Memphis Cop Killer ID'd, Subject of Intense Manhunt

Tennessee police officials on Sunday identified a suspect in the fatal shooting of a Memphis police officer, and an intense search for the man is underway.

Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, faces a first-degree murder charge in the death of Officer Sean Bolton, 33, on Saturday night, Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said at a news conference.

Armstrong said Wilbourn was a passenger in a 2002 Mercedes Benz that was parked illegally in a southeast Memphis neighborhood on Saturday night. Armstrong said Bolton saw the car and shined his squad car's spotlight on the vehicle.

Bolton then got out of his car and walked toward the Mercedes, Armstrong said. Wilbourn got out of the Mercedes, confronted Bolton, and they got into a physical struggle, Armstrong said.

Wilbourn then took out a gun and fired it, striking Bolton multiple times, Armstrong said. The officer died at a hospital.

Wilbourn and the driver then ran away, Armstrong said. The driver later turned himself in to police, and police described him as a person of interest in the case before he was released without being charged.

Armstrong said Bolton interrupted a drug deal in progress. Officers found about 1.7 grams of marijuana inside the car, which likely would have just resulted in a misdemeanor citation and a fine for Wilbourn, Armstrong said.

"He's a coward," Armstrong said of Wilbourn. "You gunned down, you murdered a police officer, for less than 2 grams of marijuana. You literally destroyed a family."

Armstrong says the U.S. Marshal's office has offered to help in the search of Wilbourn, whom he says is armed and dangerous. He said Wilbourn is on supervised release after serving a federal sentence for robbery of a banking institution.

Earlier Sunday, police officers wearing protective vests descended on an apartment complex in southeast Memphis, about three miles from the scene of the shooting. An armored truck and a mobile command center were among the police vehicles there.

Officers could be seen going in and out of a sliding door and onto a balcony on the second floor of the two-story building.

Bolton is the third Memphis officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years. Officer Tim Warren was killed while responding to a shooting at a downtown Memphis hotel in July 2011. In December 2012, Officer Martoiya Lang was killed while serving a warrant.

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton Jr. said Bolton's death "speaks volumes about the inherent danger of police work" and asked others to "pray for the family and pray for our city." During past police shootings, both Wharton and Armstrong have said too many violent criminals are out on the street and have easy access to guns.

"The men and women in blue have certain rules of engagement that they have to follow, but at any given minute in a 24-hour day they're dealing with folks who have no rules of engagement," Wharton said.

Bolton was a former U.S. Marine and served a tour of duty in Iraq, police said. He joined the department in 2010.

Jason Mendoza, a minister at Woodland Presbyterian Church, said Bolton served as the best man at the wedding of his brother, Brian Bolton, this summer. Church member Pam Haley said Bolton's father died about a month ago. Brian is a member of the church.

During the church's morning service, Mendoza asked worshippers to pray for the Bolton family. "Lord, lift up Brian and his family," said Mendoza.

Thanks to Adrian Sainz.

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Remembering the Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, 40 Years Ago Today

Odds are, 40-years ago today when Jimmy Hoffa was staring down the barrel of a revolver, I was 100 yards away looking into the stainless steel abyss of a hot fudge sundae dish.

On the anniversary of Hoffa's disappearance, July 30, 1975, this is no Forrest Gump story or even a case of mis-remembering. The once-omnipotent Teamsters Union boss was last seen alive on that day at a suburban Detroit shopping center.

He was there for a 2 p.m. meeting with mobsters Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano. The meeting was to be at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, one mile from where I grew up.

Straight across the parking lot from where Hoffa was last seen alive, was an ice cream shop known as Sanders. That summer of '75, on my way home from working a 5 a.m.-1 p.m. radio-news shift, I would stop there for one of Sanders' Detroit-famous sundaes. Or maybe a hot fudge cream puff. Every day.

It was a summertime ritual of gluttony. The front window of the ice cream shop faced the restaurant where Hoffa had come for his meeting 40 years ago today.

If only I had known that one of America's greatest all-time crime mysteries was happening, perhaps I would have paid more attention. But only a few people even knew Hoffa was there: the men he was to meet and his wife, who he called just after 2 p.m. from a pay phone in the restaurant to report he'd been stood up.

Hoffa was never heard from again.

During the last four decades, there have been dozens of suggested plots and conspiracies. There was a movie about it and an occasional excavation project based on a tip that always led to nowhere. Hoffa's body has never been found, and if there is consensus among the original investigators who are still alive, that is because his remains were dissolved without a trace.

One retired Chicago FBI agent who worked the Hoffa case in Detroit and Newark, N.J., said that within the bureau the mystery of what happened to Hoffa and why was essentially was solved - even if never brought to prosecution. Hoffa's kidnapping and murder was motivated largely by personal vendetta, according to Joe Brennan, a long-time organized crime squad supervisor.

