The Kansas City Chiefs, the Mafia, and the 1970 Super Bowl (Part 2)
Len Dawson under siege before Super Bowl IV
Introduction
Next Sunday, February 11, in Las Vegas, the Kansas City Chiefs, the defending NFL champions, will play the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. As part of my ongoing “the past is prologue” theme, this is the second of two parts, “The Kansas City Chiefs, the Mafia, and the 1970 Super Bowl,” excerpted and updated from my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, which was re-released in 2014.
Inasmuch as I interviewed all of the key characters in this drama—from Len Dawson to Don Dawson and Hank Stram to Gene Nolan—I do not believe that a more thorough and accurate account of what happened exists.
Last weekend, in my homage to the NFC playoffs, I published two other excerpts:
* “The Detroit Lions, the Mafia, and the 1963 NFL gambling scandal” (January 27, 2024)
* “Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., the San Francisco 49ers, and the Mafia.: The NFL permits a DOJ-identified mobster to buy the 49ers” (January 28, 2024)
And on February 3, 2024, I published Part 1 of this series:
Once again, the legalization of sports gambling will not only lead to the proliferation of illegal gambling and organized-crime activities, but it will also wind up destroying professional and college sports. . . . It is inevitable.
Chapter 23: “Lenny Dawson on the Brink,” pp. 206-217
During the 1969 NFL season, after four more of the Kansas City Chiefs’ games were taken off the boards by Las Vegas bookmakers,[1] Len Dawson became a target of an IRS investigation that concentrated on Detroit gambler Donald Dawson, who was no relation to Len but had supposedly made calls to the Chiefs’ quarterback.
Len Dawson told me that he suspected that something was going on on January 4, 1970, the day the Chiefs defeated the Oakland Raiders, 17-7, for the AFL crown and the right to play the NFL-champion Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. “We were staying at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, getting ready to play the Raiders in Oakland,” Dawson says. “And there was a note in my box for me to call Pete Rozelle. And I said, ‘What the hell does he want to talk to me about?’ That Sunday, I got ahold of him, and he said, ‘Oh, nothing. I just wanted to wish you luck.’ Well, I was thinking about the game, but it struck me kind of funny. Why would he call to wish me luck? That was the first inkling I had that something was going on.
“Then on the flight back to Kansas City after the game, [head coach] Hank [Stram] said that there might be some sort of inquiry from league officials.”
Stram told me that prior to the Chiefs’ game with Oakland, “The NFL intercepted me at the airport. Mark Duncan [the assistant supervisor of NFL personnel] took me in his car and said, ‘I have some terrible news. Len Dawson’s name is being mentioned with Don Dawson, and the story is going to break soon.’” Stram says that he later discussed the matter with his quarterback, who admitted [speaking] with the gambler while he was with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Len Dawson insisted that Don Dawson had called him only twice since those days. Stram was completely satisfied with Dawson’s response.
Soon after, Stram was contacted by Duncan again. “Duncan told me, ‘Don’t worry about it [the gambling probe]. We squelched the story, and everything is fine.’”
But the NFL had “squelched”—or quashed—the story only temporarily.
The roots of the IRS investigation of Don Dawson, who had ties to [top mob bookmaker] Gil Beckley, began when federal agents discovered that baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jerome “Dizzy” Dean, formerly of the St. Louis Cardinals, was a close friend of a high-stakes gambler Howard Sober, a wealthy Michigan trucking executive. At the same time, the agents alleged that Sober and another big-time gambler, had lost nearly a million dollars in bets to Don Dawson, who had introduced Sober to Dean.
In June 1969, Sober was rushing, trying to make a flight connection at an airport and gave an airport employee $50 to make a call for him to place an $800 bet. The employee called the FBI instead. A federal agent told him to make the call while agents listened on an extension. No wiretap was involved.
After the call was made, federal agents determined that Sober’s bookmaker was Dawson. Checking Dawson’s telephone records, the IRS compiled a list of nineteen hundred calls Dawson had made to gamblers, sports figures, and other bookmakers. During telephone calls monitored—but also not wiretapped—by the IRS,[2] Dawson had once complained that he had lost “a bundle” on the New York Jets’ 13-6 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in their 1969 divisional playoff game.
According to IRS documents, Don Dawson stated that his “man with K.C. had certainly done his job,” but that “Namath should have at least tied the game. . . . I’m going to contact my man with K.C. and see what he says; we’ve got to come back after being a big winner. Now, I’m a loser.”
