McWillie, Lewis J. (1908-1986)

Born Kansas City, MO, May 4, 1908.
Died Las Vegas, NV, Jan. 16, 1986.

Lewis McWillie's name will be forever linked with Dallas nighclub owner Jack Ruby. McWillie was a casino gambling operator who worked for notorious crime bosses and was idolized by Ruby. A 1958 Jack Ruby visit to McWillie in Havana, Cuba, and Ruby's 1963 murder of accused Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald connected McWillie to various Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theories.

McWillie was born in Missouri and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, where he first became involved in gambling in the early 1930s. About 1936, he moved to Jackson and Osyka, Mississippi, and then, in 1940, to Dallas. He was known to be employed as a dealer in the Blue Bonnet Hotel in the early 1940s. He then became involved in casino-style gambling at the Top of the Hill Terrace in Arlington, Texas, and the Four Duces in Fort Worth. His administration of gambling enterprises brought him in contact with Dallas crime boss Joseph Civello. McWillie was seldom in trouble with the law. He was arrested in connection with a Dallas gambling investigation in 1949 but was quickly released.

Jack Ruby and Lewis McWillie met in the late 1940s. Local officials were forcing Ruby's night club to close early, and he needed a "connection" to set things right. McWillie put Ruby in touch with Julius Schepps, and the problem was resolved. McWillie later recalled, "From then on, I could never get rid of Jack Ruby."

In 1958, as American mobsters began injecting enormous amounts of cash into casino gambling in Havana, Cuba, McWillie relocated to the island nation. In Cuba, he worked at casinos backed by Tampa crime boss Santo Trafficante, underworld financier Meyer Lansky, Meyer's brother Jake Lansky, Norman Rothman, Sam and David Yaras and Dino Cellini.

McWillie first served as manager of the Lansky and Rothman-controlled Tropicana nightclub casino. He held that position until May 1960. He then became pit boss at the Salon Rojo casino of the Capri hotel controlled by Trafficante. While in the casino positions, he was an employee of Cuban brothers Martin and Pedro Fox and made frequent trips to the U.S., often making Florida bank deposits for the Foxes.

A number of McWillie trips from Cuba to the U.S. are documented in immigration records. Providing Dallas home addresses on Raleigh Street, Maple Terrace and Homer Street, he entered the U.S. from Cuba in October 1958; April, July and August, 1959; January, February, March, August, September (twice), October and November, 1960; and January 1961.

Ruby went to visit McWillie in Havana in the summer of 1959 - McWillie sent him airline tickets and arranged hotel accommodations, reportedly hoping that Ruby would bring Dallas newspaper columnist Tony Zoppi with him. Zoppi did not make the trip. Records indicate that Ruby was in Cuba more than a month. McWillie, however, insisted that the visit was no longer than six days. "Jack Ruby was that kind of fellow that six days would be long enough to be around him," McWillie once stated. "I am sure he wasn't there a month."

Ruby's Cuba stay occurred as Fidel Castro built his government, following the successful revolution against Fulgencio Batista. Santo Trafficante had been arrested and was being held at the Triscornia detention camp. McWillie reportedly visited the camp twice that summer but did not recall if Ruby went with him. McWillie recalled going to the camp to see Giuseppe DiGiorgio but also noted the presence of Trafficante, Jake Lansky and Dino Cellini. Trafficante later insisted that he never met Ruby. During Ruby's time in Cuba, Trafficante was released, and that coincidence has led some to insist that Ruby arranged the release.

After returning to the U.S. in 1961, McWillie traveled by car from Miami to Lake Tahoe, Nevada, stopping in Dallas to stay overnight at Ruby's apartment. According to McWillie, that was the last in-person encounter between the two men.

McWillie worked briefly as a pit boss at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Nevada in 1961 and then served as casino supervisor at the Reno, Nevada, Riverside Hotel between October 1961 and late spring or early summer of 1962. In May 1962, he married at Carson City. He later relocated to Las Vegas and took a casino supervisor post with the Thunderbird Hotel on the Strip. He worked there until the summer of 1964.

