Considering Rockford's Bid for a Casino ...Mob Ties and Denials in Chicago: Deja Vu All Over Again

Friends of ours: Al Capone, Harry Aleman, Pat Marcy, Michael Magnifichi
Friends of mine: Robert Cooley, Donald E. Stephens, John D'Arco Sr., John D' Arco Jr., Betty Loren-Maltese, William "Bill" Hanhardt, Nick Boscarino, William "Bill" Daddano III

Nov, 2004. If you've been around Chicago politics long enough, you see certain cycles that repeat themselves—like those cicadas that crawl up from the ground every dozen years or so. Once again, people are questioning the organized crime associations of important public officials. Once again, those officials and their hired guns (usually a former U.S. Attorney or ex-FBI agent) are trying to laugh off those associations. Donald E. Stephens, the long-time mayor of suburban Rosemont, is a case in point, but there's a lot more at stake in his background than a history lesson. His city is on the verge of getting a casino license that could soon make it the gambling capital of Illinois. But if you know even a little bit about this mayor's old buddies, like I do, you wonder how this could ever happen.

When we were doing some research for my book, When Corruption Was King, we came across a newspaper clip from 1969. The Chicago Crime Commission had the insurance agency Anco Inc. on its watch list of "hoodlum-tainted" businesses. The company's president, John D'Arco Sr., had been a former alderman and was then Democratic committeeman for the First Ward. None other than Mayor Richard J. Daley jumped to his defense and charged, "It is one thing to have facts and another to report hearsay."

Questions about D'Arco's past faded from the press, but cropped up again, in 1980, when he engineered the appointment of Bill Hanhardt as Chief of Detectives for the Chicago Police Department during the administration of Jane Byrne. This time, Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek defended D'Arco, saying, "None of the allegations against him had ever been proved."

What a joke that was. Anybody could have gone to the newspaper clip files and found arrest reports on D'Arco linking him to Al Capone and various stick-ups, including one that cost a victim her life.

Meanwhile, at this very time in 1980, I was sitting with D'Arco most days in Counsellors Row restaurant across the street from City Hall. At the head of our table was Pat Marcy, the Outfit’s chief political operator. I watched as D'Arco and Marcy rigged city contracts, appointed judges, and even fixed murder cases for Mob hit men.

In fact, I helped them do that for the notorious killer Harry Aleman. In 1986, I went to the organized crime strike force and offered to wear a wire to help bring charges against Marcy, his political organization and associated mobsters. In the resulting trials, we ended up convicting, among others, D'Arco's son, State Sen. John D'Arco Jr., First Ward Alderman Fred Roti, some judges and even got to re-try Aleman for the murder case I helped fix. (Marcy died of a heart attack during his trial).

As we all know, the First Ward's choice for Chief of Detectives, Bill Hanhardt, was arrested many years later for leading a nationwide jewelry theft ring. He, too, had his FBI agent defenders, right until the day of his conviction.

Now here comes Rosemont's Mayor Stephens, another dinosaur who wants us to pretend he was never a reptile. This is especially laughable for me, because on at least two different occasions, I heard Marcy and D'Arco talk about him like he was another one of their go-fers. But what I say now should have little bearing on this debate.

The public record on Stephens is already damning enough. It's not just that his old Mob friend, Nick Boscarino, was convicted for an insurance scam. He was convicted for scamming the city of Rosemont, much like mobsters scammed the city of Cicero, and in that case, the mayor, Betty Loren-Maltese, was convicted, too. It's just not that some of Stephens's other buddies, like William Daddano III have Mob ties. They are tied to people like Michael Magnifichi, who I know to be long-time bookmakers.

The average person has no idea about all the ways mobsters get their hooks into legalized gambling. It starts even before the casino is built, when they use their political friends to win contracts for construction. It continues as they infiltrate the key unions involved. Outfit bookmakers hang out at the casino to take illegal sports bets, and finally, one way or another, the Mob finds a way to skim some of the cash that flies around the legal games. They did it in Las Vegas, and you can bet that they'll find a way to do it here.

In fact, you could say that law enforcement authorities who try to keep mobsters out of casinos already have the deck stacked against them. But if you were going to put a casino anywhere in Illinois, why would you start in the one city (Rosemont) that has the longest-serving mayor with Mob connections?

Thanks to Robert Cooley Co-author of When Corruption Was King with Hillel Levin.

Editor's note: According to Cooley, two Chicago newspapers declined to publish this editorial.