The original probable cause for wiretaps stemmed from statements by IRS agents who had witnessed the Detroit gambler giving money to an unnamed former member of the Detroit Lions.
A top IRS official directly involved in the investigation was more specific, saying that the affidavit requesting wiretaps on the telephones of the principal targets of the investigation came after federal investigators discovered Don Dawson meeting and giving money to Dick “Night Train” Lane, formerly of the Detroit Lions, who had been polygraphed and cleared during the 1963 players-gambling scandal.
Lane told me, “Don Dawson had a cousin named Dawson Taylor, who had a Chevrolet dealership. I started working for him in 1962. There were a lot of players who worked for him. I was married to [jazz singer] Dinah Washington, and she had put three songs Taylor wrote to music. He was grateful, so he gave both of us a new car every year.
“We were working on a base salary and percentage of what we sold [at the car dealership]. Don Dawson asked me if I’d sold anything that month. I told him, ‘Not too many. One or two.’ He said, ‘Well, I want to get my daughter a car, and so I’ll let you get it for her. I’m going to put a down payment on it, and let her keep it up.’ He gave me eighteen hundred dollars in cash.’ That’s the only money I ever got from him.” Lane says that he gave Dawson a receipt for the cash.
Don Dawson insists that he never gave Lane any money. “Why would I go to my cousin to buy a car when my dad was in the same business? I never gave him eighteen hundred dollars. I have given a lot of the other players money, but I never gave Night Train any.”
Based on the alleged Dawson/Lane transaction, the IRS special agent in charge of the investigation, Herbert Hinchman, who filed a thirty-page affidavit, wrote, “Donald Dawson of Birmingham, Michigan, is engaged in the business of accepting wagers on sports and horse races; that Dawson also lays-off some of the large wagers accepted by him to other bookmakers in the Detroit area and also to other bookmakers throughout the United States.” Dawson was also part owner of the Fox & Hounds Restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a popular spot for local sports figures and celebrities.
Another top IRS official who was involved in the investigation told me, “It was a bookmaking and layoff investigation. We put a request in for wiretaps in June 1969 on Sober, Dawson, and several college coaches. We also had probable cause for Santa Anita racetrack and some hockey bookmakers in Toronto. We went to the IRS commissioner and requested them. We had the authority for Title Three at the time if the commissioner approved it. He declined after months of negotiations. He wanted us to work with the FBI and bring them into the case.[3]
“We agreed and went to the FBI for the wiretaps. Bill Lynch [the head of the U.S. Strike Forces] and his deputy, Ed Joyce, went to the bureau as our liaison. J. Edgar Hoover said, ‘Yeah, we’ll take the case, but we want all the information and for the IRS to back off.’ I told the FBI they’d have to shove it. We wanted their cooperation, a joint effort. I wasn’t about to give the FBI the case we’d been working on. So the FBI refused to cooperate.
“We decided to go with the probable cause we had. And we would have to give up the coaches, Santa Anita, and some bookmaking on hockey. Professional football, we had cold. It was clear to us that games had been fixed by players [who were] shaving points in cooperation with several organized-crime-connected bookmakers.”
In early January 1970, after an eight-month investigation by the IRS, federal agents arrested fourteen people in a series of raids in Detroit, New York, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Biloxi against a nationwide sports-betting ring. Among those arrested was the forty-eight-year-old Don Dawson. At the time of his arrest, Dawson, who had been the principal target of the probe, was found with over $450,000 in cashier and business checks in his possession.
James Ritchie, the head of the Detroit Strike Force Against Organized Crime, said at the time of the raids, “Statements made by some of those arrested and seized records indicate a national scheme involving famous figures in baseball and football.” Ritchie described Don Dawson as “one of the largest bookmakers in the Midwest.”
There was more. NFL players had reportedly received telephone calls from Don Dawson. Besides Len Dawson, others receiving calls included quarterback Bill Munson of the Detroit Lions, quarterback Karl Sweetan of the Los Angeles Rams, and at least four other big-name players.[4]
Munson told me that he had first met Don Dawson in 1967 in Milwaukee while the Rams were preparing to play the Green Bay Packers for the divisional title. “He sort of acted like he was an intermediary for Bill Ford [the Lions’ owner], but I think that was bullshit. He was real smooth, and I couldn’t figure him out. See, I was playing out my option and trying to get traded, and he seemed like he was laying some groundwork for me to come to Detroit. Anyway, I met him that morning on the Saturday before the game and had coffee with him.”