In interviews over the years, Brennan told the I-Team that New Jersey Teamster official and organized crime boss Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano had ordered the grudge killing. The late Provenzano's role in Hoffa's disappearance has been reported over the years. But his motive has always been presumed to be a union-related, checkmate-murder designed to block Hoffa's Teamster comeback.

"Hoffa was trying to get back into labor even though he was told not to," by the courts, Brennan said. "Information we got was that the mob was concerned that his re-entry was going to create investigative interest in union activities which could cause problems (for the mob).

"Provenzano saw a great opportunity to exact revenge" under the cover of a preventive union move, says Brennan. "So, he launched a couple of his guys" to eradicate Hoffa. But Hoffa's gangland termination had nothing to do with his second coming to the Teamster. It was fueled by Provenzano's blood feud with Hoffa, from the time that both men were serving time in the same federal prison.

The FBI's information was that "Hoffa didn't show the appropriate respect for a made (Mafia) guy in prison." In short, Hoffa didn't kiss Provenzano's Cosa Nostra ring while both were at the Lewisburg penitentiary. According to the working theory, Tony Pro never let go of that hostility and eventually got revenge. The FBI was told by mob informants that New Jersey enforcer Salvatore "Sally Bugs" Briguglio and a lesser-known wheelman grabbed Hoffa and took him on his final ride, July 30, 1975.

The FBI belief is that Hoffa was grabbed, killed in Detroit and brought back to New Jersey in a 55-gallon drum for Provenzano to personally verify that he was dead. Federal agents believe the body may have then been melted into the Meadowlands sports stadium in New Jersey, dumped into the Atlantic or dissolved in a vat of zinc in a mob-connected factory. Regardless, Hoffa was declared dead in 1982.

The case is technically open today because his body was never found. Generations know Hoffa only as the punchline of jokes, fueled even by the labor leader's middle name: Riddle (his mother's maiden name.) But for me, 40 years after he vanished and after decades of coincidentally reporting on organized crime, Hoffa remains just another scoop that got away.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie.

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Bust: How I Gambled and Lost a Fortune, Brought Down a Bank--and Lived to Pay for It

A North Shore butcher is having the book thrown at him by the feds—literally.

The book is called "Bust: How I Gambled and Lost a Fortune, Brought Down a Bank--and Lived to Pay for It." It's the autobiography of imprisoned gambling junkie Adam Resnick, who helped destroy a Chicago bank by pilfering more than $10 million to pay his gambling debts.

The butcher is Dominic Poeta, a short fellow with plenty of muscle in his neck and hands, like a fighter or a jockey. He's feeling pressure, and he doesn't like being squeezed like a handful of ground pork spiked with dry fennel, some sausage from a grinder.

"Please help me," he told me, as we stood Poeta's Food Market in Highwood this week. "I just want this to end. I'm not the guy they say I am. I was the go-between. I'm nobody big." But federal authorities hunting the Chicago Outfit by tracing their lifeblood—the illegal sports booking operation—believe he's big enough.

The feds, who took down a chunk of the Chicago Outfit in the Family Secrets trial, aren't finished. Some are loyal Resnick readers, particularly Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Stewart, who took copious notes on "Bust: How I Gambled and Lost a Fortune, Brought Down a Bank--and Lived to Pay for It."

Stewart argues in federal court filings that Poeta is a bookie who accepted $647,211 in checks from Resnick for gambling debts and that Poeta plays a part in Resnick's book under the alias "Luciano 'Lucky' Petrelli."

There are other wacky characters in the book, including a Tavern on Rush fixture named Marty, who augments his income by bringing high rollers to casinos for a percentage, and is described as a "slimmer, younger version of the opera singer Andrea Bocelli."

We called Tavern on Rush boss Marty Gutilla to determine whether he is a Bocelli fan but he didn't return our call.

There's also an unnamed state senator in the book, who drives with Marty and Resnick to the gambling boats, where the state senator talks and talks about sports and politics the Chicago Way. Jeepers. Do any of you know this guy?

What I do know is that last summer, I began writing about a tsunami heading toward Rush Street, and sports booking and high-end nightclubs with "bottle service," where $40 bottles of Scotch retail to the suckers for $500 so they can pour their own. Although the waves haven't hit—and I don't know if they will—you can definitely feel the rain in the wind, with Poeta due in federal court next week as the feds continue their investigation.

"They were genuine Chicago characters, veterans of the gambling scene," Resnick writes. "They had access to the underworld. . . . I felt privy to inside information about the way the city worked."

Resnick also writes extensively about the character the feds insist is the butcher Poeta.

