By the mid 1960’s things weren’t so good for Patrick’s bookmaking operations. On October 28, 1965 the feds raided one of Patrick’s biggest betting centers in the Buena Terrace hotel, 4246 Sheridan Road. The center handled at least $100,000 a week in wagers. Arrested at the scene were Harold Sawyer and Sam Ehrenberg. Also the year of 1966 was a quite bad period for Lenny. Everything started on April 22 when Chicago detectives acted on warrants based on information provided by the FBI and followed a trail of telephone betting lines. First the detectives broke down a door that led to second floor apartment at 5045 Clark Street but the four-room flat was empty. Than they found wires leading from two telephones that were hidden by furniture which was shoved against the wall. The wires were tacked to a window that led to ceiling and than thru holes to the apartment above. The detectives went up the stairs, broke down another door and this time they were successful. Two men were busily destroying records of a bookmaking operation which was operated under the auspices of Lenny Patrick. In the end a few ledgers were found, but most have been flushed down the toilet. The men arrested identified themselves as Sam DeBaise and Robert O’Connor. Also on April 27, the federal agents raided two large scale horse and sports betting wire rooms in the North and North/West Side rackets sanctuary of Patrick. The first one was in a six-room apartment on the third floor of a building at 5002 N. Kimball Avenue, which was a rapid fire betting relay station, whose operators phoned bets they received at 15 minute intervals to clearing house elsewhere in the city. The records were kept on a fast dissolving paper which was dunked and destroyed in a bathtub seconds after the wagers were relayed to the clearing house. This reduced the chance of the gamblers being caught in a raid with records of their operation. But this time the feds disclosed a monthly betting and expense records hidden under a pile of lingerie in a dresser drawer. The records showed a daily wagers from individual bettors ranging as high as $1,500. The persons arrested in this raid were Tim Dorsey, the guy who ran the wire room and Mrs. Elaine Benefield, the owner of the apartment. During an hour period the cops handled thousands of dollars in baseball and horse bets. At the same time, the internal revenue agents, broke their way thru the doors of another third floor apartment at 1339 Early Avenue, also arresting two men who were caught by surprise as they took horse and sports bets over two phones. The men arrested were Ben Chockler and Art Becker, a known Outfit associate. The cops broke in so quickly that the gamblers had no chance to destroy the records. The records that were seized indicated a monthly handle of at least $50,000 in bets, all funneled thru Lenny Patrick’s clearing house, a gambling center that changed locations by the week because of the constant pressure from the authorities.
The next year, on April 27, 1967 Chicago detectives led a raiding party on a second floor apartment at 3001 Gunnison Street. The apartment had been barricaded with shields of 3-inch-thick plywood, braced with 2 by 4-inch timbers, 3-inch long steel bolts and steel angle irons. The detectives used sledge hammers and crowbars and managed to batter their way into one of the most heavily fortified gambling centers ever found in Chicago. Behind the barricades the cops found a clearing house which handled an estimated $50,000 a week in wagers for North Side bookmaker Lenny Patrick. In another apartment at the rear of the second floor in the building, the cops found two telephones that were connected with the previous apartment. The two men arrested at the scene were again Sam DeBaise and another guy John Russo. Both were known as Outfit associates and long time bookmaking operators. The last big strike was on September 9 when Chicago detectives raided an apartment on the 10th floor of a building at 40 E. Oak Street. The cops arrested Aaron Oberlander as he sat near two telephones over which he reportedly took major sports bets from businessmen in offices near North Side. Scattered on the table before Oberlander were numerous records of what appeared to be wagers, which had been written down in Hebrew. The cops had to bring a Hebrew speaking detective to decipher the records. The same day other group of detectives led a raid on a clearing house in a 26th floor apartment at 420 Belmont Avenue. This clearing house served for more than 20 North Side bookmakers, including Oberlander. The clearing house operated two seasons, seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Arrested at the scene were Sheldon Perlman and Eddie Gilman. This gambling ring was also operated under the auspices of Lenny Patrick. With wire room after wire room being raided, Patrick’s loan sharking activities were also slowly shutting down.