Dawson approached Munson again, this time in Miami, just before the Rams played the Cleveland Browns in the Playoff Bowl, which featured the runners-up in each NFL division. “I still couldn’t figure this guy out,” Munson continued. “We were talking, and he was trying to get close. I didn’t know what he wanted. I think I gave him my phone number because he was coming to California. We decided we’d have dinner.
“Before I was traded to Detroit [in May 1968], he called me, and we had dinner in Beverly Hills. During the dinner, Dawson told me, ‘You know, you can make a lot of money in Detroit outside of football.’ I just walked away and acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t say anything.”
Munson says that he ran into Dawson one final time at the Red Run Golf Club near Detroit. Munson was playing a round of golf with former teammates Ron Kramer and Dan Currie when they ran into Dawson on the course. Munson insists that he never saw him again, adding that he never bet with him. “I wasn’t nuts enough to do something like that and get suspended for a year. And I had no urge to do it.”
Munson says that he was never interviewed by federal agents about his relationship with Dawson—but has been audited by the IRS every other year since then.
Speaking of Len Dawson, Don Dawson told me, “When Lenny played for the Cleveland Browns [in 1960-61], I got acquainted with him. He was Milt Plum’s backup man. Lenny and I got to be pals and I knew his wife, Jackie. Her father was a car dealer in Shaker Heights [a beautiful Cleveland suburb]. I got to be friends with her dad and her mother because I came to Cleveland all the time. Lenny was a very shy young man. It was Jackie and I who got him to get the guts to go in and tell Paul Brown, ‘Either start me next year or trade me.’ Well, they wound up trading him to the Chiefs.”
Don Dawson adds, “When Lenny was at Cleveland, he gave me information, and I made some small bets for him. He was on the bench. Nothing more than a hundred dollars. Just a token bet. Nothing big.
“When he got with the Chiefs, I never heard from him, but I knew he was doing a lot of gambling over there. In Kansas City, the Civellas [the local Mafia family] were betting really big money. Some of these people got ahold of Lenny, and they made a shithouse full of money. I got wind of it through another Detroit bookmaker. But I never contacted Lenny or said, ‘Let me in with a play. I know what you’re doing.’ Who knows? The Civellas might have said, ‘Hey, this guy is muscling in on our territory.’[5] So I had not talked to Lenny since 1968-69, when the Chiefs were off the boards.”
During my interviews with Len Dawson, he flatly denied ever betting with Don Dawson or having any business dealings with the Civella crime family, adding, “I met Don while I was with Pittsburgh. I understood him to be from a wealthy family in Detroit. He was a friend of Bobby Layne, and I met him through Bobby.
“My wife didn’t know Don Dawson except through me. Her father worked for Ford for a lot of years. He got tired of traveling, so he bought into a Ford dealership. Then he moved back to Cleveland and got into [another] dealership there.”
Len Dawson told me that Don Dawson had nothing to do with his confrontation with the Browns’ head coach. “Paul Brown ruled with an iron fist. He could bring a guy to his knees with a few words faster than anybody I’d ever seen. In those days, they didn’t have agents. They just sent you a contract and said, ‘Sign it.’ I hadn’t signed it by a certain time, and he wanted to know why. I said, ‘I’m not very happy about not getting an opportunity to play.’”
When I specifically asked Len Dawson whether he had ever been approached by Don Dawson to fix a game while he was with either Pittsburgh or Cleveland, the quarterback replied, “No. I don’t know why he would. I never played. In Pittsburgh, Bobby Layne played all the time. I think in the five years that I played for Pittsburgh and Cleveland, I think I threw maybe forty-five passes.”
IRS agents also said that Don Dawson had called at least two college head coaches: Bob Devaney of the University of Nebraska and Frank Kush of Arizona State University, who had been especially plagued by longtime allegations of associations with gamblers. Kush denied any relationship with Don Dawson, insisting, “I never met Don Dawson. I don’t know who he is.”
Dawson told me that he had never talked to Devaney, a former coach at Michigan State. “He was a good friend of Howard Sober,” Dawson says, adding, “I never met any of them, except Frank Kush. We had dinner together in Phoenix, along with Howard and my wife. But Kush never called me, and I never called him.”
