Former FBI agent writes book on KC mob
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
William Ouseley’s new book, “Open City: True Story of the KC Crime Family” traces the birth and spread of organized crime in Kansas City.
Ouseley, now 72, retired from the FBI in 1985 as supervisor of the Kansas City Field Division of the Organized Crime Squad.
“After 21 years of working on the street, there were a lot of people encouraging me to tell the stories,” he said. “The history took me over, though. I found it was a book in itself. That’s why I only got from 1900 to 1953.”
The Lenexa resident writes about the roots of crime societies in Southern Italy and Sicily, which became known as Black Hand once they arrived in the Midwest.
“I don’t think people understand the impact organized crime has had on the underpinnings of our society: infiltration of business, infiltration of the labor unions, infiltration of politics and government.”
Ouseley said the title “Open City” refers to the freedom the mob experienced during their heyday in Kansas City.
“I wanted to capture the fact that it was a wide-open, anything goes, captive city completely dominated by a corrupt machine and an organized crime family,” he said. “It was a haven for the gangsters of the ’20s and ’30s. They all came up here for R&R. It was an open city in the negative sense.”
Ouseley details what began as an insular gang extorting local businesses in “Little Italy” in the early 1900s, but developed into a formidable juggernaut during Prohibition, eventually allying itself with the political engine run by boss Tom Pendergast.
The slow incursion by these organized crime factions paved the way for Kansas City mobster Nick Civella.
Ouseley said the FBI didn’t realize at first that Civella had a national voice.
“But we came to find out that Nick Civella was a major player nationally, mainly due to the fact that he owned Roy Lee Williams,” he said.
Williams became the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Ouseley’s expertise in this area has led to a featured appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” in which he was utilized as the central expert during a story about a major Teamster figure from Cleveland who became an FBI informant.
After retiring, Ouseley spent 15 years as the NFL security representative and he’s worked on his own since 2000 as a security consultant, private investigator and public speaker.
Although he’s been away from the gritty drama of mob case work for more than two decades, he still keeps up with where organized crime stands in Kansas City.
“From what I understand it’s on a very low end,” he said. “They’ve lost all of their main assets — the politics, the labor — and that was the substance of the mob. They’re semi-legitimate now. They run some of the topless bars and things like that.”
Information from: Lawrence Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com
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