Meanwhile, Drury and Connelly sought to contact Kefauver, failing which they tried to get in touch with Halley and the chief investigator of the committee. They hated the mob so hotly, they offered to work for nothing, though they were poor men. Had Drury been retained as an investigator, he’d still be living. No cop has ever been killed except in actual combat. The underworld never murders a policeman who is going about his business. But an ex-cop—yoho.
A lot of misinformation has been published about what preceded the actual assassination, last September 25. After his death, committee employes realized they would have to explain Drury’s frequent phone calls. A story was dreamed up in Chicago to the effect that Drury was seeking “protection” and that Halley, after a couple of weeks’ consideration, had agreed to arrange for it. That runs for the end book. Drury never asked anyone for protection. He was the bravest man we ever knew. He often traveled without a gun, but the mobsters feared his fists more than bullets. We spoke to him a few days before he died. He was not frightened. He was angry. He told us he had been trying to contact committee investigators for weeks to give them information. He said that ever since he had outlined to them what he was prepared to prove he got brushed off when he called again.
The Democratic Chicago Sun-Times charged categorically that Drury was rubbed out because someone on the Kefauver Committee “leaked” to the mobsters what Drury said he had the goods on. He told us his investigations implicated someone on the committee’s staff.
A few days after the murder, Kefauver phoned us long distance to tell us to get all our records and correspondence concerning Drury together as he was going to subpena us at once, in an effort to solve the cowardly crime. That was October 1, 1950. As these words were being typed in February, 1951, the subpena remained unserved and the assassination unpunished.
On the other hand, Lait and Mortimer were under considerable pressure from important personages, Republicans as well as Democrats, “to lay off Halley,” and place the blame for the miscarriage of the Kefauver committee on the chairman instead of on his staff. We refused to be bought, bribed, threatened or intimidated.
By resolution, the original life of the committee was until February 28, but it is probable that additional hearings will be authorized for March.
The plan, as this went to press, was to save all the fireworks for a final blow-out in New York, at which the glamor pusses of the underworld, such as Virginia Hill, dubbed by us “Mafia Rose,” would be called for the publicity value. Virginia was served with much hullabaloo in September, but was saved six months to hypo the last act. Frank Costello was also slated to be called if he “cared to talk.”
The big boys have brazenly stood on their “constitutional rights” on the advice of high-priced counsel who assured them their chances against conviction on contempt, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in a Federal “country club,” were about a hundred to one.
It was decided by the Mafia Grand Council that if things got too hot, Costello would have to be the goat. He has been getting too much publicity for the conservative rulers of the Unione, who still live in cold-water tenements with fat old-country wives.
They resent the airs put on by the glamor-boy hoods, who, they feel, and with some justification, are putting the finger of the law on the syndicate.