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ST. LOUIS — Now there come those who talk of the ‘‘Dixie Mafia.” Very intriguing to a newsman like my self, raised amid the stac cato executions by Lepke Buchalter’s and Gurrah Sha piro’s Murder, Inc., and never far from the machine gun chattering of Lucky Lu ciano’s and Al (Mr. Brown) Capone’s early Mafia ‘‘fam ilies.” The reports of a Dix ie Mafia are startling. On the West Coast the oth er day, some specialists dis cussed the growing San Francisco Oriental Mafia. And here in St. Louis, you hear talk of the old Syrian mob which confronted and clobbered the Mafia, splitting it, driving most of it up to Detroit which still has ties with the St. Louis “family.” Being a buff on the mob since I once read of its assassination of a crusading New Or leans police captain, David C. Hennessey, by what we'd call an old waterfront Mafia type outfit back in mid-October 1890, I’ve traced the hoods up the Mississippi. In cidentally some of the outraged New Or leans Committee of Fifty (prominent citi zens) smashed into the prison and shot or hanged 11 of the alleged murder con spirators. But a Dixie Mafia? Riesel. FROM CONVERSATIONS and a docu ment, I understand that the Dixie outfit op erates as a loosely formed unorganized or ganized crime organization. It works the Southeast and Southwest. It has no hier archic “family” structure. No Godfather in these Equal Rights Amendment days will we have a Godmother?). No boss or under boss. No capos, soldiers or button men. Otherwise, there are the fingermen, the confidence men, the executioners, the communications system. So you can’t call it a ‘‘family.” It’s a ‘‘system.’’ It’s mobile. It hits in one state, speeds across the border to another out of the local police jurisdiction, hits again and then speeds into a third. Mostly by care fully scheduled commercial airlines. It can be matched only by coordination of the local, state and federal police — by a speedy system of telecommunications, computers and electronic equipment. It is the size of a small Mafia family running up to several hundred. But about 50 are dangerous, heavily armed and quick on the kill — especially when nearly appre hended or when a hood defects or there is a witness to cut down. This Dixie Mafia has some grim notches on its guns , armed robbery of prominent personalities, arsons of large businesses, bombings of buildings, blastings of persons by their explosive specialists, contract murders and the elimination of witnesses. MANY OF THEM are on the sheets in Southeastern, Southern and Southwestern police departments — and of course in FBI files. The Dixie Mafia has specialized in snatching of valuable jewelry from social families and, in the recent burst of art theft, mostly paintings. Though loosely organized, the system op erates with lightning smoothness. When some of its killers or heist men and arson ists are caught, they are easily replaced by the insiders who rarely feel the heat mostly the fingermen, the fences and the confidence operators. They aren’t exactly footloose. Nor do they work by easily detected short wave citizen bands or easily bugged phones. They are known, it is said, to frequent cer tain hotels, bars and clubs in their central operating cities to which they return after a “job.” These are the contact points or ‘message centers’’ for the System’s associates. SINCE THERE IS no Codfather or boss, the Dixie Mafia is a weird “democratic” operation. There is no rank. ‘There are only specialists. There is the contract killer who can pick up a message and fly to a distant city for what the films used to call a ‘“‘ru bout. There is the explosives man. They know where to get their messages. And, of course, the arsonist for hire. The fingerman locates the victim or rob bery target. There is the contact man who knows just where to leave his message for the System’s expert to handle a specific crime or type of violence. The special skills include the expert in armed robbery, safe cracking, residential burglary, bank bur glary, the counterfeiter, and of course drugs. Since more than 50 per cent of the hard stuff, heroin, now comes across from Mexico (and the government there has been charged by American authorities with lack of cooperation), this is big in the Southwest. The fences are the key to the System. The fence is the outlet for the Dixie Mafia, especially for guns, jewelry, antiques, paintings and even household appliances. And all the time I thought the system, the combine, the organization, the family, the incorporated murder, the bloody hoods were a Northeastern establishment and m ention.
Newspaper Details
Syracuse Post Standard
Syracuse, New York, US
Tue, Mar 18, 1975
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Robert B.
USA 20 Jun 2026
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