In the spring of 1963, Jack Ruby reportedly purchased a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver and had it shipped to McWillie in Nevada. McWillie did not accept delivery of the package. Believed to have left the U.S. after that, possibly working in a foreign gambling operation.

Six months later, McWillie became a person of interest for federal law enforcement agents following Ruby's murder of Oswald. The FBI interviewed him in late November 1963 and again in June 1964. The Warren Commission, investigating the Kennedy Assassination, did not call McWillie to testify.

After 1964, McWillie held positions at the Carousel Club, Binion's Horseshoe Club and the Holiday Inn Casino at Las Vegas.

In the late 1970s, McWillie was interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The HSCA learned that McWillie had indeed made his own trips to the Triscornia camp while Trafficante was confined there. At the time of his testimony, McWillie said he was not certain whether Ruby had accompanied him on the trips. “I don’t recall it, but he could have,” McWillie said. “I don’t know for sure.”

McWillie said he went to Triscornia primarily to visit with his friend Giuseppe DiGiorgio but also saw Dino Cellini, Jake Lansky and Trafficante: “I didn’t talk to Trafficante because I didn’t know him that well to speak to him.”

McWillie died in Las Vegas on Jan. 16, 1986. He was 77 years old. His Nevada death record made him appear four years younger, by moving his birthdate from May 4, 1908, to May 4, 1912.

See also:

• Jack Ruby's 1959 visit to Havana - Mafiahistory.us.

Sources:

• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Oct. 26, 1958.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight 358, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, April 30, 1959.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, July 7, 1959.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight 358, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Aug. 24, 1959.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-800, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Jan. 12, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Feb. 1, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-998, departed Havana, arrived New York City, March 16, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, departed Havana, Flight CCA-800, arrived Miami, Florida, Aug. 10, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-800, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Sept. 2, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-800, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Sept. 13, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-810, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Oct. 5, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight PA-412, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Nov. 7, 1960.
• Air Passenger List, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Flight CCA-804, departed Havana, arrived Miami, Florida, Jan. 2, 1961.
• Carson City, Nevada, Marriage Index.
• House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Hearings), Appendix to Hearings Before the Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume IX, Staff and Consultant's Reports, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-Fifth Congress, Second Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. Report may be accessed online through the History Matters website (https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol9/contents.htm ).
• McAdams, John, "Testimony of Lewis McWillie," Kennedy Assassination Home Page, http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo2/jfk5/mcwill.htm .
• McAdams, John, "Testimony of Santos Trafficante," Kennedy Assassination Home Page, http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo2/jfk5/traff.htm .
• Nevada Death Index.
• Social Security Death Index.
• United States Census of 1920, Tennessee, Shelby County, Ward 31, Enumeration District 219. 
• "Lewis Joseph McWillie," Find A Grave, findagrave.com, March 31, 2010.
• "One-paragraph link to Nevada included in Warren report," Nevada State Journal, Oct. 9, 1964, p. 2.

Trafficante, Santo Jr. (1914-1987)

Born Tampa, FL, Nov. 15, 1914.
Died Houston, TX, March 17, 1987.

Santo Trafficante, Jr., the son of an early Tampa, Florida, Mafia boss, was raised in local organized crime and became boss upon the death of his father. He is known for his close ties to New York underworld bosses and for his management of Cuban casinos, and is frequently mentioned in Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

Born in Tampa, to Santo Sr. and Maria Giuseppa (Josephine) Cacciatore Trafficante, Santo Jr. grew up in a large Italian family on North Boulevard in Tampa, just outside the traditional boundaries of the immigrant neighborhood known as Ybor City. The 1930 U.S. Census shows him at age 14 as the second of five sons. His brothers were Frank, Sam, Fano and Henry. Santo Jr. attended Hillsborough County public schools but left school in the tenth grade.

