Wayne introduced me to Sergeant Jim Kellum, a stocky, bearded Memphis detective with a quick wit and lots of undercover experience. To our surprise, running a corruption sting was much like running a drug sting. You just act your part, offer the target the opportunity to do what he already wants to do, and you’re off to the races. Kellum, keeping it simple, took the undercover name Jim Smith, saying, “Why complicate things?” He was to play the role of an agent of an Oklahoma organized crime syndicate who’d heard law enforcement south of Memphis was “not too vigorous.” Kellum had gotten an introduction to John Harter and asked to meet the sheriff personally. Harter immediately showed a weakness Kellum figured he could exploit: Harter asked Kellum for $5,000 in cash for the introduction, saying, “The old man don’t need to know about this.” Knowing that disloyal confederates are always useful, Kellum gave Harter a $500 “down payment,” saying he’d get the rest after the meeting if he found he could trust Harter. One key to good UC technique is to always get the target to prove to you that he is reliable, and not the other way around.
Things moved quickly. Harter took Kellum to his residence, where Kellum waited by the pool whistling “Danny Boy,” much to the amusement of the agents listening in on the wire. Hamilton arrived, and the three of them went straight to the 301 Club, the large pink-stucco mansion just a mile from Memphis that Elvis Presley had built for Priscilla as a getaway in the early years of their marriage. Set up as an elegant supper club downstairs, the upstairs had been converted for VIP guests into a regular illegal casino, complete with slot machines, high-stakes poker tables, and dice games. Fran Jenkins’s prostitutes were to join them later.
Hamilton immediately offered to cut Kellum and his syndicate in on the deal, of course for a substantial investment. Kellum feigned enthusiasm but said “his people” operated alone and never had partners, saying “people talk.” His organization would hire and fire all employees and account to no one. As a criminal syndicate, this setup seemed reasonable to Hamilton. He praised Kellum’s “professionalism.” Of course from Kellum’s perspective, he had to have complete control so his officers could gather evidence, video, and audiotapes, and make sure that what looked illegal was actually a legal undercover operation. The bookkeeping and security for such deals are much tougher than they look. After all, if things went wrong, the headlines would read, “FBI Runs Beer Joint, Gambling Den, Condones Rampant Prostitution.”
Just as Hamilton was getting comfortable, gremlins appeared. A friend of Harter’s saw Kellum at the 301 Club and thought he recognized him. Harter confronted Kellum about how he learned of their operation. Kellum said through a local bunco artist who’d been running the 301 Club and picking up payoffs from the Camelot. Harter had checked some more and even heard that “Jim’s” real name might be something like “McKellum.” Harter, not a clever man, again confronted Kellum: “Have you ever worked with the police?”
Our cover was almost blown before we got started. Luckily for us, greed prevailed. Somewhere in the criminal underworld, the myth persisted that officers are not allowed to lie about being officers. With ultimate cool, Kellum boldly asked Harter, “Jeez, the sheriff don’t think I’m the heat or nothing, does he?” Harter was fooled and persuaded Hamilton to go along. We were back in business, but it had been a close call. Kellum was too local. Someone else might recognize him. With his agreement, we phased Kellum out.
To act as the next mobster above Kellum in the chain of command, the FBI chose a smooth, suave agent from headquarters named Les Davis, who was sent to Oxford to pose as Les Daniels, a capo in the Oklahoma mob. Davis had previously spent a year in Mississippi and understood just enough of our unique culture to read situations and fit in. Kellum introduced Davis to Harter and Hamilton and left the stage, telling the crooked law officers that he was going back to Oklahoma. To further enhance the dark side of the supposed OC connection, the FBI also sent in Gene “Gino” Stephens, a tall, burly agent of Portuguese descent who really looked the part of a mob enforcer. With Gino as the muscle and the suave Davis as the front man, our team looked ready for prime time. Hamilton took an immediate shine to Davis, calling him at all hours to ride around the county with him, showing him how local corruption worked. When Davis suggested that some people might not welcome organized crime in their midst, Hamilton was adamant: “We’re the poorest state in the nation, and you are just what we need.”