Now with the bookmaking business being under attack by the government, Outfit guys like Lenny Patrick were looking to find new ways to make the quick buck. Patrick started getting involved in shakedown activities on supermarkets, home improvement businesses, bookies, pimps, prostitutes, drug peddlers and hijacking. Patrick had a quite “friendly” relationship with Louis Steinberg, the president of Steinberg-Baum discount chain. On November 15, 1970 Patrick attended a meeting with Outfit members Mario DeStefano and Charles Nicoletti in a North Western Avenue pizza parlor to share Steinberg’s companionship. Steinberg wrote checks, some as high as $900,000 and were cashed in different banks and than transferred to the chain’s 20 different subsidiaries or affiliates, with different corporate names which some were owned by the Outfit. The FBI also received a report that Patrick was getting involved in narcotics on the West Side. Some sources say that his supplier was Fred Morrelli, owner of the Century Music Company. Patrick also got involved in the union shakedowns with one of Ross Prio’s underlings and chauffer Vince Solano. Also a 1970 FBI report states that Patrick still controlled bookmaking in the Douglas Park District and the North Side of Chicago with the help of his lieutenant Ben “Peggy” Olshansky and old school gambler from the old days, Joe Epstein. The same year Patrick again tried to swindle, now the ageing and sick Fiore “Fifi” Buccieri. One of Buccieri’s underlings and long time protege, Carmen Trotta a known interstate hijacker, was discovered for maintaining a secret business relationship with Patrick and his North Side crew. On March 22, the cops found Trotta’s body in Lyons and in his pocket they also found a list of coded telephone numbers and one of the numbers led right to the telephone installed in the home of Patrick in Jarlath Avenue. Lenny was questioned about the murder but the cops got nothing out of him.
In the early 1970’s it looked like the Outfit’s glory days were almost over and Patrick’s criminal empire was slowly crumbling down. The father of the Chicago Outfit Paul “The Waiter” Ricca died from natural causes on October 11, 1972. Just about everybody who was anybody in the underworld went to pay their last respects, including Lenny Patrick. Patrick and the Outfit in general, knew that they have lost one of their finest in one of their not too fine hours. Two months later, the second most important and powerful boss Ross Prio died on December 22. Now the Outfit knew that things would never be the same. Yes they were gangsters, but fools they were not. They knew that the foundations of their multi-million-dollar-a- year rackets empire were slowly sinking into a quagmire of federal grand jury investigations, pushed by the probing fingers of hundreds of federal agents, state and local police.
Outfit royalty Paul Ricca
Also the changing of the social and economic patterns of the populations in Chicago had their big effect on the Outfit. For example, the policy racket which had poured untold millions in mafia coffers over three decades was virtually dead. Thou it once had suckered thousands of black men to come North from the deep South in search of a new and better life. The new generation of Northern-born blacks had seen their elders cheated for too many years by platoons of their own people working for white Mafia masters. So they weren’t about to be suckered too. The big floating crap games were also gone and with the many of the large wire rooms being driven out of business, the horse and sports betting was on the down low. Even the vending and coin machine business had its own problems made by the up and coming black and latino gangs. Many of the Outfit’s racketeers were driven out from their lucrative sanctuaries. Also the skimming of illegal profits from gay bars and striptease joints was reduced, especially on the Near North Side and Rogers Park, Patrick’s territory. Many of the joints had being raided and copious quantities of booze were confiscated because of violation of federal and state liquor tax laws. For example, The Backstage Lounge was one of the most famous striptease joints that preyed on wealthy businessmen and local socialites in search of erotic kicks. Donald R. Hammond was the frontman for his father Donald Joseph Hammond, who was a Lenny Patrick’s close associate and enforcer since the old days. Mayor Daley, acting as the city’s liquor license commissioner, filed a compliant against the Backstage Lounge on 11 charges raging from prostitution to drink hustling. On July 13, 1973 Mayor Daley revoked the liquor license but the place still remained open for business. The next day the cops raided the place and arrested 24 people and seized two hidden books which showed a $60,000 weekly gross. Among the arrested were Donald Joseph Hammond and his son. However, even thou the main guys were in jail, the place remained open for those who wanted to spend $24 for a bottle of phony champagne and the company of strippers.