Lions coach Joe Schmidt, who had been disciplined by the NFL for gambling in 1963, admitted knowing Don Dawson, but denied having seen him ‘‘for years.” Alex Karras, who had been suspended for a year for betting, also admitted knowing Dawson—but told reporters that he had advised players, like Munson, to stay away from him.
Then, there were other complications. On January 5, 1970, Bill Matney, a reporter for NBC News, broke a story on NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley nightly news program, announcing that a grand jury was planning to subpoena NFL personnel. Among those to be called before the twenty-three-member federal grand jury in Detroit, according to the report, was the thirty-four-year-old Len Dawson, who was in New Orleans, preparing to play in Super Bowl IV, in which Kansas City was playing the Minnesota Vikings.
Matney told me that the source for his story was an official with the Strike Force in Detroit. After receiving his information about the grand-jury probe, he checked the official out with a respected federal judge in Detroit, who vouched for him. “To be doubly certain,” Matney says, “NBC sent one of our top field producers to Detroit to validate my findings. The producer actually met the [Strike Force] source. So he was an additional witness. In fact, we met the source at the Howard Johnson’s in downtown Detroit, and he watched the story we filed on The Huntley-Brinkley Report. After we watched it, the source said, ‘You’re right on the money.’”
Len Dawson says, “Stram told me that they were going to break a story on NBC News. I was up in Hank’s suite because he said that the NFL Security people wanted to talk to me. I was trying to rest because I did have a game to play. The NFL people were trying to make a determination as to what to say to the press and what to release. They brought in some sportswriters from Kansas City and other cities. They were trying to get their opinions on what to say to the wolves [news reporters] out there. Finally, I just told them, ‘Why don’t we just tell the truth. I do know the person. I’ve only seen him a couple of times in my life. The truth is, I did talk to him on the phone.’”
Dawson remembers, “I thought, ‘What the hell is going on? Why me?’” He adds that he did not see the news report but knew that no specific allegations were made against him or any other player mentioned in Matney’s story.
“I’ll tell you what happened in Detroit,” [NFL Security Chief] Jack Danahy says angrily. “There was a Strike Force in Detroit. They were particularly unimpressive, and they were dying for publicity. They got a search warrant on Don Dawson. Len Dawson was probably one of a hundred sports figures whose names were in a telephone directory that Don Dawson had assembled over a period of years. The week before the Super Bowl—the big football event of the year—they made a sneak release to NBC. And that’s when it hit the fan.
“I was down in Miami with all my security people, having a security conference the week before the game. I sent the guys from Detroit back to Detroit to get the story there. We sent our representatives out to interview all the NFL players whose names were in the book.
“I flew over to New Orleans, and I met Lenny Dawson at the Fontainebleau. Mark Duncan was with me. I talked to Lenny for about an hour and a half. It was very open. He admitted knowing Don Dawson. He recounted to me the various occasions that he had talked to Dawson. The last time he had talked to him was when Lenny’s father died.[6]
“I wrote up a signed statement for [Len] Dawson in longhand. Dawson had a tough day. He had practice, and then the press was all over him as a result of this news report. By the time I finished writing up his story, I looked up and Lenny was sound asleep in his chair. So I woke him up. He read the statement and signed it.
“We went back to the Royal Orleans Hotel where Pete Rozelle was, and I gave him the statement. Pete asked me, ‘Do you buy it, Jack?’ And I said, ‘I sure do.’ He asked why. And I said, ‘I’ve taken signed statements from a lot of guys—murderers, spies, you name it—but this is the first one who ever went to sleep on me.’
“Dawson had also offered to be polygraphed again, but we decided that there was no basis for it.”
The following day, at a crowded press conference, Len Dawson faced reporters and read the statement Danahy had written for him: “My name has been mentioned in regard to an investigation being conducted by the Justice Department. I have not been contacted by any law-enforcement agency or been apprised of the reason my name has been brought up. The only reason I can think of is that I have been a casual acquaintance with Mr. Donald Dawson of Detroit, who I understand has been charged in the investigation. Mr. Dawson is not a relative of mine.
“I have known Mr. Dawson for about ten years and have talked to him on several occasions. My only conversation with him in recent years concerned my knee injuries and the death of my father. On these occasions, he contacted me to offer his sympathy. His calls were among the many I received. Gentlemen, this is all I have to say. I have told you everything I know.”
