsters fled Cuba and some were imprisoned by the new Castro government.All of the mobsters like Meyer Lansky that invested a big part of their money in Cuba were all broke.

Now the CIA wanted Castro dead but not the mob.The CIA wanted the mob to play as their assassins in the killing of Fidel Castro but the thing was that nobody did nothing.Guys like Giancana,Roselli and Larner recived money from the CIA but every time they tried to kill Castro,they “allegedly” failed.In other words they swindled the CIA and extort money from it.The infamous CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, which were headed by Giancana,Roselli,Larner, along with their partners, Lansky and Trafficante were pure failure.The mob knew if they killed Castro,they still wont get their casinos back because all of the people in Cuba now supported him.They still were goin to have terrorist attacks and that was bad for business.Maybe the mafia still had faith in Castro but that faith slowly faded away and life went on because the mob still had their other operations around the world and the CIA still needed their help.The CIA is a similar organization as the mafia because they rarely place people behind bars,they usually black mail them or kill them.As Sam Giancana once said “the CIA and the mob are two different sides of the same coin”,so the CIA still needed the mob…for now.

Things went really smooth for Hyman Larner.He made so much money and started passing it to many top guys around the world.He passed a portion of his dirty cash on to government officals in Mexico and also to guys like Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines, Manuel Noriega and General Omar Torrijos from Panama,and even the Shah of Iran. For example,Larner was also picked up on a wiretap ordering seven Corvettes shipped to Panama for Christmas presents for officials there.With all of these financial backings and corruption,the Outfit expanded its operations around the world, including Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador,Jamaica,Western Europe(England,France,Spain,Italy)the Middle East(Israel,Iraq),China and even Japan.