"I was playing with another bookie. Luciano Petrelli, a star high school athlete in his mid-40s, owned a local deli and took bets while he worked" writes Resnick in "Bust" about the beginning of this decade. "When he answered the phone, you could hear him chopping in the background.

"Luciano hooked me up with a gigantic specimen of a human being, whom he introduced as a 'sometime associate of mine.' Timmy was six foot five and 280 pounds of rock."

Resnick describes the interaction between Timmy and a guy named Roberts who owed Resnick some money. When the guy said no, he didn't owe Resnick a thing, Big Timmy advocated on Resnick's behalf.

"Without even a half second of hesitation, Timmy backhanded Roberts across the face," Resnick writes. "Roberts was seeing stars."

Stunned, but certainly not stupid, Roberts quickly paid Resnick $25,000 in cash to avoid the wrath of Timmy.

In a federal deposition taken last August—one that will clearly be referred to in Monday's federal hearing scheduled for the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen—Stewart asked Poeta a series of questions about whether he was the "Luciano Lucky Petrelli" in "Bust."

"I respectfully refuse to answer, based upon my rights under the 5th Amendment," Poeta told the feds time and again. But to me, not under oath, he told a different story. No, he wasn't the bookie called "Lucky" but he was a middleman for Resnick, hanging with Resnick and Gutilla in Las Vegas, a scene described in the book.

"I'm the guy who hooked him up," Poeta told me of Resnick. "I hooked him up with guys in our area. When he got too big for them, I hooked him up with guys in Vegas. I was just a go-between.

"He would take checks to me. And I would cash them. They didn't want checks."

Poeta stood at his butcher counter, a short, tired man in old brown shoes, feeling the federal pinch. If he accepted the checks from Resnick as he says—then the feds know it—and he's got problems.

"I'm no big bookie," he told me. "If I was a bookie, I wouldn't be standing on my feet, cutting meat for 80 hours a week, would I?"

I grew up working in my father's butcher shop on the South Side.

And there's only one way to make sausage. You squeeze.

Thanks to John Kass

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Don't Call Me Bugsy Documentary

A curious phenomenon occurs all too often with documentary films about organized crime. Even the most rational and high-minded documentarian tends to fall prey to the notion that they must adhere to the tropes of a gangster B-movie. Don't Call Me Bugsy, which details the rise and fall of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, is no exception. From its self-consciously hardboiled voiceover narration to its formulaic presentation, the 70-minute doc is a passable, if unexceptional, examination of the underworld figure who helped create modern-day Las Vegas.

Don't Call Me Bugsy touches on the essentials about Siegel, whose crazy temper earned him the sobriquet "Bugsy," a nickname he despised (hence the title of the flick). Born in Brooklyn, he aligned himself at an early age with fellow gangsters Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Lansky was the brains of the outfit and Luciano the connection to the Sicilian Mafia, but Siegel possessed the murderous instinct that made him the favored triggerman. True-crime author Tim Power notes that the trio was undeniably vicious, but "it's impossible not to admire their energy, their drive."

As Prohibition ensured there was a fortune to be made trafficking in illegal booze, the Luciano-Lansky-Siegel alliance maneuvered to head criminal activities in New York and along the East Coast. In 1931, Siegel and three others killed old-school Mob boss Joe Masseria, setting the stage for the new generation of young Turks to transform organized crime into more of a streamlined business operation. But Siegel was restless for more adventure and, in 1935, relocated to Los Angeles. Enlisting the help of childhood-friend-turned-actor George Raft, Siegel dived into Beverly Hills society. His movie-star looks and roguish charm made him a favorite among polite society, particularly with rich women.

His most significant achievement, however, came when Lansky directed Siegel to spearhead the construction of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gambling had been legal in the dusty desert town since the mid-1930s, but Lansky envisioned a gaming Mecca along the lines of what organized crime had built in pre-Castro Cuba.

Siegel took to the assignment with a vengeance, sparing no expense in his desire to make the Flamingo a world-class destination. Nevertheless, costly delays and a ballooning budget assured his own demise. In 1947, Siegel was gunned down in his Beverly Hills home, a crime that remains unsolved.

The documentary intersperses black-and-white still photographs and archival footage with a handful of interviews from true-crime experts and various folks who knew Siegel, including his lawyer, barber and next-door neighbor. While the interviewees offer some juicy tidbits, they must compete with a hackneyed voiceover narration read by Larry Moran. When relating Siegel's 1926 arrest for rape, the narrator's sonorous voice tells us, "When it came to sex, he didn't discriminate. He didn't always ask, either." Siegel's longtime girlfriend, Virginia Hill, is described as "a feisty redhead from the foothills of North Carolina." Cue the eye-rolling. It's enough to make Mickey Spillane shudder.

