Authors: John Buntin
Parker was delighted. “It has been the pleasure of my office to work closely with Bobby Kennedy during his period as counsel for the McClellan Committee,” Parker noted in a statement released by his office to the press. “This opportunity to observe his philosophies in the law enforcement field has been most gratifying.” Parker confidently predicted “increased levels of support for law enforcement at all levels.” He was right. Within two weeks, Kennedy had declared war on organized crime. Press reports suggested that Chief Parker might well be tapped to head the effort.
Publicly, J. Edgar Hoover welcomed Kennedy’s appointment. (In fact, when JFK first floated the idea in November, Hoover had been the only major figure in Washington to express support for it.) But no one in the Kennedy family was fooled by this attempt to align himself with the new president. The antipathy between the two men was well known.
To the sixty-six-year-old J. Edgar Hoover, everything about Robert Kennedy was annoying: his sloppy dressing (Kennedy’s ties were rarely straight and his shirtsleeves were rarely rolled down); his lack of regard for
the dignity of his office (Kennedy often brought his ill-behaved dog, Brumus, to work, despite the fact it violated Justice Department rules, and sometimes liked to throw the football to aides in his cavernous office). Hoover was aghast to find Kennedy playing darts one day, seemingly without any concern about whether the darts hit the target or the wall. (Hoover later fumed to an associate that Kennedy was “desecrating public property.”) Worst of all, though, was the obvious lack of regard for Hoover himself. Kennedy even had the audacity to “buzz” Hoover and ask him to come down to the AG’s office at once instead of courteously requesting an appointment with Hoover, as previous AGs had. In contrast, Kennedy was almost ostentatious in expressing respect for the man J. Edgar Hoover increasingly regarded as a rival, LAPD chief William Parker.
OVER THE COURSE of the 1950s, Hoover’s dislike of Parker had turned to hatred. Parker’s cardinal sin—the offense for which he was never forgiven—had occurred seven years earlier, at a policing convention in Detroit. J. Edgar Hoover had been the honoree of a gala dinner. Although the FBI director was not there in person, his achievements had been lauded by the assembled police executives—with the notable exception of Bill Parker. After the awards ceremony, Parker wandered “from bar to bar” grumbling that Hoover wasn’t the only competent police executive in the country. According to other attendees at the event, he’d also complained about the bureau’s civil rights investigations into his department. Hoover was incensed. He instructed the L.A. SAC “to have no contact with Chief Parker in the future.” He also suggested that friends of the bureau complain to Mayor Poulson about Parker’s conduct at the Detroit convention. They did, and when Parker got back, he was summoned to the mayor’s office to receive a personal rebuke from Poulson. Parker was bewildered that such minor grousing had reached the mayor. Puzzled, the chief called the L.A. SAC to clarify his comments. He asked if the bureau had put someone up to complaining to Poulson. Of course not, the SAC replied, telling Parker that it was “absurd to even entertain the thought.” Meanwhile, bureau agents were instructed to monitor Parker closely.
“As the Bureau knows, Parker has a flair for sounding off,” noted one memo. “He is like a rattlesnake in many respects; he is full of venom but seldom does he fail to give a warning when he is going to strike. When he is working on a new idea, he throws it out here and there to test reaction, and if he finds that his ideas are generally accepted he crystallizes them into a speech before some law enforcement groups.”
The rattlesnake was now in a position to succeed Hoover as the next director of the FBI.
Parker did not lobby for the job directly. Instead, he revived his idea of a national clearinghouse that could provide big-city police departments with information on organized crime. He also resumed his criticisms of the FBI’s director.
“The F.B.I. shows great interest when stolen property moves across a state line but little interest when criminals move from state to state,” Parker pointedly told the
Herald-Express
in December. Although the FBI was the natural choice to take on the job of leading an organized crime clearinghouse, “they have shown no indication that they will or that they want to,” Parker continued. As a result, a new agency was needed.
“I have a high opinion of the F.B.I. and Hoover,” Parker continued. “They are fine firemen. But the house is burning down.”