When a reporter immediately asked whether he and the gambler had ever had any personal meetings, Dawson replied, “Are we going to get into all this?”
“Gentlemen,” the Chiefs’ head coach, Hank Stram, interrupted, “Len has made his statement. Now we would like to discuss the football game with you if you have any questions about that.”[7]
Running back Ed Podolak, who was a rookie with the Chiefs at the time of the Super Bowl, told me, “We had a team meeting and coach Stram told us that there was an effort to do anything possible to take our concentration off the game. Here was a chance for the AFL to defeat the NFL two years in a row, and that would absolutely destroy the myth of the NFL’s superiority over the AFL. So we were told to put all of this behind us and not to worry about it. Coach Stram said that it didn’t affect anybody; that the allegations were untrue.”
Pete Rozelle was annoyed that Len Dawson had admitted knowing Don Dawson during the press conference. The commissioner told The Detroit News, “I’m sorry he said it. I’d have preferred it would have come later.” Rozelle also called the news reports on the investigation “totally irresponsible. . . . While the entire matter has been under investigation by our security department for several days, we have no evidence to even consider disciplinary action against any of those publicly named.”
Rozelle chose that moment to reveal that Len Dawson had voluntarily taken the polygraph test in 1968 and passed. “More than a year ago, during the 1968 season, rumors were circulating regarding [Len] Dawson. At that time, Dawson and his attorney cooperated fully with our office and Dawson volunteered to take a polygraph examination to establish his innocence in regard to the rumors. The test and our independent investigation proved to our satisfaction that the rumors were unsubstantiated.”
Don Dawson told me that Len Dawson had had an opportunity to get the gambler off the hook with his statement—but didn’t. “I drew a lot of criticism,” Don Dawson says. “Lenny saw me in the newspapers, and he knew what was going on. He said that he casually knew me, but he’s a fucking liar. As far as Lenny goes, yeah, he was doing plenty of gambling. And that was way before my thing ever erupted. I had no connection or further conversation with Lenny after he left the Browns. He wasn’t gambling with me anymore. He was then with the Civellas in Kansas City, but I was the one who got all the publicity. And I was the one who got arrested.
“I imagine Lenny said what he said for his own protection—for which I don’t blame him. But he should have called me later to apologize because I was hung out to dry.”
Notably, during one of our later recorded interviews, Don Dawson admitted to me that he had been personally involved in no fewer than thirty-two fixed NFL games.
NBC, which never interviewed Don Dawson, did not back off its original story. Matney says that he received “complete support” from the network. However, James Ritchie of the Strike Force lambasted the news report, saying, “The peacock is NBC’s trademark, and the peacock has turned out to be poppycock.” U.S. Attorney James Brickley of Detroit angrily said, “There is no federal process against these persons named by NBC or any other sports figures.”
Matney said that soon after his report aired “I got a call from the Washington [NBC] bureau and one of the guys in the office said that Attorney General John Mitchell was ‘furious.’ Then I got a call from my source. He said two things were happening: One, that Mitchell had ordered an investigation within the department to find out who leaked the information, and, two, the [Strike Force] was going to be forced to change its modus operandi. Instead of calling the players to testify in person, it was going to dispatch agents to see them, avoiding any appearance in court.”[8]
On January 11, 1970, under an overcast sky and on a wet field, the Kansas City Chiefs, who were thirteen-point underdogs, upset the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7. Despite the new NFL gambling scandal, oddsmakers in Las Vegas refused to take the game off the boards.[9] It was the second consecutive year that the AFL champions defeated favored NFL teams.
Before the game, President Richard Nixon, an avid football fan and a longtime gambler, had called Hank Stram and told him, “Dismiss it [the gambling scandal] from your mind and go out and play like champions. I know there is nothing to the rumors about Dawson. He shouldn’t be upset about them. Would you tell him that for me?” Nixon also called after the game to congratulate Len Dawson.
Dawson, who had missed six games during the regular season because of his knee surgery, completed twelve of seventeen passes for 142 yards and one touchdown with one interception. The thirteen-year-veteran quarterback deservedly was selected as the game’s Most Valuable Player. Gate revenues from the game were nearly $4 million. Super Bowl IV captured the largest television audience of any prior single-day sporting event.
