Leonard Patrick: Difference between revisions

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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. Patrick was reportedly running a horse race betting operation out of Lawndale Restaurant, down the street from Lewis’s constituency office. However neither were charged or even spoken to by the police and the murder remains unsolved to this day.<ref name=”ABC”>{{cite news |title=50 years later, alderman murder still open case |url=https://abc7chicago.com/archive/8965861/ |access-date=March 19, 2019 |work=ABC7}}</ref><ref name=propublica>{{cite news |last1=Dumke |first1=Mick |title=The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve |url=https://www.propublica.org/article/ben-lewis-murder |work=[[ProPublica]] |date=25 February 2021}}</ref> The FBI considered Patrick as “undoubtedly responsible” for the murder of his one-time gambling partner Arthur “Boodie” Cowan, who was found in the trunk of his own car in 1967.<ref name=kraus113/>

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. Patrick was reportedly running a horse race betting operation out of Lawndale Restaurant, down the street from Lewis’s constituency office. However neither were charged or even spoken to by the police and the murder remains unsolved to this day.<ref name=”ABC”>{{cite news |title=50 years later, alderman murder still open case |url=https://abc7chicago.com/archive/8965861/ |access-date=March 19, 2019 |work=ABC7}}</ref><ref name=propublica>{{cite news |last1=Dumke |first1=Mick |title=The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve |url=https://www.propublica.org/article/ben-lewis-murder |work=[[ProPublica]] |date=25 February 2021}}</ref> The FBI considered Patrick as “undoubtedly responsible” for the murder of his one-time gambling partner Arthur “Boodie” Cowan, who was found in the trunk of his own car in 1967.<ref name=kraus113/>

On 10 September 1975 Patrick was convicted of [[contempt of court]] when he refused to testify under immunity against a police officer in the Chicago PD who was accused of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison. On 3 July 1978, after serving 21 months, he was let out on parole under the supervision of a [[halfway house]].<ref name=hsca1ix/> In 1992, Patrick agreed to become a government witness following his indictment for racketeering charges. His testimony would result in the conviction of Gus Alex and several other key figures involved in the city’s extortion rackets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kelly |first1=Robert J. |title=Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States: From Capone’s Chicago to the New Urban Underworld |date=2000 |publisher=Greenwood Press |page=11}}</ref> Up until that point, he was the highest-ranking Chicago mobster to cooperate with authorities.<ref>{{cite news |title=Own Testimony Haunts Mobster |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1994/02/25/own-testimony-haunts-mobster/ |work=Chicago Tribune |date=25 February 1994}}</ref> As a warning a small bomb was set off outside the home of his daughter.<ref>{{cite news |title=John DiFronzo, Top Chicago Mobster, Dies |url=https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/john-difronzo-top-chicago-mobster-dies/2044897/ |work=[[NBC 5 Chicago]] |date=29 May 2018}}</ref> In return for his cooperation, he was given a seven-year sentence and sent to Sandstone federal prison in [[Minnesota]].<ref name=propublica/> He was released in 1998, he refused to enter the witness protection program and lived out the rest of his days in Chicago.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kraus |first1=Joe |title=The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters |date=2019 |publisher=North Illinois University Press |pages=157-67}}</ref>

On 10 September 1975 Patrick was convicted of [[contempt of court]] when he refused to testify under immunity against a police officer in the Chicago PD who was accused of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison. On 3 July 1978, after serving 21 months, he was let out on parole under the supervision of a [[halfway house]].<ref name=hsca1ix/> In 1992, Patrick agreed to become a government witness following his indictment for racketeering charges. His testimony would result in the conviction of Gus Alex and several other key figures involved in the city’s extortion rackets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kelly |first1=Robert J. |title=Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States: From Capone’s Chicago to the New Urban Underworld |date=2000 |publisher=Greenwood Press |page=11}}</ref> Up until that point, he was the highest-ranking Chicago mobster to cooperate with authorities.<ref>{{cite news |title=Own Testimony Haunts Mobster |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1994/02/25/own-testimony-haunts-mobster/ |work=Chicago Tribune |date=25 February 1994}}</ref> As a warning a small bomb was set off outside the home of his daughter.<ref>{{cite news |title=John DiFronzo, Top Chicago Mobster, Dies |url=https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/john-difronzo-top-chicago-mobster-dies/2044897/ |work=[[NBC 5 Chicago]] |date=29 May 2018}}</ref> In return for his cooperation, he was given a seven-year sentence and sent to Sandstone federal prison in [[Minnesota]].<ref name=propublica/> He was released in 1998, he refused to enter the witness protection program and lived out the rest of his days in Chicago.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kraus |first1=Joe |title=The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters |date=2019 |publisher=North Illinois University Press |pages=157-67}}</ref>

===Jack Ruby===

===Jack Ruby===

Jewish-American organized crime figure (1913-2006)

Leonard Patrick
Born (1913-10-06)October 6, 1913

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died March 1, 2006(2006-03-01) (aged 92)

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation Mobster
Allegiance Chicago Outfit

Leonard “Lenny” Patrick (October 6, 1913 – March 1, 2006) was Jewish-American organized crime figure affiliated with the Italian-American Chicago Outfit. Along with his partner David Yaras, he was one of the most active of the organized crime hitmen during the 1940s till the 1960s. Patrick was involved in bookmaking and extortion, later becoming a government informant.

