St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 41

Gangster Past Haunted 'Jellyroll' Hogan 'Art Buclmald Badminton Game's Hidden Meanings NEW YORK. Aug. 18 LAST WEEK WHEN Secretary of State Dean Rusk went to visit Premier Khrushchev at Gagra, on the Black Sea, the two men were pictured playing badminton on an Oriental rug. This in itself was not as significant as the fact that they He Headed Gang Which Waged Running Battle With Egan Rats; Sought Respectability Later By Herbert A. Trask Of th Pott-Dispatch Staff THE DEATH SUNDAY of former State Senator Edward J.

(Jellyroll) Hogan removed one of the few remaining survivors of the bloody gangland wars which terrorized St. Louis in the early 1920s. In his devil-may-care younger days, Jellyroll Hogan succeeded in strong-arming his way into notoriety as leader of the old Hogan gang, a hard-boiled crew which waged a running battle for several years against a group of hoodlums known as Egan's Rats. were playing without a net. Kremlinologists, or in this case Black Seaolo-gists, have been studying what was behind Khrushchev's decision to eliminate the badminton net from the game.

If they figure out his intentions on this they can be helped immeasurably in predicting the Russian Premier's future move. Here are some of the theories that have been advanced and are now under careful scrutiny. Khrushchev did not wish a net as he wanted to get over his points directly to Rusk. Khrushchev, a 1 1 a ART BUCHWALD thought there was a net EDWARD J. (JELLYROLL) HOGAN as he appeared" in 1921.

His voting record during his first term as State Senator In 1945 also was regarded as generally good. But all this changed" when Forrest Smith became a candidate for Governor in 1948. Hogan and other politicians end gamblers saw in Smith's candidacy the long-awaited opportunity for a return of commercialized gambling in Missouri. The old Hogan-Egan feud was forgotten when Hogan became associated in maneuvers headed by former Egan lieutenants, Frank (Buster) Wortman and former Sheriff Dougherty, in expectation that gambling was returning. Hogan formed a close association with Charles Binag-gio, Kansas City Democratic boss, who was murdered with his bodyguard, gangster Charles Gargotta, in 1950.

On his frequent trips to Jefferson City when the Legislature was in session, Binaggio visited Hogan'i office at the Capitol. Widespread publicity about these maneuvers blocked their up, but as with so many things In the Communist world, no one but he could see it. Instead of a net, Khrushchev wanted to Install a missile site, but his advisers were afraid of ruining the rug. Khrushchev was testing the United States intentions. If Dean Rusk would play without a net it would indicate that the Americans were willing to play ball.

The Russian Premier will not admit it, but he has a very weak forehand and he didn't want Rusk to find out about it. Khrushchev lent the net to the Red Chinese during a previous conference, and Mao wouldn't give it back. All the badminton nets were now in Cuba hidden in caves. The Russians don't play badminton with a net. They usually have a wall between them and their opponents.

If Khrushchev lost the game which he didn't he wanted clear field so he could throw his racquet at Rusk. Khrushchev wanted to show Rusk he could still test in the air despite the bomb test accord. Russian badminton net factories had not made their quotas for 1963 and Khrushchev was too embarrassed to it. While many theories have been advanced as to why Khrushchev played without a net, Americans are hard put to understand why Dean Rusk, one of our most athletic Secretaries of State, lost to the Russian Premier. Insiders believe that Rusk had been ordered to lose as the price for a partial test ban pact.

But other sources high in Government circles claim that Rusk, who has only played on wall-to-wall carpeting in his office, was thrown by the Oriental rug. Republican opponents to the test ban treaty are passing a story around Washington that Rusk was promised a net by the Russians, but in keeping with previous agreements they failed to deliver it. Some pundits have pointed out that Rusk's Russian Is very weak and when he asked Khrushchev a question the Russian premier replied "Nyet," which is what the secretary thought he would be playing with. In any case there is a certain amount of nervousness in Western circles over the badminton game. There is nobody in the West who is any good at badminton, except Gen.

de Gaulle, and he is the only person in the world who likes to play badminton alone. 1963, Tin New Torlc Herald Trlbunt, Ino. Ann Landers All Ann's Fault DEAR ANN LANDERS: On account of you I am still taking piano lessons which I hate. My mother wrote to you last year when I was 12 and asked if she should let me quit or make me go on. You said I should stick with the lessons did not bring an end to the gangsterism.

