In 1941, Hogan was part of the Democratic effort to prevent St. Louis Republican and Governor-Elect Forrest C. Donnell from taking office by demanding a recount. The effort failed. Hogan remained in Democratic politics for 50 years, serving five terms in the state house and four terms in the state senate. In 1960, Hogan retired after being defeated by Theodore McNeal, the first black man to be elected to the Missouri State Senate. In addition to his political position, Hogan was a business agent for a soft drink bottlers� union. Hogan died at the age of 77 in 1963 after a short illness.
The Cuckoos were headed by the three Tipton bothers, Herman, Ray and Roy. The gang earned a reputation for being �fast and willing shooters who would fight anyone, including themselves. Extortion from bootleggers and other gangs, robbery, kidnapping and murder for fun and profit were Cuckoo specialties.�
It was Roy Tipton who planned the 1923 mail truck robbery that netted its participants $2.4 million and 25 years in prison. The Cuckoos suffered minor losses in manpower from the convictions and continued on. A few months later the losses began to mount. Gang members Oliver Hamilton and Clarence �Dizzy� Daniels were sentenced to life in prison, and August �Gus� Webbe was sentenced to 10 years for the killing of St. Louis Officers Edward Griffin and John Surgant during a robbery. This was followed by Joseph �Mulehead� Simon, Jimmy Michaels, and Ben �Melonhead� Bommarito being arrested for the armed robbery of a jeweler and the attempted robbery of a shoe company payroll. Next came Milford Jones, implicated in a robbery with Carl, Bernie, and Earl Shelton. Bennie Bethel was a suspect in a Pine Lawn bank robbery, while Joseph Costello, Marvin Paul Michaels and Alfred Salvaggi were questioned in the deaths of the aforementioned John and Catherine Gray.
In 1925, Cuckoo Gang member Tommy Hayes was released from prison after serving time for a mail / payroll robbery in January 1921 in Wood River, Illinois. Hayes was considered an unusual gangster because he came from a respectable family, didn�t drink or smoke, and worked out to stay in shape. Hayes� police record began in 1913 when he was 15. By the early 1920s, he had become �an efficient killer.�
In the mid-1920s the Cuckoos survived a gang war with the Green Ones, in which 13 mobsters were killed. It was rumored that a truce was declared after a three-day peace conference was held between Herman Tipton and Green Ones� leader Giannola. The agreement ended when Tony �Shorty� Russo, and his brothers led a splinter group away from the Green Ones. The leadership of this renegade group was short lived when Russo and Vincent Spicuzza were found slain outside Chicago, each with a nickel in their hands, the trademark murder signature of Al Capone gunman �Machine Gun Jack� McGurn. Authorities believed the two were trying to collect a $50,000 bounty put on Capone by rival Joe Aiello.
The war continued for another two years, during which another dozen plus mobsters were killed. Among them were James Russo and Mike �the Chink� Longo, both murdered by Tommy Hayes. The war came to an end on July 29, 1928 after St. Louis police escorted the surviving Russo brothers � William, Thomas, and Lawrence � to the Union Station so they could get out of town alive.
The Cuckoos were soon involved in another gang battle as they lent their guns to Carl Shelton�s East Side Gang to fight the Birger Gang. When the Birger Gang was eliminated in 1930, Shelton ordered the Cuckoos out of the East Side. When Herman Tipton refused to leave because of the sudden bootlegging wealth he was enjoying there, Shelton convinced Hayes to split from the gang and turned on Tipton. Another dozen or so killings took place during this faction war. In February 1931, Hayes led an attack on a roadhouse in which three Shelton men were killed. Shelton, suspecting a double-cross, in turn double-crossed Hayes on April 15, 1932. Hayes was found in Madison, Illinois with 12 slugs in his back. His death effectively ended the Cuckoo gang as a force in the St. Louis underworld, although, as with Egan�s Rats members, many ex-Cuckoos would be around for decades.