But with all of the effort and pressure made by the government against organized crime, they still couldn’t touch the heart of the Outfit because still many corrupted policemen and politicians protected the core of organized crime in Chicago. Many of the high ranking government officials socialized with the underworld and made no bones about attending gangster wakes and weddings. Some of the policemen even chauffeured the Outfit bosses and did their dirty work. All this was very well known in Chicago’s police Department but rarely was a finger raised. If there was any action and someone got noticed by the public, they were summoned in the chief’s office, slapped on their hands and cautioned to lay low until the heat goes down. According to a police lieutenant, Outfit boss Joey Aiuppa once told him “Every month I will see that there’s a c-note ($100) or some worldly goods in your mailbox. You’ll be on the pay roll. All I want from you is information so they will not kicking me with the point of the shoe, but with the side of the shoe. You understand? If I make money, you make money. You have a chance to make a little money now. Do you think the guy with $4,000 or $5,000 job, driving a new car with $100 suits, you think this all is done with his salary? Do you?” With those few words, Aiuppa defined the name of the game. Another example is when a lieutenant in command of a detective unit fell under the shadow of an accusing finger from the FBI as a fellow who constantly met with Lenny Patrick. Patrick also used the cop as his chauffer and as wiretapper on his own bookmakers, just to make sure they weren’t cheating their boss. Later the lieutenant got transferred and that’s all. Another example is when a top police commander frequented weekly one of Patrick’s gambling joints. The FBI noted the other government officials but nothing happened. So this shows us that Patrick still had many government officials in his back pocket and maintained his illegal operations on the streets of Chicago.
But then a federal grand jury subpoenaed 40 top Chicago Outfit hoodlums to appear in a special investigation on organized crime and its involvement with police and politicians. First on the list was the Outfit’s financial advisor and political fixer, Gus Alex. Alex was reportedly served his subpoena by Miami based FBI agents as he lolled in the sun at his $50,000 Fort Lauderdale condominium. Second on the list was Dave Yaras who got his grand jury summons as he was about to tee off at the Bay Shore Country Club in Miami and third on the list was Lenny Patrick in Chicago. Among those summoned were also two of Patrick’s lieutenants Eugene “Yudie” Lufman and Norm Rottenberg. Alex, Yaras and Patrick managed to whistle in and out of the grand jury with a grin on their faces. However Lufman and Rottenberg were not so lucky. They decided to keep their mouths shut and rather go to jail than to talk about Patrick’s enterprises under court-bestowed grants of immunity from prosecution. So they represented themselves as a stand up guys in the eyes of their Outfit peers.
Now the justice department was fast closing in on the Outfit, so Yaras and Patrick were quick to read the handwriting on the wall that their operations were in trouble. They drew up a master plan for foiling the FBI in its efforts to destroy the rackets empire. But in doing so, they accidently foiled up themselves. Here’s what happened… Yaras and Patrick thought that many of their bookmakers were getting arrested because of the many loosed-lipped horse players and gamblers that knew their phone numbers. Therefore, Yaras and Patrick ordered their bookies that they should telephone their clients instead. Further, they should keep moving at all times. So the increased mobility and with the changing of the telephone traffic pattern made the gamblers tougher to catch and it also sentenced the bookies to an endless of coin-operated phone booths on frozen, rain-swept or boiling hot street corners. Also the new strategy reduced the profits because the bookmakers couldn’t always find their clients. What had once been the biggest gambling operation in Chicago, started to disintegrate. Previously an active Outfit bookmaker managed to handle an average $50,000 a week or maybe $1,000,000 a month. Now they were lucky if half that much business flew thru their phones.