The L.A. office hastily fired off a memo to headquarters, describing the chief as “a blabbermouth.” It also suggested that Parker was attempting to stir up dissension between Hoover and the new attorney general. In truth, Parker hardly needed to work at that. The Kennedys weren’t exactly circumspect about whom they might prefer as FBI director. On the contrary, they openly joked about it. Just a few weeks after her husband was sworn in, Ethel Kennedy took the liberty of slipping a card into the FBI’s suggestion box at main Justice. Her suggestion was for Chief Parker to replace Hoover as the head of the FBI. She helpfully signed the note “Ethel.”
Ethel was a prankster. The card may have been a joke. But the joke was a pointed one because the sentiments it expressed (the desire to be done with Hoover) were obviously true. To his closest aides, Kennedy frequently criticized the director and mocked his intimate associate, Clyde Tolson. Once his brother Jack was reelected, he told friends, Hoover was out. No wonder Hoover feared that Kennedy and Parker were conspiring to dethrone him. But Hoover held a trump card—information. Eleven days after John F. Kennedy was sworn into office, Hoover forwarded a memo to RFK alerting him to a woman who was claiming to have had a sexual liaison with Jack. It was the first in a very long line of memos.
TO MICKEY COHEN, the selection of Robert Kennedy to be the attorney general was the latest development in a nightmarish autumn. On September 16, the LAPD intelligence division’s painstaking efforts to document Cohen’s extravagant lifestyle (along with a massive investigation by the Treasury Department and several months of intensive surveillance by
the FBI) paid dividends when prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted Cohen on thirteen counts of tax evasion and fraud. The sums named were startling. Prosecutors alleged that between 1945 and 1950 and between 1956 and 1958, Cohen had evaded $400,000 in income tax. Federal authorities also filed liens against Cohen in Los Angeles, El Paso, St. Louis, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in an effort to recover some of the $135,000 he still owed in back taxes following his first tax evasion conviction.
To Cohen, the case was nothing more than a personal vendetta.
“There’s no question about Bobby Kennedy and Chief William Parker having everything to do with my being indicted,” he would later fume. “[H]is squads were following me around here at the Mocambo, Ciro’s, Chasen’s. They had little cameras, they would snap pictures, they would take data.”
That data was now put to damning use. The strategy pursued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office was basically the same as that used in Cohen’s first trial: prove that Cohen’s expenses vastly exceeded his income. With information provided by the intelligence division and others, Treasury Department investigators were able to reconstruct in vivid detail Cohen’s free-spending ways. A string of witnesses further bolstered their case. The landlord of Cohen’s apartment at 705 S. Barrington in Brentwood testified that after moving in, Cohen had spent between $5,000 and $8,000 redecorating his apartment, a sum he described as “a nominal figure” for the retired gangster. He also noted that Mickey had paid $9,000 up front for rent and other expenses. The owner of the Sportsman Lodge remembered paying Michael’s Greenhouses $9,500 for landscaping work but was rather vague on what, if anything, had been done. A psychiatrist recalled a $10,000 gift to Cohen—in exchange for the right to study the gangster’s aberrant behavior.
Then there were the people who had invested in the Mickey Cohen life story.
The first investor appeared as early as 1951, when Beverly Hills decorator Henry Guttman gave Cohen $10,000 for all story and screen rights to the Cohen life story. That didn’t stop Mickey from seeking other investors. Several years later, a nightclub owner paid $15,000 for a 10 percent cut in Cohen’s book. When he tried to back out, he’d gotten a frightening phone call from someone in New York telling him that if he didn’t “straighten things out” with Mickey, he’d “be taken care of.” Other investors had followed. Comedians Jerry Lewis and Red Skelton testified to being approached by Cohen about producing and starring in his movie. (Cohen had originally wanted Robert Mitchum to play himself.) Lewis demurred, saying that “any productions bearing his name should involve levity.” (He did
make a small investment in the project though; Mickey had been the person who first brought him to the West Coast to do a show at Slapsie Maxie’s.) Skelton had also turned down Cohen’s offer, pointing out that a “tall red-headed fellow” would hardly make a credible Mickey Cohen.
Then there were the “loans.” By his own account, Cohen had borrowed more than $140,000 since his release from prison. Acquaintance after acquaintance appeared before the jury to relate loans in the range of $1,000 to $25,000, none of which had ever been repaid. Almost everyone said they’d happily lend Cohen more.
The most damaging testimony, though, came from Cohen’s stripper paramours.
