Jacob Barker

Two Blind Mice

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters who nailed County Exec Steve Stenger turned a blind eye to the historic influence of organized crime that presaged their reportage.

St Louis Post-Dispatch reporters Jeremy Kohler and Jacob Barker’s extensive coverage of political corruption involving St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger helped send the politician to federal prison last year. But the two journalists failed to fully report the criminal background of Sorkis Webbe Jr., a crime figure who played a key role in the affair.

In 2014, Webbe introduced then-County Executive Stenger to John Rallo, who started his business career in his family’s construction company, which allegedly had ties to Chicago organized crime, according to FBI records.  Rallo, a co-defendant who was also found guilty in the Stenger case, benefited from contracts funneled through the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership then headed by Sheila Sweeney, an associate of Webbe. Sweeney received probation. Webbe, was not charged.

The money was siphoned from the $5 million in annual rent payments made to the St. Louis County Port Authority by the River City Casino, which is owned by Penn National, a Pennsylvania-based gaming corporation.

This was not Webbe’s first rodeo. The former city alderman had been convicted of voter fraud and obstruction of justice in 1985. His bust followed the conviction of his father for income tax evasion in Nevada in 1983. The IRS case against Sorkis Webbe Sr. related to his interests in the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas, which was then controlled by the Detroit Mafia.

Documents released by the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act in October 2020 show Webbe Jr. and his late father were embroiled in a power struggle with St. Louis Mafia leader Matthew Trupiano and the Detroit Mafia in 1982. The conflict developed because the Detroit mobsters and Trupiano were leaning on Webbe Sr. to cut them in on the skim from a casino in the Bahamas, according to the FBI. The Detroit Mafia believed that Webbe Sr. had ripped them off in the Aladdin casino deal in Las Vegas and wanted to be repaid through sharing in the ill-gotten gains from the Bahamanian gambling operation, according to the FBI.

Though the FBI records were released only last month, details of the rift between the Webbes and Trupiano had already been reported decades ago by the Post-Dispatch — but that background information was inexplicably omitted from the newspaper’s coverage of Webbe Jr.’s part in the Stenger affair.

July 10, 1985 dual byline by St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters Ronald J. Lawrence and William C. Lhotka

In the July 10 and July 11, 1985 editions of the Post-Dispatch, staff reporters  Ronald J. Lawrence and William C. Lhotka revealed the details of the Webbes’ conflict with Trupiano and his allies in Detroit.

The two stories reported that in the early 1980s, Webbe Jr. acted as an envoy for his father in negotiations with Trupiano, the St. Louis mafia leader, who was related to members of the Detroit Mafia through his uncle, the late Anthony “Tony G” Giordano, the prior boss of the St. Louis Mafia.  After Webbe Sr. and Trupiano failed to reach an agreement on sharing the estimated $100,000 per month skim from the Bahamian casino, the Webbes sought protection from St. Louis Syrian crime boss Paul J. Leisure.

July 11, 1985 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story by Ronald J. Lawrence.

The Leisure family was then in a gang war with loyalists of  the late Southside Syrian syndicate boss  Jimmy Michaels, who had been murdered in a car bombing on Interstate 55 in South St. Louis County by the Leisure gang in September 1980. The unrest in the St. Louis underworld had been spurred by the earlier, natural death of Giorando, who had forged a pact with both Michaels and East Side rackets boss Art Berne, who represented the interests of the Chicago outfit.

During this period, Paul J. Leisure reached out for support from the Kansas City Mafia then headed by the Civella crime family. The Civellas refused to intervene in the dispute with Trupiano, according to FBI sources cited by the Post-Dispatch in 1985. The Detroit Mafia also declined to declare war on the Leisures, thereby averting further violence

Paul J. Leisure lost his legs in a retaliatory car bombing carried out by the Michaels gang in August 1981. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison in 1985 for the car-bombing death of Michaels and died at the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo. in 2000.

Blind Spot

When two Pentagon bosses showed up to grab a chunk of the city back in December, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discretely chose not to mention them or the new military landlord on the Northside.

 

Better Dead than Red: Warning sign at 23rd and Cass cites the Internal Security Act of 1950.

The sign cautions visitors they are not welcome to enter without the permission of the “Installation Commander.” Bold letters above the warning identify the site as a U.S. Air Force installation. The advisory is posted on a locked gate at 23rd and Cass in North St. Louis, one of the entry points to the 97-acre development site of the planned National Geospatial Intelligence Agency headquarters.

The city, which spent $100 million in taxpayers funds to prepare the property, gave it away to the Air Force back on December 13 at a ceremony held at the St. Louis Public Library’s main branch. But readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were not informed of the identity of the new landlord in the story by reporter Jacob Barker the next day. Nor were newspaper readers informed of two high-ranking military officials who attended the event.

One of the unmentioned officials in the Post story, was Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert H. McMahon, who gave a speech to the 300 people in attendance. The other Pentagon speaker the newspaper forgot about was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Richard K. Hartley, a former CIA operative detached to the National Reconnaissance Office from 1997 to 2003.

Dec. 13, 2018 NGA Land Transfer Ceremony honorees: (from left) federal felon and former St. Louis Economic Development Partnership CEO Sheila Sweeney; unelected Missouri Gov. Mike Parson; Assistant Defense Secretary Robert McMahon, Deputy Assistant Air Force Secretary Richard K. Hartley, a former CIA agent; NGA Director Robert Cardillo; St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson; Rep Lacy Clay; Rep. Ann Wagner; Aldermanic President Louis Reed. (Photo courtesy of KMOX Radio, Debbie Monterrey)

In their comments, the two officials thanked St. Louisans  for their generosity, and alluded to the Air Force being happy to be “embedded” in St. Louis. Both military officials were applauded and warmly received by the audience. All the invited local dignities heaped praise on the cooperative spirit that was necessary to entice the spy agency to locate on the Northside. None hinted that it could be dangerous to locate a high-value enemy target in the middle of a densely populated urban area, nor did the Post story elude to this possible risk.

The warning sign on the gate of St. Louis’ new Air Force Installation prohibits entry to the site, citing the Internal Security Act of 1950, otherwise known as the Subversive Activities Control Act. President Harry Truman vetoed  that bill in September 1950, sending it back to Congress with a blistering message in which he slammed the legislation as “the greatest danger to freedom of speech, press, and assembly since the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798,” a “mockery of the Bill of Rights” and a “long step toward totalitarianism.” Influenced by the anti-communist hysteria of McCarthy Era, the House overwhelming overturned Truman’s veto.

St. Louis is now a garrison city. Its citizens paid for the privilege of being occupied.