with the East Coast's biggest gambler, Frank Erickson, a close associate of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello.
In 1929, Al Capone brought Annenberg into the underworld's famous Atlantic City Conference, the gathering at which the groundwork was laid for the national crime syndicate. Capone and Annenberg ironed out the details of a syndicated racing wire in discussions on the boardwalk.
Nation-Wide brought in a flood of money. The service received its information from telegraph and telephone wires hooked into 29 race tracks and from those tracks into 223 cities in 30 states, where thousands of poolrooms and bookie joints operated in violation of local laws. Annenberg thus became the fifth largest customer of American Telephone and Telegraph, making transmissions only slightly behind RCA and the three press associations of the day. It was with Annenberg's cooperation that Lansky sewed up for himself his preeminent gambling position in Miami and Florida's lush East Coast.
In the 1930s Annenberg also took over the century-old Philadelphia Inquirer and through it became a power in Republican Party politics—a "respectable" citizen. But Moe was to end up like Al Capone—hauled up for income tax evasion. In 1939, both he and his only son, Walter, were indicted. For the year 1932 the government found Annenberg owed $313,000 and paid only a paltry $308. For 1936 alone Annenberg owed an estimated $1,692,000 and paid $470,000, still not the epitome of civic-mindedness. All told, along with interest and penalties, Moe's unpaid taxes came to $9.5 million.
Annenberg claimed that, because much of his activities came during a period of national Democratic dominance, his legal troubles were politically inspired. More accurate was the evaluation of the New York Times, reporting that the money gush became so large "it apparently did not seem worth while to give the government its share."
Walter pleaded not guilty and finally Moe, in what some observers to the conversation regarded as the epitome of paternal devotion, declared: "It's the best gamble. I'll take the rap." Moe was in his 60s and his lawyers advised that a guilty plea by him could well lead to the dropping of charges against his son. The gamble paid off. Moe got a three-year prison term and handed the government $9.5 million in settlement.
Nation-Wide News folded and Moe was succeeded as the country's racing information czar by James M. Ragen, who set up Continental Press Service. Walter Annenberg remained an important publishing king and society figure and under President Richard Nixon went on to become ambassador to England. Moe wasn't around anymore but he would have been proud. "Only in America," he might well have said. And it would have been true. Organized crime and the great fortunes derived from it never flourished as in America.
See also: Ragen, James M.
Further reading: My Last Million Readers by Emile Gauvreau.
Anselmi and Scalise: Mafia murder team The Chicago newspapers referred to Albert Anselmi (squat and bulky) and John Scalise (tall and thin) as "the Mutt and Jeff of Murder." Another writer called them "the Damon and Pythias of Crime." If that appears a rather elegant characterization for two near maniacal killers, it does have a measure of truth to it. It was not until their dying day that either one spoke ill of the other—and that only when he faced certain execution as his partner had already. They grew up together in Sicily, came to America together, became syndicate gangsters together, became the most-feared killers of their day together, betrayed their bosses together, but always to their own selves were true.
Before they departed this world in 1929 they left their mark on the ways of Mafia mayhem. It was they who imported to Chicago the Sicilian custom of rubbing bullets with garlic, based on a theory that if the bullets didn't kill the victim the resultant gangrene would. They also introduced the "handshake hit," whereby the iron-gripped Anselmi would shake hands with an unsuspecting victim, locking the man's gunhand in a death grip, while the taller Scalise would produce a gun and blast him in the head. The pair, together with an imported New York killer, Frankie Yale, "wacked out" the infamous Irish gang boss Dion O'Banion in that fashion.
Both Anselmi and Scalise fled to America in their twenties when murder charges were brought against them in their native Marsala. In the early 1920s they were in Chicago in the employ of the Terrible Gennas, a bloodthirsty Mafia family also from Marsala. The Gennas were at the time the leading producers of illicit liquor in the entire Midwest and as such had a real need for efficient gunmen to guarantee their primacy. Naturally the murder twins fit the Genna specifications just as the Gennas fit the twins' needs. Very earnestly Anselmi and Scalise informed other Sicilian gunners that they had come to the United States in order to accumulate $1 million apiece, which they reckoned would allow them to return to their native land as wealthy men with the means to fix the murder case against them. The Gennas treasured this pair enough to pay them amounts extraordinary for the period. For one murderous caper alone, each was given $10,000