With his gambling empire slowly tumbling down, Patrick suffered another huge setback. On January 4, 1974 his 62 year old “brother from another mother” and long time partner in crime Dave Yaras died suddenly from a heart attack while playing golf in Miami Beach. Pals for more than 25 years, a period when the two of them were countless times arrested by the cops and questioned in numerous murders. Together they created the gambling network on Chicago’s West and North side, thus making millions of dollars for the Outfit. Thus, the crocodile tears that Patrick shed at Dave’s grave were probably more for the pending demise of their gambling enterprises than for the demise for his buddy. Outfit bosses Jackie Cerone and Gus Alex, who were also by the graveside, understood and they extended their condolences to Patrick. There were indications that some of the betting was still laid off thru Miami, thanks to the ingenuity of the late Dave Yaras. The same year, Dave’s son Ronald was killed. Story goes that Ronnie was whacked by the Trafficante crime family because of an ongoing feud between mob-connected lounge and bar owners that spilled over into Miami from Tampa.
Also the same year Patrick’s old boss Sam Giancana was deported by the Mexican government under the pressure of the U.S. The Mexican authorities entered Sam's estate San Cristobal and deported him back home. At the same time Giancana was also subpoenaed to testify before a Chicago grand jury about his alleged CIA contacts. So now the new administration, headed by senior advisor Tony Accardo and boss Joey Aiuppa, decided to eliminate Giancana. On June 19, 1975, Giancana was murdered in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park home with 6 shots from a .22 in his head. After the hit the Chicago mob was never the same and neither were the multi million dollar rackets. It was the end of an era, an era that began with the man who died that faithful summer day.
And just when things couldn’t get any worse, the special federal grand jury, headed by U.S. Attorney James Thompson and his strike force chief Peter Vaira, decided to go after Lenny Patrick again. With additional grants of immunity from prosecution, the government planned to force Patrick to tell them about his illegal operations, his payoffs to crooked policemen and his connections with the Outfit bosses. Story goes that Patrick agreed with the feds, behind close doors, to testify at the tax trial of police lieutenant Ronald O’Hara especially about the case when he paid the policeman $500 a month not to raid his gambling joints. Later on September 10, 1975 Patrick’s attorney Sherman Magidson said that his client is not going to testify because of the threats made on his life. The attorney said that Patrick received threats from an “unknown” policeman, who Patrick knew had a big reputation for violence. Federal Court Judge Prentice Marshall charged Patrick for a criminal contempt of court for his refusal to testify under a grant of immunity and sentenced him to 4 years in jail. With Patrick in jail, his bookmaking operations were mostly closed down by the late 1970’s because of the new Federal gambling legislation. In 1978, Patrick had served 21 months of the 4-year sentence and on July 3, he was released and placed under the supervision of a halfway house.
On July 21, 1978 Lenny Patrick was taken in the U.S. Courthouse, Chicago, Illinois to testify on the matter of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby’s possible mob connections. Patrick was questioned by James McDonald, senior attorney with the Select Committee on Assassinations, House of Representatives. Patrick again didn’t say much except that he knew Ruby from the old days as young man and denied Ruby’s mob activities. But he also said that his late partner Dave Yaras was more knowledgeable about Ruby’s activities… “He was closer to him than me. He used to be a little friendly with him.” If anyone’s interested, you can read Patrick’s testimony right here:
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/m_j_russ/patrick.htmBy the early 1980’s some of the feds thought that Lenny Patrick was retired from the mob. He had successfully cast the image of a gentle old man who was somehow getting by on a monthly Social Security check. But they were wrong because Lenny Patrick, now in his early 70’s, was still a gangster to the core and was also too greedy to quit. He was back on the streets and with his old bookmaking empire turned to dust, Patrick assumed charge of his new street crew and went into the juice loan business, card games, extortion of wealthy businessmen and street-taxing bookmakers in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the city’s Far North Side and in the city’s Near North Suburbs. He worked together with one of the top 7 syndicate directors who held sway on the North Side, Vincent Solano and also with the boss of the infamous Rush Street Crew, Caesar DiVarco. But still, Patrick’s real boss was Gus Alex. Alex still had friends in high places like in Washington DC and in Hollywood California and also lived a glamorous life style on North Lake Shore Drive. Alex seemed untouchable by the law and Accardo and Aiuppa still took his advices very seriously.