By the next U.S. Census, twenty-five-year-old Santo had started his own family. He, wife Josephine Marchese Trafficante and their five-month-old daughter Mary Jo resided at 3105 Eighteenth Street in Tampa. Santo and Josephine married in April 1938. For the census, Santo reported his occupation as clerk for a retail grocery, but he was likely working with his father in underworld rackets by then. A major income source for the Tampa Mafia was a lottery-style gambling racket, known as bolita. A few years later, another daughter, Sarah, was born into the family.

Following World War II, Trafficante began making trips to Havana, Cuba. He was well established with authorities there when U.S. underworld figures began funneling money into gambling facilities and narcotics smuggling rackets on the island of Cuba.

The passing of underworld authority from the late Santo Sr. to Santo Jr. was not acceptable to a local Mafia faction supportive of the Italiano family. At attempt was made on Santo Jr.'s life in 1953 - a shotgun blast fired at his car succeeded only in wounding his arm.

When Santo Sr. died the next year, Antonio Italiano and Dominic Ferrara reportedly went to New York Mafia bosses to complain about the succession. Trafficante business connections with New York were already strong and lucrative, however. The new Tampa boss reportedly had solid support from the Luciano-Costello (later Genovese), Lucchese and Bonanno organizations, as well as Meyer Lansky. The Italiano faction's complaint was ignored and Antonio Italiano and Dominic Ferrara were never seen again.

In that year, Santo Jr. and his brother Henry were convicted of bribing a St. Petersburg detective and sentenced to five years in prison. The trial judge called the Trafficantes, "a couple of rats [who] crept out of the sewer." The conviction was later overturned, but Henry was eventually imprisoned on bribery and gambling convictions.

As the Mafia invested heavily in Cuban casinos under the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, Santo Jr. spent much of his time in an apartment in the affluent Vedado neighborhood of Havana. He reportedly managed investments of the U.S. underworld in gambling ventures and is widely believed to have organized international narcotics trafficking through the island nation.

Trafficante was visiting New York City at the time of the 1957 murder of crime boss Albert Anastasia. Anastasia was believed to be trying to create a separate gambling empire for his Mafia family in Cuba. Trafficante was also noted at the Mafia convention in Apalachin, New York, later in that year.

American authorities linked Trafficante with gambling at Cuba's Sans Souci nightclub, the Hotel Comodoro Casino and the Hotel Deauville Casino. He is known to have worked closely with Jake Lansky, brother of underworld financier Meyer Lansky, and with Dino Cellini.

Mafia investments and the trust of underworld allies in Trafficante's management were imperiled when the Batista government was toppled. Trafficante was unable to make arrangements with the regime of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro after 1959.

Trafficante and associates Jake Lansky and Dino Cellini were arrested by Cuban authorities in the late spring of 1959. Lansky and Cellini were quickly released, but Trafficante, perceived as being especially close to Batista brother-in-law Roberto Fernandez Miranda, was held at Triscornia detention facility until August. Compelled by Cuban officials to sell his interests in gambling facilities, Trafficante attempted for months to retain secret control of them. He returned to Florida in January 1960.

Trafficante and other Mafia leaders worked with American intelligence agencies to plot the overthrow or assassination of Castro. Castro survived that conspiracy, and some believe he succeeded in turning it to his own advantage. Trafficante is among the underworld bosses regularly named by conspiracy theorists as an organizer of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Trafficante vehemently denied any involvement in the Kennedy assassination. However, statements made by Trafficante during 1962-63 seemed to predict that killing.

In 1966, during a trip to New York, Trafficante was arrested along with a dozen other suspected Mafiosi at an Italian restaurant in Queens. Police dubbed the gathering, "a little Apalachin."

When Tampa detective Richard Cloud was shot to death at the front door of his north Tampa home, Trafficante was suspected of involvement. Authorities hoped that imprisoned underworld figure Victor Acosta would help link the murder to Trafficante, but Acosta suddenly died in his prison cell of an overdose of tranquilizers. The death was said to be a suicide.

Trafficante was called to testify before Kennedy assassination investigators in the late 1970s. At that time, he acknowledged that the CIA had approached him about deposing or killing Fidel Castro. Chicago Outfit leaders Sam Giancana and John Rosselli also had discussions with the CIA. Giancana and Rosselli were both killed in 1975.

