To police surveying the bloody scene at the Democratic Club on Truman Road, it appeared that 41-year-old Charles Binaggio either hadn’t suspected a thing or had little chance to react. His body was slumped in a swivel chair where he had been enjoying a smoke just moments before an assassin pumped four .32-caliber slugs into his face. The body of Charles Gargotta, Binaggio’s 49-year-old bodyguard, was lying near the front door. Gargotta may have been trying to make a run for it when the gunmen shot him in the back of the head.
The murders, on April 6, 1950, shook the political world of Kansas City, Missouri. The national headlines even caught the interest of Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, who targeted the city in his impending investigative crusade.
Political blurred lines
Years earlier, Binaggio started earning a name for himself in Kansas City’s Democratic Party through ties with mobster and power broker John Lazia. After Lazia’s 1934 slaying, Binaggio rose up through the then-powerful “Pendergast Machine” of political boss Tom Pendergast.
Having some involvement in bootlegging, gambling and prostitution rackets was not uncommon for many individuals embedded in Kansas City’s political parties. Not everyone was mobbed up, but there existed a gray area where distinguishing public servants from underworld opportunists was tricky, particularly from the onset of Prohibition through the Binaggio era.
“Binaggio was part of a group of individuals that came to be known as ‘The Five Iron Men,’” wrote organized crime author Allan R. May. “Although sources differed at times on who the five men were, the most popular lineup was Binaggio, Charles ‘Mad Dog’ Gargotta, Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Gizzo, James Balestrere and Gaetano ‘Tano’ Lococo.”
As the 1940s unfolded, the bond between Binaggio and Pendergast deteriorated. Strains in their relationship became evident when Binaggio started to claim his autonomy and sought to establish a political foundation separate from Pendergast’s dominance. Furthermore, Pendergast’s grip on the city weakened amid legal issues and corruption controversies, particularly following his 1939 tax evasion conviction.
“Ultimately, many things brought down the Pendergast political machine,” writes Kansas City historian William Worley. “Certainly, hubris should be high on the list. For so many years, Tom Pendergast and those around him thought they were invulnerable.”
Many of the machine’s politicians had relationships with underworld figures. Some even had a criminal record, although Binaggio’s was rather mild compared to his pal Gargotta. Binaggio, however, rebutted the allegations. “I don’t know anybody in that Mob,“ he once argued when pressed about ties to Chicago Mob boss Al Capone. “I never was the Mob’s man here.”
“His true place in Kansas City cannot be found in the files of the police department,” the Kansas City Star wrote. “His record there reportedly was cleaned out in the days when the underworld controlled the department.”
Binaggio’s downward spiral
Binaggio overplayed his hand in the political game. Confident in his influence, he promised underworld figures that if his candidate, Forrest Smith, won the Missouri governor’s race, the state would be wide open for gambling. To make it happen, Binaggio secured $100,000 in campaign funds.
Smith won, but Binaggio’s plans unraveled. The governor offered him little influence, and a bill to legalize horse-race betting failed. President Harry Truman, whose political career was jumpstarted by the Pendergast machine, wanted nothing to do with him. And the police raids on gambling operations continued.
As pressure mounted, the FBI and a grand jury began investigating Binaggio and Gargotta. Perhaps worst of all, frustrated racketeers wanted what they were promised — either an open city or their investment money back. Binaggio had gambled big, but his luck was running out.
On the evening of April 5, Binaggio was picked up by his driver Nick Penna and taken to the Last Chance Saloon, which straddled the Kansas-Missouri border. There, Binaggio met with Gargotta and decided to leave around 8:30 p.m. Binaggio told Penna not to join them, as they’d only be gone for “15 or 20 minutes.” Gargotta asked gambler Homer Cooper if he could borrow his car.
Binaggio and Gargotta drove to the Democratic Club, and that was the last anybody heard from them until the break of dawn.
Cab driver Walter Gambill was on his way to an all-night diner, walking by the Democratic Club about 4 a.m. on April 6, 1950, when he heard the distinct sound of heavily dripping water from within the club. Believing there could be a burst pipe flooding the place, he called the police.
When the police arrived, they struggled to push open the front door. They discovered the obstacle was Gargotta’s corpse. At the back of the room they found Binaggio, ironically perhaps, facing in the direction of President Truman’s portrait. The leaking water was from a clogged toilet on an upper floor.
Gambill and the tenant from the apartment above, Harry Erwin, were briefly held and questioned at the scene.
The aftermath
Binaggio and Gargotta were separately laid to rest on Monday, April 10. Some newspapers reported the funerals as reminiscent of John Lazia’s internment 17 years earlier. Others, however, downplayed the fanfare. They described them as having unremarkable attendance, while acknowledging the numerous flower arrangements that arrived with respects and condolences from across the country. Noticeably not in attendance for Binaggio’s funeral service was the Pendergast faction, who were no-shows across the board, including President Truman.
The Kefauver Committee held its first hearing a month after the murders. Kefauver pushed hard to make Kansas City a stop on the crusade, which took place from May 1950 to August 1951 across 14 cities. Previously dismissive, President Truman could no longer avoid the subject and approved. The hearings took place in Kansas City on July 6 and September 28-30, 1950.
“My first impression of Kansas City was of a place struggling out from under the law of the jungle,” Kefauver wrote in one of a series of syndicated articles in 1951. “It was a staggering example of a prosperous city, blessed with many industries and the same type of good citizens found everywhere, but which, through civic inertia, had fallen completely under the thumb of vicious criminals.”
Ultimately, there was no question the murders were Mob-style hits. The victims were unarmed, and police found no signs of robbery. Binaggio’s appearance led investigators to surmise he knew the perpetrators. Gargotta, evidently, had tried to escape but was clipped while racing toward the door.
Because finding the actual triggermen was unlikely, debate and conjecture instead ensued over where the assassins originated. Some speculated that the order came down from the highest levels in New York.
Binaggio was “in the way,” bluntly proclaimed Missouri state Representative Dewey Short just days after the murder. “So what happened? He got bumped off.” Short believed Binaggio’s demise stemmed from his long-standing rivalry with the Pendergast faction and was directly related to the Missouri Senatorial primary.
The murders of Charles Binaggio and Charles Gargotta have never been solved.
Christian Cipollini is an organized crime historian and the award-winning author and creator of the comic book series LUCKY, based on the true story of Charles “Lucky” Luciano.