Things started off well. The FBI rented a series of suites at the Memphis Hilton and loaded them with legal bugs and video cameras. The UC agents played their mobster roles to the hilt. But when they suggested using a bank account to transfer payoffs, the streetwise Hamilton balked: “I don’t like to put my John Henry on nothing. Let’s just use play money (cash).” Hamilton vouched for Harter: “He’s my right hand, my quarterback. His mouth is my mouth.” The agents smiled inwardly at his trust, knowing that Harter had been cheating Hamilton behind his back. Wanting Hamilton on tape rather than just Harter, Davis said, “We understand. We trust him, too, but our bosses say deal only with Number one.” Flattered, Hamilton agreed.
He briefed them on his operation. “We got thirty-eight honky-tonks in the county running wide-open. No hours, no rules. They pay $150 a week each. We control all the gambling machines in all of them, too.” He explained how a father-son team, the Robert Harbins, Sr. and Jr., paid him for the entire county gambling machine concession, saying they had run out all the little nickel and dimers. “We’re about to take over gambling in Tunica County and Marshall County, too.” When Stephens asked about constables, elected officers who serve as bailiffs for justices of the peace, Hamilton said, “Put a quarter [$25] a week on them and you’ll have no problems.” When Stephens asked about the justices themselves, Hamilton said, “If there’s no one to arrest you, where’s the problem?”
At their next meeting, Hamilton took on the role of consigliere, warning the undercover FBI agents about FBI stings: “Watergate started off in Washington and got the president himself and now it will move down to your lowest-titled man in the state.” He said each “spa house” paid him $500 a week, but the slot machines were the most lucrative. “That is where you’re going to really rake it in.” Hamilton handed Davis a special DeSoto County deputy sheriff’s badge (just like Elvis once had), authorizing him to carry a gun at all times. Hamilton then launched into a series of homey aphorisms on corruption. When Stephens asked how the prostitution business would get known since it was illegal to advertise, Hamilton said, “I don’t have to tell you how a coon finds a tree.” He told them to let gamblers win some on the front end to build up business, saying, “You gotta feed the pig if you want to eat it.” He also warned them that not all law enforcement was corrupt, saying, “Your federal boys and your state ABC alcohol boys, they don’t tell me when they’re coming. They got a right to come in here just like you’ve got a right to drive down Broadway.”
Hamilton concluded his little seminar on corruption with a message: If caught, he would never tell on them, and they’d never tell on him: “When the heat gets on my ass, you can nail my nuts to a sycamore tree and I ain’t tellin’ a goddamned thing. And if a son of a bitch squeals on me, he’s a dead motherfucker. That’s just how simple it is. Now I may go to Parchman, but that SOB who sends me, he ain’t going to be out there eating cake and ice cream.” This prophecy later came back to haunt Hamilton. Unbeknownst to him, FBI undercover agent Les Davis had once been a cartoonist, and he later drew a picture of Hamilton with his privates nailed to a tree while Wayne Tichenor stood by eating cake and ice cream.
Harter drove Davis around the county looking for a good spot for an illegal twenty-four-hour gambling/liquor/prostitution joint. When Harter suggested they call it the Dew Drop In, Davis sniffed, “We were thinking of something a little classier.” The FBI didn’t want just any old beer joint. After several false starts, Davis found a nice former supper club in a secluded location not far from Interstate Highway 55. The FBI agents, fond of using puns as names for their U
C operations, called it the Pump House. By January 1977, the slot machines and dice tables were in place, and Davis was ready to open.
He had also solved another little problem. Hamilton and Harter kept offering him his choice of the best-looking prostitutes at the Camelot. The agents, being agents, had already taken an informal poll and elected a brunette named Jenna as the Camelot “queen.” But Davis was happily married, and hanky-panky was the last thing he needed. The FBI solved the dilemma by assigning special agent Gail Denman, an agent from New Jersey, to pose as Davis’s girlfriend.
All through January things went great. Hamilton showed up almost every night at the Pump House, took his payoffs in person, and incriminated himself all over the tapes. He did the same thing at the Camelot massage parlor. The next month, problems began. A constable named Macon Campbell came by and told Davis that his wife had him going to church and he’d decided he would take no more payoffs, saying, “I have to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.” Davis peeled off several bills and offered them to Campbell, who said, “I’m not asking for more money. If you do that again, I’ll arrest you.” A week later, Campbell reappeared and arrested Davis, who told me later he wondered how the incident would look in his FBI personnel file. Tichenor, who never worried about anything, said, “That should just enhance your reputation as a real criminal for other UC operations.” Davis was not amused.