In 1986, Trafficante was unsuccessfully tried by federal prosecutors for racketeering and conspiracy. The following year, he was to be tried on a 1981 indictment charging him with taking kickbacks from the International Laborers Union dental and eye health care plans. He died, following a triple-bypass operation at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, before he could stand trial.

See also:

• "Jack Ruby's 1959 visit to Havana" - Mafiahistory.us
• Tampa Crime Bosses - Mafiahistory.us

Sources:

• Air Passenger Manifest, Pan American World Airways, NC-34948, departed Havana, Cuba, arrived Miami, Florida, July 25, 1946.
• Air Passenger Manifest, Pan American Airways, NC-45375, departed Havana, Cuba, arrived Miami, Florida, June 17, 1948.
• Arrival-Departure Record, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Miami, Florida, Jan. 27, 1960.
• Florida State Census of 1935, Hillsborough County, Precinct 17.
• Florida State Census of 1945, Hillsborough County, Precinct 22.
• SAC Miami, "Santo Trafficante, Jr.," FBI airtel, file no. 92-2781-104, June 17, 1959.
• Santo Trafficante, Jr., World War II draft registration card, 1942.
• "Santo Trafficante, Jr.," Find A Grave, findagrave.com, June 11, 2010.
• Social Security Death Index.
• United States Census of 1930, Florida, Hillsborough County, Ward 6, Election Precinct 17, Enumeration District 29-48.
• United States Census of 1940, Florida, Hillsborough County, Ward 9, Precinct 17, Enumeration District 70-73.

• "Trafficante gets order," New York Times, April 15, 1967, p. 16.
• "Underworld figure refuses to talk before a House assassination panel," New York Times, March 17, 1977, p. 23.
• Harris, Kathryn, "Santo Trafficante Jr." A Tampa son who made the bigtime with the bad guys," St. Petersburg Times, April 27, 1977, p. 53.
• "16 indicted over union fund use," New York Times, June 5, 1981.
• "15 deny racketeering charges," New York Times, June 20, 1981.
• "Judge declares mistrial in Florida crime case," New York Times, July 10, 1986.
• Leusner, Jim, and Tom Scherberger, "Florida's reputed don, Santo Trafficante, dies," Orlando Sentinel, March 19, 1987, p. 1.
• Roy, Roger, "He never spent a night in U.S. jail," Orlando Sentinel, March 19, 1987, p. 4.
• "Santo Trafficante, reputed Mafia chief, dies at 72," New York Times, March 19, 1987.

Lansky, Meyer (1902-1983)

Born Grodno, Russia, July 4, 1902.

Died Miami, FL, Jan. 15, 1983.

Lansky was a long-time friend and "business" associate of Charlie Luciano, Benjamin Siegel, Frank Costello and other big-name Prohibition Era gangsters.

He was born Maier Suchowljansky in Grodno, Russia. Various dates of birth range from 1898 to 1902. Social Security death records and FBI files contain a birthdate of July 4, 1902. Some believe that his birthdate was erroneously recorded upon his entry into the U.S. and was actually Aug. 28, 1900. Lansky appears to have used the 1902 date in official papers.

The Jewish community in his native Grodno surrounded by and often assaulted by non-Jewish residents of the area. Lansky's earliest memories reportedly were of Jewish versus Gentile warfare. Lansky, his mother and his younger brother Jacob "Jake" sailed to America in 1911. They arrived in New York harbor on April 4, and were met by Lansky's father Max, who had traveled to the U.S. years earlier and was living on Lewis Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in sight of the Williamsburg Bridge. They subsequently moved a very short distance to an apartment building near the corner of Columbia and Grand Streets.

In that neighborhood, populated by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Lansky met and befriended Benjamin Siegel (known as "Bugsy"). A friendship also developed with young Salvatore Lucania - later known as Charlie Luciano - who lived nearby. Luciano, Lansky and Siegel cooperated on some minor criminal enterprises, possibly working for Arnold Rothstein on occasion, and in scuffles with the nearby Irish-dominated gangs. They joined in racketeering ventures - likely including bootlegging, narcotics smuggling and labor racketeering - with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and possibly had business relationships with Dutch Schultz.

