It's tough for me to believe those charts in their entirety, but they're interesting.
It always surprises me that when it comes to St. Louis, no one, but no one on any of these boards, ever mentions either the Sansones or the Rallos. Anyone know if anyone in either of those families is still active? Joey Dice, IvyLeague, TonyG, you guys seem pretty knowledgeable. Heard anything about those guys?
The charts are speculative, and please note, I believe they are inflated.
I went to school with Tim Sansone and Chuck Rallo. Tim went to Wash U and has an MBA from SLU. He works for the family construction company (Sansone Group).
Chuck used to work at the family construction company (CJ Rallo) then he and his brother split and started their own company - CMR. They were ousted by new investors a while ago, even though CMR had $25M of work in progress and pending jobs at $250M (
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2000/05/29/story4.html?page=all).
I remember seeing one of the Rallo's on the news back when there was a controversy over the casinos when gambling was legalized.
In the 8th grade, Tim and his brothers were removed in the middle of class, just after lunch. About 15 minutes later, the school made an announcement that the Sansone's grandfather had passed away. That was the day Jimmy Michael's was blown up in his car, and the STL mob war took off.
There have been rumors and speculation about the Sansone's and Rallo's for years.
There is no question that Tony Sansone was neck deep with the Syrians through his father in law, Jimmy Michael's. There have been several instances reported in the papers, mostly years ago, but the best evidence was in 1964 when the FBI bugged Sansone when he was the business associate and campaign manager for former STL Mayor AJ Cervantes (the old convention center was named after him). The FBI recorded a lunch meeting with Sansone, Cervantes and Jimmy Michael's, at a vending machine company that had been incorporated by Morris Shenker. A second meeting took place with Tony Sansone, Jimmy Michaels and Tony Giordano after Cervantes won the primary, prior to the general election in March, 1965.
Cervantes was widely believed to have been in the pocket of the mob. You can read the Pulitzer Prize winning story about it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=7lUEAAA...p;q&f=falseIncidentally, Mayor Cervantes sued the reporter and Time Life for libel. He lost the suit, and the Federal court opined that the allegations in the article were substantiated by its facts.
There is a very good article about the difficulties the reporters had getting the story published, and its aftermath (they left town). You can read it here:
No Hall of Fame for Them This article also has great information on Morris Shenker, STL attorney for mobsters, including Jimmy Hoffa. Shenker was also an owner of a casino or 2 in Las Vegas.