Len Dawson told me, “After the victory, [CBS sportscaster and former New York Giants star] Frank Gifford was interviewing me. Before the cameras went on, he said, ‘Christ, everyone on the Giants team knows that guy [Don Dawson]. He was just one of those guys who seemed to get acquainted with football players.’”
When I asked Len Dawson how he was able to play so well in the Super Bowl under such conditions, he replied, “Throughout the week, once I hit the practice field, I was able to concentrate and focus my attention on what I had to do. On the day of the game, I knew what was there. I knew the pressures on me. My back was against the wall. I was guilty until proven innocent. I was there, and I was the story. I was the center of everything.
“You look for little signs that this might be your day. When I was warming up before the game, my arm felt great. That was one thing I could erase from my mind. The first play was a play pass, and I hit Mike Garrett for a first down. That really helped.”
CBS-TV, which broadcast the game, never directly mentioned the gambling charges in its four hours of coverage—and only referred to the “extra strain” Dawson had suffered.
With the investigation blown by the timing of the NBC report and without wiretap authorization or the cooperation of any of the gamblers or players involved, the 1970 probe into sports gambling collapsed. On February 13, federal officials—who had promised “several dozen” more arrests in the gambling case—instead dropped all charges against several of those already arrested in early January.
However, ten more gamblers were indicted on February 24.[10] Don Dawson and Howard Sober were among them. Dizzy Dean was named as an unindicted coconspirator. Don Dawson pleaded guilty and spent nine months at Lewisburg and Allenwood in Pennsylvania. One month after Dawson’s release, former attorney general John Mitchell entered Allenwood after his conviction for his role in the Watergate cover-up. Mitchell’s attorney was Bill Hundley, the former chief of NFL Security.
After the Super Bowl, the heat on Len Dawson was still not off. The IRS began a lengthy audit of his income-tax returns because he had allegedly failed to report a portion of his income. “Dawson’s wife claimed that the omission of his income had been a mistake on her part,” an IRS official says. “The revenue agents did not believe this explanation but were forced to accept it because of ‘pressure on high.’” The official says that the pressure came from the U.S. Department of Justice.
When I asked Dawson about this charge, he told me that he was not aware of any pressure from the Justice Department for the IRS to back off the investigation. To the contrary, he says that the IRS took a year and a half to conduct its probe of his finances.
“They came in after the Super Bowl,” Dawson says. “A guy from Detroit and the guy from the IRS sat down in our family room and told me, ‘You better have your lawyer with you.’ They were honest. They were looking for some money in a secret bank account I supposedly had that had not been claimed. Really, they were looking for a payoff.
“They went through all the microfilm at the bank. In fact, I was on the board of the bank that I dealt with. They [the bank officers] were telling me the number of man-hours they [the IRS agents] spent going over everything—every deposit, every check. It was unbelievable.
“In the end, my wife was taking care of the books and maybe didn’t report a couple of things. It had nothing to do with anything major. We’re talking about a few hundred dollars. There was no hidden bank account, and that’s what they were looking for. They found virtually nothing, except maybe a couple of hundred bucks from a speaking engagement—but nothing of any wrongful intent.”
ENDNOTES
[1] The Chiefs games taken off the boards in 1969 were the September 14 game against the San Diego Chargers, which the Chiefs won, 27-9; the September 21 game against the Boston Patriots, which the Chiefs won, 31-0; the September 28 game against the Cincinnati Bengals, which the Chiefs lost, 24-19; and the October 5 game against the Denver Broncos, which the Chiefs won, 26-13. After the Denver game, the Chiefs remained on the boards for the rest of the season.
[2] The IRS used the “pen register,” a device that is attached to a telephone line and then maintains a record of each number dialed.
[3] I asked Don Dawson whether he had any knowledge about the inability of the IRS to receive wiretap authorization. Dawson replied, “I had called [attorney and Redskins president] Ed Williams up, and Ed said, ‘I’ll get to John Mitchell and see what the story is.’ Williams told me that Mitchell said, ‘It’s too hot to handle. I can’t touch it, Eddie.’ And it was too hot to handle because there were players involved, and nobody wanted to mess with the NFL.”
Also, at the time of the investigation, legislation authorizing an intense crackdown on organized crime’s involvement in professional and college sports by the IRS was also stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
[4] When the gambling investigation became public, Joe Namath—who had been forced by the NFL to sell his interest in Bachelors III just the previous year—was named as being among those players involved with Don Dawson. However, Namath denied knowing Dawson.