Patrick was born on 6 October 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Morris and Ester Patrick, both Jewish immigrants from England. His mother died when he was five, leaving his father unable to care for Patrick and his three brothers. They were placed in the care of an orphanage. He attended Shepard Grammar School, which he left after completing the seventh grade. He then got a job as a delivery boy.[1][2]

Patrick’s family history had a criminal streak. His uncle, Meyer Mackenberg, had been arrested along with sixteen others after the murder of Octavius C. Granady. Another uncle, Jack Patrick, was a wanted bank robber who was shot by Patrick’s father Morris. Patrick’s own brother, Charles, was shot by the police outside of a brothel. The police claimed that Charles had attempted to rob the building, but Patrick’s father insisted that law enforcement had planted a gun on Charles and that Charles had been there only because he was demanding that the brothel pay for treatment of a venereal disease he had contracted from the brothel.[3]

In April 1932 Herman Glick was shot outside of a synagogue in Lawndale, Chicago. Before he died from his wounds Glick named Patrick as his killer. When the police succeeded in finding Patrick he refused to open his apartment door until the police started firing through it. Patrick was taken to Cook County Jail and brought before a grand jury which decided that there was not enough evidence to indict him for the murder.[2]

Patrick was sentenced to 10 years in prison on June 28, 1933 for robbing a bank in Culver, Indiana. He was held at the Indiana State Reformatory before being transferred to the Indiana State Penitentiary on 22 February 1933. Patrick was paroled on 11 March 1940.[1] He underwent a psychological evaluation, with a prison psychologist labelling him a “high-grade moron” with an IQ of 72.3.[4]

Patrick’s partner in crime was his fellow Jewish Chicagoan, David Yaras. They were particularly close, so much so that Yaras named one of his sons after Patrick. Lenny Yaras would go on to become one of Patrick’s lieutenants.[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.[6] In 1946 Patrick and Yaras were indicted for the murder of James Ragen. However after two key witnesses were murdered and two more refused to testify, the charges were dropped.[7] He is also suspected of involvement in the 1947 murder of Bugsy Siegel.[8] He would later confess to the murders of Harry Krotish in 1948, Eddie Murphy in 1950, David Zatz in 1952, and Milton Glickman in 1953, all gambling rivals of Patrick.[4]

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. Patrick was reportedly running a horse race betting operation out of Lawndale Restaurant, down the street from Lewis’s constituency office. However neither were charged or even spoken to by the police and the murder remains unsolved to this day.[9][2] The FBI considered Patrick as “undoubtedly responsible” for the murder of his one-time gambling partner Arthur “Boodie” Cowan, who was found in the trunk of his own car in 1967.[4]

On 10 September 1975 Patrick was convicted of contempt of court when he refused to testify under immunity against a police officer in the Chicago PD who was accused of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison. On 3 July 1978, after serving 21 months, he was let out on parole under the supervision of a halfway house.[1] In 1992, Patrick agreed to become a government witness following his indictment for racketeering charges. His testimony would result in the conviction of Gus Alex and several other key figures involved in the city’s extortion rackets.[10] Up until that point, he was the highest-ranking Chicago mobster to cooperate with authorities.[11] As a warning a small bomb was set off outside the home of his daughter.[12] In return for his cooperation, he was given a seven-year sentence and sent to Sandstone federal prison in Minnesota.[2] He was released in 1998, he refused to enter the witness protection program and lived out the rest of his days in Chicago.[13]

Patrick had an acquaintance with Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald. He claimed that “I never was what you would call running around with him or anything like that. I knew of him. I knew him when he was a kid. He lived in the next block from me”.[14] However the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined that Ruby had called Patrick in the summer of 1963.[15] On 25 November 1963, a day after Ruby assassinated Oswald, Patrick was interviewed by the FBI after they received a tip that Patrick had ran Ruby out of Chicago. The FBI interview report, records that Patrick was a “neighbourhood chum” of Ruby and that they attended the same school. It adds that Patrick “frequently saw Rubenstein [Ruby] in the neighbourhood and always spoke with him, as did everyone else who grew up in the West Side”, but that they were not close friends.[16] Patrick was called to testify before the Warren Commission in 1964, he told the commission that Ruby had no significant links to organized crime. Patrick’s statement was among the evidence the Commission cited for its assertion that “the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime”.[17]

  1. ^ a b c Appendix to Hearing Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives Ninety-Fifth Congress Second Session: Volume IX. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1979. p. 942.
  2. ^ a b c d Dumke, Mick (25 February 2021). “The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve”. ProPublica.
  3. ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 113–4.
  4. ^ a b c Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 113–22.
  5. ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 44–46.
  6. ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 15–16.
  7. ^ Moldea, Dan E. (1989). Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football. Open Road Media. p. 61.
  8. ^ Humble, Ronald D. (2007). Frank Nitti: The True Story of Chicago’s Notorious “Enforcer”. Barricade Books. p. 17.
  9. ^ “50 years later, alderman murder still open case”. ABC7. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
  10. ^ Kelly, Robert J. (2000). Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States: From Capone’s Chicago to the New Urban Underworld. Greenwood Press. p. 11.
  11. ^ “Own Testimony Haunts Mobster”. Chicago Tribune. 25 February 1994.
  12. ^ “John DiFronzo, Top Chicago Mobster, Dies”. NBC 5 Chicago. 29 May 2018.
  13. ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones – A History Of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. North Illinois University Press. pp. 157–67.
  14. ^ Kraus, Joe (2019). The Kosher Capones: A History of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters. Cornell University Press. pp. 137–8.
  15. ^ Humble, Ronald D. (2007). Frank Nitti: The True Story of Chicago’s Notorious “Enforcer”. Barricade Books. p. 205.
  16. ^ Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, Second Session · Volumes 5-7. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1978. p. 948.
  17. ^ Moldea, Dan E. (1978). The Hoffa Wars: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa. Open Road. pp. 180–3.

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