From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Yaras was a criminal involved with the Chicago Outfit. He was a partner of Leonard Patrick and one of the most active of the organized crime hitmen during the 1940s till the 1960s. He was arrested a total of 14 times, but never convicted.[1]
Yaras was involved with the Teamsters, helping to organize the branch Local 320 in Miami. Santo Trafficante Jr. used Local 320 as a front for his activities. It was occasionally used as his headquarters and facilitated narcotics trafficking by providing trucks for transportation. Yaras and Trafficante dined and drank together.[2] He served as a liaison between Chicago and organized crime in Miami and briefly was a mentor to Frank Rosenthal.[3]
The Kefauver Committee of the US Senate determined that Yaras was a hitman for Sam Giancana and was involved in the slot machine and pinball business of Al Capone.[4] He was also of interest to the McClellan Committee, with Senator Bobby Kennedy describing Yaras as “a notorious Chicago racketeer who has been involved with many of the leading racketeers in the Midwest“.[5]
On 14 January 1944 Benjamin “Zukie the Bookie” Zuckerman, the boss of an independent gang in Lawndale, Chicago was murdered, with Yaras and Patrick considered the likely culprits.[3] On 8 March 1947 Yaras, Leonard Patrick and William Block were indicted on the charge of murdering James Ragen. Although on 3 April 1947 the indictment was dropped after one of the three witnesses was murdered and the two others refused to testify.[6] While in Miami in January 1962, Yaras was recorded by the FBI in an electronic eavesdropping operation discussing the proposed killing of Frank Esposito with his fellow mobsters Jackie Cerone, Fiore Buccieri and Jimmy Torello. The Florida authorities were subsequently tipped off.[7] Yaras and Patrick were suspects in the murder of Alderman Benjamin F. Lewis in February 1963, after the FBI received a tip from an informant that the duo had killed Lewis. However neither were charged and the murder remains unsolved to this day.[8]
After Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody after he was charged with assassinating John F. Kennedy, Yaras was interviewed by the FBI on 6 December 1963. Yaras maintained that though he knew Ruby when he was young, he had not seen him since he left Chicago approximately 14 years prior and that Ruby was not connected to the Chicago Outfit.[9] In 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was probing Ruby’s links to organized crime figures, concluded that Yaras and Ruby were “acquainted during Ruby’s years in Chicago, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s”, but that “the committee found no evidence that Ruby was associated with Yaras or [Leonard] Patrick during the 1950’s or 1960’s”.[10]
On 4 January 1974 David Yaras died of a heart attack, aged 61, in Miami while playing golf. Weeks later his son Ronald was murdered.[11][12][13] Another son, Leonard, was slain in a gangland shooting in Chicago in January 1985.[12]
- ^ Gentry, Curt (1992). J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Plume. p. 552.
- ^ Deitche, Scott M. (2007). The Silent Don: The Criminal World of Santo Trafficante Jr. Barricade Books. p. 160.
- ^ a b Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 15–16.
- ^ Friedman, Allen; Schwartz, Ted (1989). Power and Greed: Inside the Teamsters Empire of Corruption. Franklin Watts. pp. 154–5.
- ^ Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Eighty-Fifth Congress First Session: Part 18. US Government Printing Office. 1957. p. 7416.
- ^ Humble, Ronald D. (2007). Frank Nitti: The True Story of Chicago’s Notorious “Enforcer”. Barricade Books. p. 121.
- ^ Bash, Avi (2015). Organized Crime in Miami. Arcadia Publishing. p. 78.
- ^ “50 years later, alderman murder still open case”. ABC7. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
- ^ Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Volume XXII. US Government Printing Office. 1964. p. 372.
- ^ Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1979. pp. 150–1.
- ^ Rowe, Sean (24 October 1990). “Boneyard Ramble”. Miami New Times.
- ^ a b Wattley, Philip; Crawford Jr., William B. (11 January 1985). “Mobster Slain As Rackets Boss Enters Custody”. Chicago Tribune News.
- ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. p. 46.