Supporting Namath, a top IRS official involved in the investigation told me that “Namath was never a target of the investigation. We had no idea where the media came up with his name. We had nothing on him at all.”
Another Jets player named in news reports was tight end Pete Lammons.
Dawson told me that he didn’t know either Namath or Lammons. However, Dawson added, “Joe bet pretty good.” He claims that he knew a bookmaker in Miami with whom Namath did business.
[5] Nick Civella was convicted for running an interstate sports-bookmaking operation in 1970.
[6] Len Dawson’s father died in November 1969, the day before a game between Kansas City and the New York Jets. Dawson played in that game and won it for his dad, 34-16. Dawson told me that after the game, he flew home to Alliance, Ohio, for the funeral. Don Dawson called him at his parents’ home.
[7] Stram had been an assistant coach at Purdue, his own alma mater, for part of the time that Dawson had played his college ball there; the two men had developed a close friendship as well as a player/coach relationship.
[8] Marty Ralbovsky, Super Bowl: Of Men, Myths and Moments (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1972), p. 113.
[9] In lieu of taking the game off the boards, the oddsmakers simply allowed the line to skyrocket. Initially, Minnesota was considered a three-point favorite. When Len Dawson was named as a possible target of the grand-jury investigation, the line jumped to nine and then to thirteen by kickoff. The ten-point variance in the spread indicated that gamblers believed that Kansas City would be slaughtered in anticipation of Dawson’s collapse under the extreme pressure he was under.
[10] Just the previous week, Detroit Tigers pitching star Denny McLain had been hauled before a federal grand jury in Detroit investigating his relationship with a Michigan bookmaker since 1967. He was also implicated with Detroit Mafia figures Tony and Vito Giacalone, both of whom figured prominently in the 1963 Detroit Lions betting scandal. McLain, who was suspended by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, was later indicted and convicted of racketeering and narcotics trafficking.
Ironically, McLain was the first pitcher to win thirty games in a single season since it had been done in 1934—by Dizzy Dean.
Chapter 24: “Restaurants and Hotels,” pp. 218-221
With the public pressure on the World Champion Kansas City Chiefs, new little-known investigations involving the Chiefs and other NFL personnel were launched.
In December 1970, the Chiefs’ Johnny Robinson purchased a swimming and tennis club/restaurant in Kansas City from Edward P. “Eddie Spitz” Osadchey, who had been described in U.S. Senate testimony as a “part of the Kansas City organized-crime structure.”[1] However, Robinson was not buying the business straight out. Osadchey was holding a $275,000 promissory note on the sale, which was to be paid in monthly installments until 1980. Also, Robinson’s partner in the club was Jim Moran of New Orleans, who had also been described by law-enforcement authorities as a close associate of both Carlos Marcello and New Orleans Saints owner John Mecom.
“We’ve managed to bring New Orleans cooking to steak and potato country,” Robinson told reporter Peter Finney. “In the fall, when our menu is extensive, Jimmy [Moran] comes up on Fridays and Saturdays [from New Orleans] to do the cooking himself.”
When the Kansas City Crime Commission began to investigate the transaction, Robinson said that he had bought the business with the permission of the NFL. “I went through the proper channels on this,” Robinson told me. “I notified the NFL and told them what I was going to do, and they told me to go ahead.”
Reflecting on the Robinson-Osadchey controversy, Aaron Kohn says, “Robinson placed himself in the total financial control of this mob-connected guy because he owed all that money to him. This situation was evidence of the fact that the NFL was not meeting its responsibilities to the public. It demonstrated that they do not accept the high standard of responsibility to keep the sport untouched by compromising influences.”
Pete Rozelle, who had been supplied information about the relationship between Marcello and Moran by Kohn’s Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, publicly denounced the Kansas City Crime Commission for its investigation of Robinson and called the transaction a “simple purchase of property.”
A similar arrangement was also made in 1970 by New Orleans running back Ernie Wheelright, who had formerly played with the New York Giants. He had opened two clubs in New Orleans. However, the real ownership of Central Park South, one of Wheelright’s nightclubs, was traced directly to Carlos Marcello and Marcello’s brother and son. The other lounge, the Zodiac Club, was owned by Anthony Glorioso, who had been indicted for his role in an interstate-gambling operation.
Once again, even after the NFL, the Saints, and Wheelright were notified of the underworld involvement in the clubs, the sales were permitted. The Saints’ chief of security even helped to arrange them.