Strangely enough, the open warfare was brought to a close because a member of the Egan gang informed on members of the gang. The gang was broken up by the conviction of its leaders for mail robbery. Under the soft-spoken but tough Dinty Colbeck, the Egan gang established its hangout at the old Maxwell ton Inn and race track on St. Charles road, in St. Louis county.

It was there that the daylight $260,000 robbery of an armored mail truck in downtown St. Louis on April 2, 1923, and the equally bold $54,000 mail robbery at Staunton, 111., several weeks later, were planned and the loot divided. It was there also that Colbeck, Chippy Robinson, Cotton Eppel-sheimer, Red Lanham, Ray Ren-erd and others in the gang sharpened their shooting by firing at empty whisky bottles. Renard, a dapper, pleasure-loving member of the gang, proved to be its nemesis. Sent to prison for robbery of a freight car, he longed for the gay life and brooded over his fancied or actual desertion by others in the gang.

He squealed on the mob. He told federal authorities about the mail robberies, and backed up his accounts at subsequent trials, with the result that Colbeck and eight others in the gang were convicted. After his release, Renard went to California and got a job as a technical adviser on gangster movies. Colbeck was released from the of the machine were the late Isadore (Izzy) Londe and Elmer Runge, Egan gangsters who had been arrested often in connection with police investigations of robberies and burglaries. Later Londe was sentenced to 25 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary for the bombing of St.

Louis cleaning establishments. Jellyroll was picked up the next day in the Court of Criminal Correction, where he was arranging bonds for six of his gangsters who had been charged with carrying concealed weapons. He was taken to police headquarters to identify Londe and Runge, but he refused to face them after the arrest, telling detectives: "I'll identify them with a shotgun." Another shooting occurred a few days later which prompted public demands that the Governor and police free the city from gang terrorism. Rival gangsters in automobiles exchanged shots as the cars passed in the 3300 block of Locust street. No one on the street was hit, but windows in automobile dealers' showrooms were shot out.

One of the dealers, R. C. Frampton, had huge signs painted in the windows: "What Gangsters Are Doing in St. Louis. They will be shooting up our homes next.

How long will St. Louisans tolerate these Jesse James tactics?" Frampton offered to contribute $1000 to' a public fund to hire lawyers and detectives to help rid the city of the gangsters. Public sentiment caused police to redouble their efforts and numerous arrests followed. But this federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga in 1941 after serving 16 years for the robberies. He told police on his return that he was going straight, and would work at his old trade as a plumber.

But he became involved with gambling interests on the East Side, however, and on Feb. 17, 1943, was machine-gunned to death. The Hogan gang no longer had to fear its rivals. After the mass conviction of top members of the Egan Rats, the remaining members scattered because of the "heat" generated by the mail robberies. Hogan's brother, Jimmy, was sentenced to the penitentiary in 1916 on a plea of guilty of burglary, but Jellyroll, a member of the 1917 Legislature, got him paroled.

Hogan voted against a bill backed oy Gov. Frederick D. Gardnfci which was defeated by a narrow vote. Jellyroll announced he voted against the measure because the Governor had refused to parole his brother. The following day he changed his vote and the bill was Jimmy's parole was granted a week later.

After the gang war subsided, Hogan gained control of a soft drink bottlers' local which he represented as a busi- ness agent until his death. As a member of the Missour Constitutional Convention, seemed to bask happily in th( close personal association wit! many of the top leaders in the convention, some of whom were socially prominent St. Louisans. In striving for respectability he joined forces with them and opposed the proposals of his more partisan friends. In his later years, as a State Senator and a delegate to the 1943-44 Missouri Constitutional Convention, Hogan sought respectability.

But he could never live down the reputation and image he created for himself in his youth. Within a few years in the Prohibition era, the rival gangs of robbers, sluggers and gunmen piled up a record of 23 killings. Hoodlums were cut down by gunfire on the streets, or their bullet riddled bodies were found dumped in lonely spots in St. Louis county. The murder of a gang member brought swift retaliatory attacks by the other faction, generally in the form of bullets fired from speeding automobiles into the rival gang's hide-out or into the homes of its leaders.

On several occasions bystanders ware among the casualties. In those days, Jellyroll was never without a revolver. When questioned by police, Hogan said he was armed only for his own protection. "I never went gunning for anybody," he would say. The feud between the Hogan and Egan gangs, which had been smoldering for several days, flared up after Constable William T.