On Oct. 23, 1918, a teenage Lansky was arrested for felonious assault. He was later discharged. During Prohibition, Lansky, Siegel and Luciano engaged in rum-running. Lansky and Siegel regularly served as guards for illegal liquor shipments sent from New York to Chicago by Dutch Goldberg, Charlie Kramer and Bill Heisman. The two men also may have worked at hijacking competitors' liquor shipments. In the late 1920s, Lansky was suspected of involvement in the murder of Kiddy Kolbrenner, he was arrested for felonious assault, for violation of penal law and for homicide. Each time, he was discharged.

Luciano was absorbed into the New York Mafia organization of "Joe the Boss" Masseria, and Lansky and Siegel served informally as his advisors and enforcers.

In the early 1930s, Lansky became a trusted financial adviser to the Mafia's ruling Commission. His presence in Chicago in the spring of 1932 was documented by his April 19 arrest. He began setting up gambling facilities in Miami and Cuba and stayed regularly at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. He also initially supported Siegel's vision of a gambling and entertainment Mecca in Las Vegas. Lansky reportedly held a secret financial interest in the Flamingo for many years.

In 1939, Lansky reportedly attended a top-level meeting of racketeers which considered how best to handle the law enforcement pursuit of fugitive Lepke Buchalter. Buchalter was wanted on narcotics charges and other racketeering offenses. Prosecutors in Brooklyn also were investigating Buchalter's connections to a series of murders. At the meeting, Lansky, Doc Rosen, Longie Zwillman and others decided that Buchalter must leave the country. Buchalter remained and eventually turned himself over to the authorities.

Lansky is generally credited with serving as an early 1940s go-between for the jailed Luciano and officials with U.S. Naval Intelligence. Lansky was among the noteworthy underworld visitors to Luciano at Great meadows Prison in Comstock, NY.

After World War II, Lansky and his brother Jake ran a gambling house near Miami known as the Colonial Inn. They took part in gambling operations in Saratoga and Hollywood. Lansky is believed to have collaborated with Frank Costello and Phil Kastel in the opening of the Beverly Club just outside of New Orleans in 1946.

In 1948, as Florida began to crack down on illegal gambling, Lansky sold off Colonial Inn. Pressure by the U.S. government against organized crime increased in the late 1940s, and Lansky was called before the Kefauver Committee Oct. 11, 1950. By that time, he was invested in a number of legitimate enterprises, including alcohol distributorships, food companies and coin-operated machines.

Lansky's major gambling investment, the Riviera Hotel in Havana, was lost with a change in Cuban leadership. Tourists had been discouraged from traveling to Cuba during the revolution of Fidel Castro's force. When Castro took over the government and embraced Communism, tourism shut down completely. The hotel, which by some estimated cost $14 million to build, had not be open long enough to recover more than a third of the initial investment.

Lansky's health, already an issue while developing his casino in Cuba, suffered further upon the casino's shutdown. He dealt with ulcers and chest pains and was hospitalized after a heart attack.

U.S. federal law enforcement agencies hounded Lansky for much of the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he attempted to retire to Israel. Under pressure from the U.S., which wanted Lansky back home to face charges of skimming from the Flamingo, the Israeli government refused his request for permanent citizenship in 1971. Late in 1972, the Israeli Supreme Court backed the decision and Lansky was forced to attempt to find refuge elsewhere.

An airplane exodus took him first to Switzerland, then to Rio, then to Buenos Aires and on to Paraguay, where he hoped to set up a quiet life for himself. But U.S. authorities headed him off, and Paraguayan officials refused to let Lansky off the plane. The aircraft continued on with stops in La Paz, Lima and Panama before returning Lansky to Miami and the waiting American officials.

Lansky avoided conviction but three other attempts to go to Israel were blocked. He died in Miami on Jan. 15, 1983.