Rozelle, though critical of Wheelright’s decision to go ahead with the deals, held a hearing on the matter at the NFL’s New York offices. “The hearing showed that he wasn’t culpable,” Jack Danahy told me. “He hadn’t violated any rule.”
Wheelright quit football at the end of the 1970 season.
The same month that Robinson went to the NFL for permission to buy his restaurant, the FBI raided a Miami restaurant, the Bonfire, a popular hangout owned by fifty-nine-year-old Sam “Radio” Winer, a convicted bookmaker, who was another principal in the Beckley/Sklaroff bookmaking network. An FBI report described Winer as “a well-known Miami hoodlum.” Involved in the world of Bahamian gambling, Winer had also been a close friend of Mafia capo Mike Coppola and Lou Chesler. In October 1969, Earl Faircloth, the state attorney general in Florida, charged that the Bonfire was “controlled by Mafia money.” One law-enforcement official also said, “Winer was tight with Sklaroff and every O.C. [organized crime] figure on the beach.”
FBI supervisor Ralph Hill remembers the Bonfire raid and says, “Among the things we discovered were some sheets reflecting what we refer to as bottom-line figures which bookmakers keep. Coach Hank Stram of the Kansas City Chiefs, his numbers were on these records—private, unlisted telephone numbers at home and his private, unlisted numbers at the field office. As a result, we interviewed Coach Stram about these numbers.”
The FBI interviewed forty-six-year-old, Chicago-born Stram in Miami in February 1971. Hill says, “Coach Stram denied any complicity with Sam Winer other than having been a patron of his restaurant when he was in Miami as an assistant coach at the University of Miami [and later]. . . . When questions were proffered to [Stram] about the unlisted telephone numbers,” says the FBI agent, “his explanation was, ‘Well, I felt that he was calling me as a nice person, as a friend, to inquire about the health of ballplayers.’
“When questioned about the bottom-line figures [that were over $10,000] that were named on the sheets, he [Stram] said, ‘Well, it must have been a restaurant bill’ that he incurred when he was in Miami during the Super Bowl the previous year. And it was explained to him that the Super Bowl was not played in Miami the previous year [rather it was in New Orleans], and the interview was concluded at that point.”
Hill added that the federal grand jury investigating Winer’s operations had considered a subpoena for Stram to testify—but the Strike Force chief in Miami decided against issuing it.
When I asked Stram how his name ended up in Winer’s address book, Stram explained, “Winer was a good friend of the University of Miami when I was an assistant coach there in 1959. Winer was also a great friend of Andy Gustafson, who was the head coach at the time. So anytime we had to entertain visiting players or any dignitaries, Andy would say, ‘Take them down to Radio’s and have dinner.’
“So this one particular time, my wife, Monsignor Mackey, and I went over to Radio Winer’s for dinner. We had a great dinner. And my wife loves stone crabs, and I do, too. So during the discussion about the good meal we had, I mentioned to Radio, ‘God, I wish we could get stone crabs where we are [in Kansas City], because we like them so much.’ He said, ‘That’s no problem. I’ll just send them to you.’ I said, ‘Can you do that without any trouble? Won’t they spoil?’ And he said, ‘No, I’ll package them up and send them to you in Kansas City.’ I said, ‘How much will they be?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll send them to you, and then let you know.’
“I gave him the address and phone number at my home and office. I told him to call me before he sent them so that I knew when to pick them up.”
Stram says that he has no idea why his name appeared on Winer’s bookmaking bottom sheets and insists, “I have never gambled on anything in my life.” He added that whenever he went to Miami, “I would stop by to say hello to Radio and have dinner.”
Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt later pushed out Stram as head coach, saying, “I am determined that the Chiefs are going to be a source of pride. I am confident that this announcement will begin a new era in that respect.” Stram, who had been with the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs since the inception of the AFL, then became the head coach of John Mecom’s New Orleans Saints.
ENDNOTES
[1] Osadchey was fingered by the Kefauver Committee as being closely associated with Kansas City’s “Five Iron Men,” who were five of the most vicious racketeers in the region and controlled gambling operations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
A comprehensive insider’s look at the NFL and gambling. It has been going on for years; the public well never know how really bad the problem is and it going to get worse. Bravo Dan, for uncovering, reporting and sharing this sensitive information. You have guts and are relentless in your journalism.
I agree with Geno.