(Publisher’s Note: This is the third chapter of a new series of short historical stories that focus on the history of organized crime in Wheeling. A number of eyewitnesses have offered their memories, and interviews were conducted with them and with federal and local officials, including former FBI agent Tom Burgoyne before his passing on January 26, 2023.)
3
Tales of a Tow Truck Driver
Shoe stores, jewelry stores, clothing stores, appliance stores, restaurants, hotels, office buildings, doctor’s offices, five-and-dimes, theatres, and bars. Lots and lots of bars.
Once, that was an accurate description of downtown Wheeling, a business district that evolved into and out of its role as the Ohio Valley’s mega metropolis where consumers could buy anything, eat anything, and wager on anything from college and pro football to horses and dogs and baseball and basketball.
There was the Odyssey, the Chit Chat, the Elbow Room, The Office, Billy’s, the Brickhouse, Academy Billiards, the Club Tower, the Cork & Bottle, the Capitol Ballroom, the Sportsman, and the San Antone, and no one batted an eye at the Mob’s bookies, the backroom poker games, the spot sheets, or those little white envelopes passed along by bartenders with a patron’s change.
“I went to the bars and one of the coolest ones was the Tin Pan Alley,” said Don Atkinson, a former Wheeling council member (2008-2016) who was an employee of Ace Garage for more than 40 years. “That place had three floors with a different kind of music on each of the floors. There was country, jazz, and I think disco was on the top floor. The place was always jam-packed.
“You went down the alley from Market (Street) to go in, and the place was cool as hell. I remember Bill Lias’ big round booth being there because it was his restaurant (Zeller’s) before it was the bar and the owner (Jim Coyne) thought it was cool to have it there,” he recalled. “Man, it was loud and it was crazy, but it looked like just another regular business. But if you knew, you knew there was more to do than dance and drink. You knew what else you could do there.”
For decades, according to former U.S. Attorney Bill Kolibash, drug trafficking was one illegal activity Wheeling’s mobsters avoided until quaaludes and marijuana arrived in the 1970s and then cocaine came into play during the 1980s. The federal prosecutor, whose book “Justice Never Rests” will be released in late January, included drug dealing as one of a plethora of indictments against gangster Paul “No Legs” Hankish in the October 1990 trial.
“It was slick as hell the way they did the cocaine (sales),” Atkinson remembered. “Coke was huge around in the 80’s but I was always scared of the stuff. But you’d see the buys take place and it wasn’t just there. It was everywhere.
“I’m not sure how the customer signaled that they wanted to buy the coke, but what the bartender would do is get the guy’s drink and when she gave him the drink and his change, there would be a little white envelope with the bills,” he described. “The guy would just put it all in his pocket and walk away from the bar and that was it. So, they tried to be cool about it, but every single person in that bar knew what was going on just like they knew those girls in the alley were hookers and the guy at the end of the bar was the bookie.
“And no one cared either.”
Those Little Crocodiles
His mom was in the mob. Kinda-sorta.
Kay Atkinson operated a tavern in the town of Triadelphia, a small settlement just outside Wheeling’s city limits that was comprised mostly of coal miners who once worked Valley Camp’s pillared tunnels beneath the eastern portions of Ohio County. He doesn’t remember the name of the bar, but Don does recall it was near where Bleifus Tire operates today.
He remembers the tales she told, too.
“I was young. Single digits, pretty much, she would tell us about ‘Big Bill’ and what was happening to him. She said there was a lot of gambling, backroom card games, and things like that,” Atkinson recalled. “My mom wasn’t hiding anything; she wasn’t whispering or anything. I’d hear about ‘this guy with the mob’ and ‘that guy with the mob.’
“We heard about the car blowing up, too. Hankish’s Studebaker. And the word was Lias didn’t like Hankish much so he tried to get rid of him. I know he never got arrested for it, but most people still think he got away with it,” he said. “I remember hearing about the mob all the time when I was growing up. Everybody knew about it. It was Wheeling.
“It’s just what was happening in Wheeling back then. And no one cared.”
He doesn’t remember his mother complaining. For that matter, he doesn’t recall anyone complaining about the Wheeling Mob.
“A lot of people just didn’t talk about anything those guys were doing. But it was accepted. It was just a way of life in this town. People went to work, worked hard, and did their business. Some people avoided everything that was connected to the Mob, and some people didn’t avoid them,” Atkinson said. “If you wanted to make a bet or get whatever, you knew where to go. Hell, we were in Ron’s Value Center all the time when I got older, and we knew the place was filled with stolen stereos and necklaces and stuff like that.
“We all wore those IZOD shirts like the people at the country club, too. Our shirts didn’t have the tags because I guess that’s how the Mob hid it, but who cared? We had all the colors at Ace Garage because Ronnie Bris would always stop down because the Jacovettys owned the business and Vinnie’s uncle was involved with Lias,” he said. “Sometimes Bris would stop at the garage with a bunch of steaks he got from somewhere and we’d buy some as long as they were frozen.
“Listen, some people avoided all that stuff like the plague, and they had their reasons. Because my mom ran that bar for ‘Big Bill’, I knew what was going on inside that place and all the others. It was just normal life in this town.”
To Tow or Not to Tow
He was a peacemaker, an enforcer, a bar owner, a sharp dresser, and Jesse Anderson intimidated when intimidation was needed. Anderson was one of the most trusted men in Hankish’s mob, and that’s why he ran errands, delivered packages, communicated messages, and collected overdue debts for the Boss.