Davis met with Hamilton and told him he was paying for protection and he’d better start getting it—or else. Hamilton replied with one of his little parables, saying Davis was “going too fast, too wide-open.” He stressed that corruption needs to be subtle: “It’s just like this coat I’ve got on. You can take it and throw it in that puddle and it will be all wet, just like that, and everybody will know it. Or you can take one drop of water at a time and put on it and slowly get it wet, but nobody will notice it even when it is thoroughly wet.”
Embarrassed at his inability to give Davis protection, Hamilton dug himself in deeper, boasting of his statewide ties, saying, “me and the Governor are close as chocolate is on a cake.” He said Davis could still get whatever he wanted: “Just pull the cord and the bell will ring.” But Hamilton was not all confidence. He warned Davis that he’d heard that the Feds were snooping around and that the state grand jury was about to meet, so the Pump House needed to “close for repairs” till they were out of session since Hamilton admitted he could not control local DA Gerald Chatham Jr.
Another interesting character, Chatham was the son of Gerald Chatham Sr., the courageous young DA who had prosecuted the men who murdered Emmett Till back in 1955. Much praised by the national media for his courage, Gerald Chatham Sr. had died of a heart attack while still in his thirties just after the Till trial ended. Gerald Jr. was cut from the same cloth. He was one of only three public officials in DeSoto County we informed of our undercover operation.
As Hamilton had predicted, he could not control the local grand jury, and distinguished FBI Special Agent Les Davis was indicted, fortunately under the name “Les Daniels.” Gerald Chatham got it dismissed, but Les was worrying what his OPF (Official Personnel File) would be like. For our case the worst was yet to come, and from a most unlikely source. Some FBI bureaucrat in Washington had reviewed Davis’s personnel file and noted that he had never attended the official FBI undercover-agent training course, which lasts a month. Davis was ordered straight to Quantico, potentially blowing our whole case. I went ballistic, ranting and screaming till my wife feared I’d have a stroke.
Wayne Tichenor stayed cool but could not calm me down. That took Ken Hughes. “Mr. Hailman, the sheriff himself told us to shut it down. Les Daniels, an important syndicate man, has been indicted. It is only natural for him to leave town.” It was as simple as that, and it worked fine.
In the meantime it was business as usual at the Camelot massage parlor until one night Sheriff Hamilton called and told Fran Jenkins, “The heat is on,” and he would not be coming any more but was sending an old and trusted friend named “Jack.” Hamilton said “once you see him, you’ll always know him.” That night a big green Buick with an Arkansas tag pulled up out front. The three-hundred-pound man who got out had not previously been a customer, and Jenkins immediately knew he had to be the sheriff’s man. One of the girls slipped out and wrote down his tag number. It came back to a Jack Briggs of West Memphis, Arkansas, just across the river.
Briggs went right up to Fran Jenkins, who boldly said, “I only deal with one man, and you ain’t him.” Briggs, who not only spoke in a whisper like the old actor Sidney Greenstreet in the movie The Maltese Falcon, also physically resembled the actor. He told her the sheriff could not come because “there is so much heat on, the Feds and all.” Briggs explained he was “Harvey’s best friend” and was the first one who had put Hamilton in alcohol rehab, joking it was a challenge because Harvey kept smuggling in half-pints of whiskey in his artificial leg, which caused him to refer to himself as “the old peg-legged sheriff.” Fran Jenkins coolly played her role: “What if a Fed was to come here and ask me questions? What do I say?”
Briggs was ready. “I’m a businessman. I made you a loan. You’re paying me back.” Briggs said he would always call before coming and they would use a sort of oil company code since that was one of his businesses. “I’ll call you well No. 9. A hundred barrels of oil will equal $100.” Briggs, who saw himself as a real, if somewhat obese, James Bond, told Fran to call him No. 14, because “that’s the middle number of my social security number.” Not to be outdone, Fran Jenkins said, “You can call me No. 33, because that’s my age and I can remember that.” After each of his visits, agents would videotape Briggs going to a nearby restaurant, where he always met right away with Hamilton. Tichenor would then meet with Fran Jenkins and go over the tape recordings with her and receive the serial number lists from Debbie, information that later proved crucial at trial.