Egan, leader of the Rats, was mortally wounded when standing in front of his saloon at 1400 Franklin avenue the night of Oct. 31, 1921. The shots were fired from an automobile containing three persons as it sped past his place. Willie Egan's followers said one of the killers was Hogan's brother, Jimmy. The Hogan gang leader always denied that his brother had any thing to do with it, but agreed that the shooting and the charge that Jimmy Hogan was involved were responsible for the warfare that followed.

Egan, who was Democratic Committeeman of the old Fifth ward, died at City Hospital 40 minutes after he was shot. The first of his cohorts to reach his side were William P. (Dinty) Colbeck, who succeeded to the leadership of the Egan gang, and John F. Dougherty, who later was sheriff of St. Louis from 1945 through 1948.

It was Dougherty who drove the dying Egan to City Hospital, accompanied by a policeman who had heard the shots. The machine ran out of gasoline two blocks from the hospital and Egan made the rest of the trip by ambulance. The Egan murder, like all the others, was never officially solved. But it was thought to have been in retaliation for a shooting seven months earlier in which John P. Sweeney, a lawyer who had been a record clerk in the circuit attorney's office, was killed.

Sweeney had been standing at Sixth and Chestnut streets talking with Max Greenberg, a gangster-gambler, and several other men. Five or six bullets were fired into the crowd, one striking Sweeney in the head and kill-ing him instantly, another frac-' turing Greenberg's jaw. Sweeney was not a member of either gang, and it was known the bullets had been intended for Greenberg. The latter formerly had been an associate of Egan, but there had been a falling out, reportedly over a bootlegging deal, and Greenberg had joined the Hogan forces. The afte.noon before the Egan murder, Police Inspector Joseph Gerk saw Greenberg at Union Station boarding a train for New York.

The Eganites were convinced Greenberg had plotted th Egan murder and had then made a point rf having a police witness see him leave town before the shooting, to establish an alibi. Greenberg later returned to St. Louis voluntarily for questioning about the shooting. Ha left the train in East St. Louis and was escorted to police headquarters by detectives.

As the gangster was being questioned at headquarters, detectives found Dinty Colbeck and another Egan gangster sitting in an automobile a few blocks away, apparently waiting for Greenberg to leave. Both wera heavily armed. Jellyroll, also questioned at length about the Egan shooting, said he and his brother, Jimmy, had been in Rolla, at the time, visiting a former legislator with whom Hogan had served in his first term as a State Representative in 1917. In reporting the incident at the time, the Post-Dispatch said that when Jimmy Hogan was appoint a St. Louis Police Board that insisted on strict enforcement of gambling laws.

The 77-year-old Hogan mellowed considerably after he was defeated in 1960 in his bid for i fifth consecutive Senate term. In 1962, Steamfitter boss John L. (Doc) Lawler offered to back Hogan in en effort to unseat Democratic Senator John P. Barrett. But there was little fight left in Hogan and he declined the offer.

Lawler was forced to make the race against Barrett, but was defeated by the incumbent in the Democratic primary. Hogan mellowed in his later years. protection," he declared. "Jim Hogan is not afraid of any of the Egan gang, and neither are his brothers." Other gang killings, all attributed to the outbreak of hostilities between the rival gangs, followed the Egan killing. Luke Kennedy, a Hogan gangster and former convict, was found shot to death in his automobile in 1922.

According to police information, Kennedy was believed by the Eganites to have been one of the three men who killed their leader, and was marked for death. One of the feud's most sensational killings was that of Jacob H. Mackler, attorney for the Hogan gang, who was shot when in his automobile the night of Feb. 21, 1923, in front of 1730 North Twelfth street. His car was riddled by 15 bullets, fired from a machine which overtook Mackler's car.

Police said that Mackler had been in fear of his life since the Egan killing. They reported that in gang circles Mackler was known as more than a "mouthpiece" for the Hogan gang. He was credited with arranging alibis for the Hogan followers, which won them acquittals in the courts. The attorney had good reason to fear the Egan gang, because an attempt on his life had been made in December 1921, a few months after the Egan shooting. Gunmen in a speeding automobile fired into his car at Eleventh and Market streets, but Mackler escaped with two bullet holes in his hat.