St. Louis was one of 14 cities where Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings in the early 1950s. Gambling was the focus of the committee, and to expose organized crime in interstate commerce. Colonel William L. Holzhausen, chairman of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, was one of the first to testify and confirmed that organized gambling, facilitated by the race wire service, was the principal law-enforcement problem in the area.
Missouri Attorney General J. E. Taylor told the committee that efforts in 1938 to cut off the Pioneer News wire service were met by legal actions. A long struggle ensued to compel Southwestern Bell Telephone and Western Union Telegraph to discontinue service to the Pioneer News Company. When service was finally cut off, the company used illegal means to continue to supply race results to the local handbooks.
J. J. Carroll and John Mooney ran the largest bookmaking operation in the area. Operating out of East St. Louis, the operation was handling $20 million annually in bets. The enterprise functioned heavily in the �layoff bet business� and employed agents to work the various racetracks, betting �come back� money at the pari-mutuel machines. This last action would result in distorting the track odds with the sudden placing of heavy bets just minutes before post time. Carroll, who was the first committee witness to refuse to testify because of the television cameras, later continued his testimony in Washington D. C. at his own expense. Carroll, who saw himself as a respectable businessman and disdained the tag of gambler, glorified himself with the title of �Betting Commissioner.�
One of the more unusual gambling operations discussed by the committee was run by C. J. Rich and Company. The enterprise, which grossed almost $5 million a year, used Western Union telegrams, money orders, and Western Union agents to conduct business. Telegrams placing bets would be sent to C. J. Rich in East St. Louis and the bets were then covered by Western Union money orders. Each day Western Union would accumulate the incoming money orders and issue a single check to C. J. Rich. Western Union agents were paid handsomely for their efforts and rewarded with expensive gifts. Western Union profited greatly from this arrangement. During May 1950 their billing to the C. J. Rich Company came to $26,700. With publicity from a June 1950 raid on the C. J. Rich Company, Western Union finally cancelled the account of the gambling enterprise. The committee surmised Western Union�s reluctance to react prior to this was due in part to William Molasky, a well-known St. Louis gambler, being a major stockholder in the company.
The last item covered by the committee was the Pioneer News Service. Molasky was also a chief stockholder in this operation. The wire service, which once was owned by Moses Annenberg and James Ragen, effectively ended up in the hands of the Capone syndicate in the late 1940s, with muscle provided by East St. Louis gang boss Frank �Buster� Wortman.
In the mid-1940s, after what was seen as a lack of Italian leadership in St. Louis, the Kansas City mafia sent two representatives to oversee the rackets in the city, Thomas Buffa and Tony Lopiparo. Buffa, according to historian Fontane, actually arrived in St. Louis in 1922 and eventually took over leadership of the Pillow Gang after Fresina�s murder. Buffa was murdered in 1946 in Lodi, California after testifying against the girlfriend of a Kansas City mobster.
Leadership of organized crime in St. Louis was sketchy at best during the late 1940s. Believed to be running the family were Lopiparo, Frank �Three Fingers� Coppola, and Ralph �Shorty Ralph� Caleca. Coppola had been involved in the drug trade in Detroit and New Orleans, as well as St. Louis, before being deported to Italy. During this period the St. Louis hoods developed closer ties to the Detroit family instead of Kansas City. Mob members from both Detroit and St. Louis were involved in narcotics trafficking. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, three men shared prominent roles in the St. Louis underworld; Anthony G. Giordano, John J. Vitale, and James A. �Jimmy� Michaels.
Anthony Giordano was born June 2, 1914 in St. Louis. His police record began in 1938. His more than 50 arrests included charges of carrying concealed weapons, robbery, holdups, income tax evasion, and counterfeiting tax stamps. Giordano was groomed for his rise to the top by his predecessor, Anthony Lopiparo, along with Frank Coppola and Ralph Caleca. The latter two were one-time members of the Green Ones gang.