From the tape recordings of Hamilton, Harter, Briggs and their cronies, we figured we had a pretty good case. But some problems remained. Most of the laws they were violating were state laws, not federal. Our proof of the gambling was mostly talk, the prostitution normally did not cross state lines, and the after-hours booze cases were misdemeanors. The bribes were all of state officers, not federal. Since then many of those laws have changed, but in 1976, our arsenal of legal weapons was pretty slim. We needed more law to go with our facts.
One thing we could not figure out was what Hamilton was doing with all the money he was receiving. We had planned to use the IRS to bring tax-evasion charges, but there too lay a problem. Hamilton only had two bank accounts, one checking and one savings, and none of the payoff money had gone into either account. Nor was any money coming out of either account. As his attorney later said at trial, he was just “ratholing” it. He was living off his cash payoffs and banking his salary. Then, in one lucky tape, Hamilton helped us out by telling Les Davis why he didn’t trust banks—he knew too many crooked bankers. He kept all his money at home and suggested Davis do likewise. With that evidence as probable cause, we got search warrants for Hamilton’s house, car, and person. Teams of FBI agents served the warrants one day right after Fran Jenkins had paid off Briggs. On the shelf in Hamilton’s bedroom closet they found a Fran Jenkins payoff bill. In his wallet they found more payoff bills. Having just seen him hand something to his wife, a nice innocent lady, right before they searched him, they received her permission for a female agent to search her purse. Among her grocery money they found several more payoff bills from Fran Jenkins. Hamilton’s poor wife was buying her groceries with the prostitutes’ money.
Simultaneously with the searches, pairs of FBI agents began serving subpoenas for the next federal grand jury on every gambling den, honky-tonk, and massage parlor. Most cooperated right away. Several were brought in for me to interview personally. One I remember vividly was the mother of Dr. Leslie McLemore, political science chair at Jackson State University and for many years the president of the Hinds County Boa
rd of Supervisors and a vital leader in Mississippi’s era of racial reconciliation. Leslie’s mother ran a popular café in the town of Walls, totally legal, but Hamilton had threatened to shut her down if she didn’t pay him anyway. He encouraged her to stay open after hours and sell liquor illegally, which she refused to do. Leslie came in my office and got right to the point: “My mother needs no lawyer, she’s done nothing wrong, but I want to know one thing. Are you really going to do something this time? DeSoto County is desperate; it’s always been like this, for blacks and whites alike. All I want is your word that you will go all the way.”
Of course I said we would, but in my heart something changed that day. Before that, the case had been an adventure, a well-meaning game. But what Leslie McLemore said brought home to me just how much this case meant to so many people and the suffering and despair it would cause if we lost. After they left, I really went to work. Leslie’s comments had motivated me like a football coach at halftime, and this game was now for keeps.
Hamilton immediately went on the attack, asking a state senator to “silence” one of his employees, who ran a little honky-tonk. The senator immediately called me and offered to come to the grand jury with his employee, saying they would both testify. Then Hamilton got even bolder and talked directly to Warren “Tut” Sullivan, one of the biggest and richest of the Delta cotton planters, asking him to get one of his employees to deny that Hamilton had shaken him down. Sullivan immediately called Tichenor and reported it. The good guys were lining up on our side. So was the press.
But we still had the legal issues to deal with. Ken Hughes suggested what was then the magic word in law enforcement, RICO, the punning title of a new federal anti-Mafia law. RICO stood for the “Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations” law. Intended originally only for use against traditional organized crime, federal courts had ruled such an application would be discriminatory and anti-Italian and that RICO could be used against any organized group of five or more persons whose primary purpose was to make money from crime. The special appeal of RICO was that it federalized most state crimes. A RICO indictment would solve all our legal problems. But we could not just indict for RICO like any other federal crime. The FBI first had to ask Main Justice to approve it, and then the attorney general himself had to sign off on it. Our own local FBI signed off enthusiastically on our proposal. I was flattered when U.S. Attorney H. M. Ray had enough confidence in me as a young prosecutor to send me to Main Justice in Washington alone to plead our case.
From Midnight to Guntown Page 12