Riding with him at the time were Kennedy and JellyrolFs brother, Jimmy. They were not hit. Shortly before Mackler was shot to death, detectives heard underworld rumors that the attorney was going to be "bumped off," and they warned him about the threat. Mackler shrugged and told the detectives that the Eganites would not harm him because "I've got an injunction against them." In another of the many killings, George Ruloff, a friend of Egan, was found shot to death in an all-night restaurant at 1318 Franklin avenue, a hangout for Egan followers. Ruloff was indebted to Willie Egan because the gang leader had exerted political pressure to obtain his parole from the Ar-kansas State Penitentiary, where he was serving a 15-year sentence for holding up a Hot Springs dice game.

Ruloff became a marked man after he denounced the, Egan murder and boasted openly about what would be done to the killers. In quick succession, Joseph Cammarata, a petty bootlegger, Joseph (Green Onions) Cipolla. a bootlegger and robber, and Everett E. Summers, a hoodlum, were killed. Their bodies were found in ditches and fields off St.

Louis county roads. On May 17, 1922, Dinty Col-beck's plumbing shop at 2215 Washington avenue was shot up by the Hogan gang. No one was bit, but the damage was considerable. The following day the Egan gangsters returned the call by shooting up the Hogan home at 3035 Cass avenue. On one occasion Jellyroll used his gun, and he indicated after that incident that he wanted to be armed for other than defensive purposes.

Late in March 1923, Jellyroll exchanged 6hots at Grand boulevard and St. Louis avenue with two men in an automobile. No one was hit in the cross fire, but the automobile in which Hogan's assailants were riding struck and seriously injured a 13-year-old boy as he stepped off a streetcar. The boy was run down as the machine zigzagged wildly through traffic as the assailants fled from the scene of the shooting. Shortly after the gunplay, Hogan told police the occupants until I am 14.

According to you, kids should do some things they hate because it's good for their character. Well, I can't see where these crummy piano lessons have improved my character any, and for sure they haven't helped my mother's disposition. Yesterday when I was practicing I got to daydreaming and looking out the window. My mother came by and gave me a ANN LANDERS hit with the fly swatter. Do you think this is any way to treat a child? I told my dad and he got kind of sore.

Mom said she only tapped me little to wake me up. I would like to see this in the paper aince you are to blame for the whole thing. BENNIE Dear Bennle: Fly swatters are for flies. But In my book you've got another year of piano lessons. So quit beefing and keep your eyes on the music, Bub.

DEAR ANN: Two years ago we built a beautiful patio. But we can't use it on weekends we must sit Inside, with doors and windows shut. Why? Because our next door neighbors have put in a swimming pool. Saturday morning the screaming begins. It continues until Sunday night.

Last weekend I counted 18 children and 10 adults in their pool. The din is nerve-shredding. Our summer has become a nightmare. Is it fair that older people must get into a car and buck the traffic to escape the noise of neighbors? What can we do? FORMER HOME LOVERS Dear Former: Explain the situation to your neigh-bors as you explained it to me. If they make no effort to cut down the noise the police may have to decide If they are disturbing the peace.

COLLEGE AMERICANA': Jack Winter Relax on campus in these smarIy tailored college favorites ver- satile Bermudas by Jack Winter. From left: Wool flannel in olive or gray. Sizes 8-18, $7.95. Wool tartan in Campbell red or McCall green. Sizes 8-18, $7.95.

Cotton corduroy in black, olive, teal, willow. Sizes 8-16, $5.95. CRESTWOOD, CLAYTON, NORTHLAND, OPEN FRIDAY NIGHT Bill Vaughan Says AMERICAN BUSINESS IS GETTING so diversified that you can't tell what a company does from its name. For all we know, the Eagle Laundry Co. no longer launders eagles.

ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES agree on most major issues, except that we often seem more anti-Communist and they are more anti-nicotine. THE MOST STATUS-CONSCIOUS MAN we know sprays a little perfume on his lapel before he leave the office. He doesn't want to confess to his wifa that he doesn't have a lecretary. WHEN A FEW YEARS FROM NOW, organisms from sAer planets are eligible to compete in the Miss Universe we must remember that their standards of beauty tuy not be ours. SAVE 20 DRiVI IN DISCOUNT CRESTWOOD NORTHLAND DOWNTOWN CLAYTON RUG Cteinlng Alterfna; UniiM iHilrlne taken home after the questioning, detectives followed in another automobile to protect him, at the request of Jellyroll and another brother, Jellyroll called the newspaper and hotly denied it "We didn't ask far any police W00DARD f30l MANCHISTII ST.

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