It isn't a bad documentary, but it is uninspired and surprisingly lifeless. Too much of the film is a recitation of facts that don't shed much light on the subject. Only when we get to the saga of the Flamingo does Don't Call Me Bugsy really grab you, and most of that is due to rarely seen footage of Las Vegas in its early days.

The Video: The full-frame picture is solid but unremarkable. A few of the modern-day interviews suffer from softness, but much of the black-and-white archival footage is in very good condition.

The Audio: The 2.0 Stereo audio track gets the job done without any fanfare. The sound is somewhat flat, but you clearly hear the interviews and voiceover narrator, which is all that an audience would need.

English subtitles are available, but it should be noted that whoever is responsible for them evidently has little understanding of when a comma is necessary.

Extras: None.

Final Thoughts: Made in 1992, Don't Call Me Bugsy is a run-of-the-mill true-crime documentary that packs more information than it does illumination. The film chronicles Siegel's extravagant tastes for the Flamingo, but there is no speculation about what prompted it. What was his vision for Las Vegas? Did he even have a vision for it? People fascinated by organized crime (a group that includes your reviewer) would be better-served elsewhere, while viewers with only a casual interest are not likely to find much here worth their time.

Thanks to Phil Bacharach

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It Ain't Pretty, But It's Real

John Drummond proudly calls himself a pack rat.

A retired reporter for WBBM Channel 2, Drummond has interviewed countless people over the years, including mobsters, murderers, athletes and assorted Chicago oddballs. Drummond did more than just get those interviews on tape -- he also transcribed them. And now, the basement of his Wilmette home is filled with transcripts and tapes.

With his book, It Ain't Pretty But It's Real (Chicago Spectrum Press), Drummond offers the public a peek into his filing cabinets.

In 1998, Drummond wrote a similar book, Thirty Years in the Trenches Covering Crooks, Characters and Capers, but one book wasn't enough to contain all the colorful characters Drummond has encountered in Chicago. Talking about his reasons for writing a second book, Drummond gives a characteristically blunt explanation. "It's an ego trip," he says.

It's also a trip into the past for readers. Drummond writes about organized-crime trials, conspiracy theorist Sherman Skolnik, boxer Tony "The Man of Steel" Zale, and Frank Pape: "the toughest cop in Chicago."

On the comical end of the spectrum, Drummond remembers Ted Serios, a mentalist who claimed the ability to photograph people's thoughts. Serios was not able to pull off the feat when Drummond tried to film him doing it. "He'd just make a lot of noise and grunt and groan," Drummond recalls. The Polaroids never came out.
Criminal intent But while Drummond's first book focused on eccentric people like Serios, criminals dominate his second book. "In the first book, those people didn't get a lot of play," he says. "I thought, 'You know, there's a lot of stuff I left out.'"

One of the most memorable bad guys Drummond ever interviewed was Silas Jayne, the horseman who went to prison for conspiring to murder his brother, George, after years of bitter feuding. "He was considered a bogeyman," Drummond remembers.

In the book, Drummond recalls a disagreement in 1978 with an editor at Channel 2 who didn't see the news value in Drummond's exclusive interview with Jayne -- who just happened to be visiting home on a furlough from prison at the time. "He didn't know Silas Jayne from Joe Six-Pack," Drummond says of the editor, who was new in town.

The editor postponed the broadcast, but then when newspapers got wind of Jayne's temporary release from prison, he rushed it onto the air. "That was quite a scoop at the time," Drummond says.

Drummond says Jayne had an intimidating stare, but that the man also knew how to turn on the charm. "I enjoyed interviewing Silas Jayne," he says. "I have a soft spot for him, I have to admit."
Nice wise guys

At the same time, Drummond says he knew that Jayne could be dangerous. The same is true of the many mobsters Drummond covered. They rarely agreed to appear on camera, but when they chatted with Drummond and other reporters, they often seemed like amiable fellows.

"They claimed they were providing goods and service to the public: girls, gambling, whatever people wanted," Drummond says. "But you have to remember they're very ruthless."

Drummond still gets phone calls with tips about investigations and crimes. He does occasional reporting as a freelancer, including the Family Secrets trial. He says that case revealed the continued decline of the Chicago Outfit's power.

"The Family Secrets trial is very significant, but the trial that devastated the mob as we know it occurred in Kansas City 20 years before," he says. That case -- Operation Strawman -- is another chapter in Drummond's book.

Years ago, his fellow journalists started calling him Bulldog Drummond. In part, it was a reference to a detective who appeared in a series of 1920s novels, but it also seemed like an apt description of this newsman.

"They thought I was very tenacious," he says. And so he still is.

Thanks to Robert Loerzel

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