In early June 1961, Candy Barr was flown in from prison in Texas to testify. Barr told the jury that during the two months they had dated, Cohen had given $15,000 to her defense attorneys and lavished expensive presents on her, including jewelry, luggage, and a poodle. He had also picked up a $1,001.95 bill at a local clothing shop. At one point, he had even helped her flee to Mexico, arranging for her hair to be dyed black, providing phony documents, and giving her $1,700 in cash. (Barr got bored and eventually returned home.) Others put the figure even higher. Federal narcotics agent T. Jones put Cohen’s spending on Barr at roughly $60,000.
The next witness after this damaging testimony was Sandy Hagen, Mickey’s current fiancée. Per Judge George Boldt’s orders, the twenty-two-year-old ex-model/waitress/car hop arrived wearing the mink stole Mickey had given her. Hagen insisted that she’d bought the $600 mink with her own personal funds, despite the fact that she had no apparent income. The prosecution insisted that it was a gift from Cohen, paid for with unreported income. When prosecutors proceeded to quiz Hagen about other gifts Cohen had given her, she refused to answer. She was ultimately sentenced to a week in jail for contempt of court. Hagen still refused to testify. So the prosecution moved on to another target.
On June 14, two Treasury Department agents slipped into Los Angeles and tracked down stripper Beverly Hills, just before her performance. There they served her with a subpoena to appear before the federal grand jury investigating Mickey Cohen. After meeting Miss Hills, they decided to stay for the show. Afterward, the stripper asked them sweetly, “Now that you’ve seen everything I’ve got, do I still have to appear?”
The answer was yes. And so it went. For forty days, the jury listened to the parade of witnesses—194 in total—testify about Cohen’s lavish spending and unsecured personal “loans” of a sort that no sane person would voluntarily extend to a penniless ex-gangster with a small stake in an ice-cream parlor. On June 16, 1961, the United States summed up its case against
Cohen. Prosecutors claimed that in 1956 Cohen had failed to report $2,500 in income from the greenhouse. For 1957, the government had documented taxable income that exceeded $46,000 (Cohen had reported $1,272). In 1958, Cohen had failed to report at least $13,000 in income. All told, for the years 1956-58, Cohen owed the government $34,799.70 in unpaid back taxes.
Cohen’s defense was simple: He insisted that these were simply loans against future income from a book and movie deal.
“I feel it’s now up to God’s will,” Cohen told the press, after the defense rested its case. “I know in my heart I’m innocent.”
The jury disagreed. After two days of deliberation, on Friday, June 30, 1961, Cohen was convicted on eight counts of income tax evasion. The next day spectators packed the 150-seat courtroom to witness Cohen’s sentencing.
Judge Boldt had been a genial presence during the trial. But this particular Saturday morning he was all business. He started by asking Cohen if he had any remarks for the court.
“I can only say to your Honor very respectfully… [that] I made every effort to live my life in the past six years correctly, and I thought I did so,” Cohen replied.
Judge Bolt thought otherwise.
“In my opinion, it is clear beyond doubt that defendant Cohen has little, if any, sense of truth, honesty, or responsibility either in his personal and financial affairs or in his obligations as a citizen of the United States,” the judge said sternly.
“Notwithstanding kind and humane efforts to help Mr. Cohen’s rehabilitation… there is no credible evidence that during the last six years he has ever engaged in any useful or commendable work or activity,” Judge Boldt continued. He noted that within a short time from his first release from prison, Cohen “was in full flight on a profligate style of living, financed by many fraudulent or extorted so-called loans in a very large amount.
“If there be substantial decadence in society, as sometimes charged, Mickey Cohen is an excellent specimen,” the judge continued. “The obstruction and impending weight of the collective Mickey Cohens in our national community could tip the balance to our doom in the struggle for the free way of life.”
The judge then handed down his verdict—a $30,000 fine and fifteen years in prison. Cohen himself, watching calmly, seemed not to understand what had happened.
“What is the sentence anyway?” he asked reporters minutes after the verdict had been announced. When informed, he replied simply, “Well, I
ain’t going to say what I think until I ride with the punch a little.” Mickey’s reaction to the judge’s lecture was succinct: “He is entitled to his opinions,” Cohen said, simply.