Anderson was a tall, muscular black man who loved to dress in bright suits, matching hats, and shiny shoes, and he always waved from his fancy cars, too. Atkinson described Jesse as a flashy and friendly man who could be all about business when necessary, and that’s why Anderson’s named appeared frequently in the federal RICO indictments published by The Intelligencer on October 3, 1989.
Anderson, who owned the Playmate Lounge on Lind Street in East Wheeling, was murdered a few years later in Meigs County, Ohio.
“Once me and Jesse knew each other, we always got along,” said the long-time tow truck driver. “And I became friends with some of the other guys who worked for Hankish, too, and I remember Jesse well because he was one of Paul’s right-hand guys. I’ll never forget, I had a car broke down in downtown Wheeling one day around lunchtime, and the car was in a parking place and I couldn’t get it out.
“Jesse (Anderson) stopped and got out of his yellow Cadillac in this bright yellow suit, and he started helping me push the car out of the way … and I’m thinking about who he is the whole time and that I shouldn’t make him mad,” Atkinson said. “I didn’t have a problem with any of those guys, and I didn’t want them to have a probem with me either. But Jesse was cool with me.
“Ya know, except for all the bad stuff he did, he was a pretty nice guy.”
Just a couple of streets south of Ron’s Value Center were two mob-owned properties: a bar called the “Palace Disco” that later became known as the “Pirates Cove,” and the other was only known by the feds as 2244 Water Street because it was one of the largest and longest running brothels in the city.
People parked everywhere and anywhere, and that kept Atkinson busy during his night shifts.
“It was all up to the police back then, and they knew who not to have towed. Back then, someone in my position didn’t ask anyways. I mean, I knew who had what car, so I knew what was going on and I didn’t think twice about it. People used to park all over the place so we cleared who we cleared and didn’t get in any trouble.
“There were bars all over Wheeling and people used to park wherever they fit because of how crowded it was most weekends. There were biker bars, pool halls, the disco places, and there was a lot of live music in downtown, and people went out. People had a lot of fun around here back in those days.”
Fun and Games
George’s Bar in Fulton used to serve the neighborhood boys mashed potatoes with brown or chicken gravy for lunch for just 25 cents. If a kid didn’t have the quarter, George would add a little more just because.
The boys would sit at the same bar with the few men who went to George’s for the open-face lunch specials, and Atkinson recalls the chalkboards used for the big games and the point spreads. George’s was down the street from hi shouse, but it wasn’t the only bar in the neighborhood.
“We’d go there and up the street to the Swing Club when we were running around, and both bars ran numbers. They both had the pinball machines with men trying to get the highest score, and there were the other poker machines and stuff like that. Whatever was popular at the time, I guess,” he explained. “I was always told there was only one way to run a bar in Wheeling, and that was with Hankish in your pocket.
“No one blinked,” Atkinson said with eyes wide. “As soon as me and my friends were 18 years old, we went out to all the bars and I don’t remember someone approaching me about making a bet or anything like that. It was definitely kind of an unspoken thing, I guess, but if you wanted to bet, you could ask at the bar,” he remembered. “That’s what guys did.”
Hankish wasn’t a bar hopper once he became Boss after Lias was dead and buried in Greenwood Cemetery, but he had men like Anderson, a man named Jimmy Griffin, and people Atkinson referred to as “bag men” who would “pickup and deliver.”
“They were always brown paper bags, so they looked like lunches, I guess. And Jimmy was quiet. He wasn’t loud like Jesse. You just knew to keep your head down when you saw Jimmy because we heard he took care of things when Paul needed it done,” he described. “Hankish was out there. He was always out there, always around. I think he liked to be seen. He was the guy Lias couldn’t kill and everyone knew that. He knew that.
“My wife (Gail) even cut the man’s hair. When she was done, she’d have to go out to the car to wake up Jimmy so Jimmy could get Paul back in the car. I mean, Hankish didn’t hide from anyone, that’s for sure. It was the ‘Crazy 80’s,” Atkinson said. “Some said people came here from out of town for the ‘Wheeling Feeling,’ and I was never sure exactly what the ‘Feeling’ was because there was so much of everything. Whatever it was, it sure had people like (FBI agent) Tom Burgoyne looking for something all of the time.”
Burgoyne was a Massachusetts native who was assigned to Wheeling in 1967, and once the Federal Bureau of Investigation was granted jurisdiction over cocaine sales, he was able to build a thick file on Hankish and his organization. Twenty years later, Burgoyne was a member of Kolibash’s criminal task force that surveilled all the moves made by Wheeling’s mob boss.
“You knew something was going on. You heard the feds were on them,” Atkinson said. “People were talking about the investigation getting pretty serious, and I had known Tom Burgoyne for a while by the time the trial took place. When I was a kid working at a Texaco gas station, he used to come there and he used a credit card with ‘FBI’ on it. He was cool as hell.
“But just like Hankish didn’t hide, neither did Burgoyne. He was right out there in the open all the time,” he said. “Me and Tom became pretty good friends, and I think most people in Wheeling knew Tom more for what he did in the community and less as an FBI agent who helped bring down Hankish and his mob.
“Wheeling was a lot of fun until then.”
(Author’s Note: Each week I’ll be sharing a link to one of the chapters of my first “Wheeling Mob” series I wrote while serving as the founding editor-in-chief of Weelunk, a digital media site now owned and operated by Wheeling Heritage, a non-profit organization that promotes the history and heritage of the city of Wheeling.)