Patrick’s crew consisted of his top enforcers James LaValley, Raymond Spencer, Nicholas Gio and Mario Rainone. Also one of his closest associates was Lenny Yaras, the gang’s go-between for mob bookies and street tax collector. Yaras was also direct with Solano and DiVarco. Outfit member Joe Vento was in charge of the gang’s juice loan and extortion crew together with Pete Buonomo, Gary Edwards and Phil Tolomeo. So business was booming again. The crew's gambling business alone involved an extensive network of offices, one of which cost $500,000 to open, served 800 betting customers, had a weekly payroll of $20,000 to $30,000, and accepted $80,000 in wagers in a single week. And in addition to paying its employees' salaries, the crew had to shell out for rent, phone service, utilities, pagers, and sports journals printed out of state. By the mid 1980s, Patrick’s crew also extorted nearly half a million dollars year from legitimate businessmen and bookies and another half a mil from the juice loan biz. Lenny Patrick spent most of his time at a restaurant in Lincolnwood named Myron and Phil’s Steak, Seafood and Piano Bar in Lincolnwood Illinois, where he received his daily cut. He sat in the bar with a dozen old men playing gin rummy and cursing each other in Yiddish. In the process, he also extorted monthly street tax of $1,500 from the same bar. Patrick also had a daily routine. He lived in an apartment at 7425 West Belmont Avenue and drove a 1981 Maroon Oldsmobile. At the beginning of the day some of his bookmakers and extortionists like George Sommers would visit him and gave his tribute. Than Patrick would go out and visit his juice collector and bookmaker Raymond Spencer or Lenny Patrick who lived at 6400 N. Cicero Ave. in Lincolnwood, to take his daily tribute also. Later he visited Myron’s and Phil’s bar and by the end of the day he would go to Harlem Avenue to make a few phone calls on a public phone and later returned home.
By the end of 1984, rumours spread around that the Outfit’s top hierarchy will be indicted for skimming millions from the Las Vegas casinos. So before indictments were released, the street taxes paid by bookmakers to operate in the Chicago area were increased from 15 to 25% to make up for the loss of income to the Chicago Outfit by the Las Vegas losses. Mob's extortionists raised the "fear fees," or money paid for protection, and loan sharks were levied with a surtax of sorts by the Outfit. Not everyone was satisfied by the increase which resulted with the violent deaths of many bookmakers.
By 1984 Patrick’s associate Lenny Yaras had risen up the ranks in the Outfit. He ran a lucrative bookmaking operation out of Rogers Park and was regarded as associate and close friend of many Outfit big shots and operated on about the same level as them. Yaras was also associated in the bookmaking business with gambling bosses Donald Angelini and Dominic Cortina, members of the Cicero crew under the rule of Joe Ferriola. At the same time Yaras was involved with another bookmaking crew led by the Pettit brothers, also part of Ferriola’s extended gambling network. On February 10, 1985, 44 year old Lenny Yaras, left his office at A-1 Industrial Uniforms Co., at 10 a.m. He walked over to his late-model Oldsmobile, parked next to the curb out front. He was at ease as he slid into the front seat behind the steering wheel. As soon as he shut the door, a tan Chevrolet swung in front of his auto, preventing it from going forward. Than, two masked gunmen jumped out and shot Yaras four times, hitting him in the face, throat and once in each leg. The killers jumped back into their stolen car which was driven by a getaway driver and fled. Later the car was found torched in an alley a little less than two miles west of the murder scene. Yaras was laying down on a bundle of files on the passengers seat, dead. Who was responsible for rubbing out Yaras, and the reasons why, it is not known. There’s a story that Yaras fell out with the Cicero crew, especially with Joe Pettit. Yaras allegedly schemed from the share that was intended for the Pettit bros and Ferriola. Also a mob informant told the Chicago Crime Commission that Ferriola once said, "Things are coming apart in Chicago and something has to be done about it." The informant also added that it was Ferriola’s belief that bookies and collectors were working together to hold out on delivering the correct street tax and that Yaras was the most blatant of the group. Later that year, David “Red” O’Malley, an ex-cop turn mobster charged with the murder of Yaras, but later was acquitted at a bench trial. Thomas Maloney, the jurist presiding over the murder case, issued his verdict on November 25, 1985. He found O’Malley’s identification by witnesses “unconvincing” and acquitted him. Red O’Malley was hooked up with the Cicero crew. Immediately after Yaras’ death Joseph Pettit took over his bookmaking operations. Also the main thing that I want to point out is that his mentors Lenny Patrick and Gus Alex must’ve known and had to give the ok for the hit. Patrick’s old friend Dave Yaras was spinning in his grave but that’s the way it goes in the mob. It’s nothing personal, just business.
Lenny Yaras
Eather way, in 1986 Outfit boss Joey Auippa, his underboss Jackie Cerone, Joe Lombardo, Milton Rockman, and Angelo LaPietra and other mobsters from Kansas City were indicted for skimming millions from the Las Vegas casinos. So the same year, Joe Ferriola became the Outfit’s acting boss. As for 73 year old Lenny Patrick, it was business as usual. He continued his juice loan and extortion operations with his band of cut-throats on Chicago’s North Side. He and his crew had a very terrible and fearful reputation which can be seen in some of these examples. In one case, Patrick demanded a $150,000 extortion payment from Ray Hara of King Nissan in Niles. Hara paid the money and Patrick gave Gus Alex his tribute of $75,000. Also Patrick managed to extort $100,000 from the owners of two suburban restaurants. His boss Alex received $25,000 from the payment. Patrick met with Alex regularly in a variety of places, including Northwestern Memorial Hospital, to deliver payments to him. In another occasion, Patrick ordered Mario Rainone and James LaValley to extort at least $200,000 from the owner of an undisclosed Italian restaurant in Northbrook in 1987. Two days after confronting the owner at the restaurant, Rainone phoned him and warned him that if he didn't pay the $200,000 his “entire family would wind up in Mt. Carmel Cemetery.” So the owner had no choice but to pay his “debt”. The co-owner of a Lincolnwood Illinois restaurant and his son-in-law, the owner of a Wheeling restaurant, made regular payments after Rainone beat them up. They also made a large cash payment of $100,000 to Rainone who also threatened to "blow away" the children of the owner of a Chicago restaurant. In another case he threatened to cut off the head of a businessman and display it on the flagpole outside his Northbrook restaurant. But not everyone was easy to do a shakedown. In 1987 Steve Triantafel, the owner of Touhy House in Skokie Illinois for 33 years, was visited by one of Patrick’s thugs to shake him down. Triantafel lifted him up by the throat and promised to kill him if he ever returned. Also Paul Tamraz, the owner of Motorwerks of Barrington, a Mercedes-Benz car dealer, was also shaken down by one of Patrick’s hoods, with a reputation as "a bone-crusher", who demanded $500,000 and threatened his family. But Tamraz had connections in the Outfit and he complained to unnamed mob boss. After that the extortionist never came back.
