Jesse Stoneking [Part Two]

Prologue

This article was condensed from more than 5,000 pages of FBI transcripts of recordings made by Stoneking and from 25 hours of taped interviews the author conducted with Stoneking in 1988.

The intensity of the search for Stoneking was clearly demonstrated to me early in 1988, more than three years after the $100,000 price tag had been placed on him.

At the time I was an investigative reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I was to get together with Stoneking on a Thursday afternoon in rural Illinois.

On Wednesday morning, I was told that a mob figure was overheard telling another that they were going to try to find Stoneking through me. The meeting with him was canceled immediately because it was feared both of us might be walking into a trap.

Two police intelligence detectives suggested that it be determined if I was being watched. That afternoon, they followed me as I drove about 35 miles west from my office in downtown St. Louis. They detected no surveillance of me. We assumed there was no crisis.

The next morning, the day Stoneking and I were to have met, my wife answered the telephone. The caller stated that the dishwasher would be delivered between 10 and 11 that morning. We had not ordered any appliances and a call to the store confirmed that no such delivery to anyone with my name at any address near me was scheduled.

It was common knowledge that our daughter and infant granddaughter lived with us and were in the house during the day. The detectives agreed that it might have been an attempt to kidnap them in an effort to learn Stoneking's location from me. We moved our daughter and granddaughter to a friend's house. The problem was that I did not know where Stoneking lived at the time and still don't.

Not long after Carolee abandoned him, Stoneking married Dorothy, his mistress for so many years. She was with him the night he almost was assassinated as he left his mother's house. The hit men would not have spared her life.

Under his new identity, Stoneking worked at odd jobs, including as a security guard in a housing complex. Apparently, Dorothy could not escape the past and accept the abject poverty in which they existed. Several years ago, they separated and then divorced. He dabbled in undercover work for a while, but found that boring and unrewarding. No longer did he have the mentality for it.

Stoneking still uses his cover name and will for the rest of his life. He has a guaranteed full-time job that pays well. He doesn't need that much money; there are few obligations now and he has forsaken his craving for wealth.

Stoneking doesn't worry if his past catches up with him on some deserted street corner. He's found renewed confidence and strength in the religious faith he had as a child and in the Bible.

"I was the world's worst person," he said not long ago. "You know what I did. There wasn't any sin I didn't do. That's all behind me. I ain't that person anymore." Some of those he helped send to federal prison still are there. Others no longer pose a threat. Berne pleaded guilty of extortion and interstate travel in aid of racketeering. He was sentenced to six years in prison. Paroled in the spring of 1989, he died a broken man a few years later.

Bramlet was found guilty of bank robbery, weapons violations and conspiracy after a jury rejected his claim that he suffered from "organic brain damage."

He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. He was paroled, but was returned to prison after he threatened those who had testified against him. Kowalski pleaded guilty of interstate transportation of stolen furs. Because he was 70 years old, he was placed on five years' probation.

Trupiano was convicted of operating a handbook ring that Stoneking helped expose and was sentenced to four years in prison. He became the laughing stock of the underworld when it was disclosed that he was the only bookmaker around who lost money. In his greed, he had refused to lay off any of the $1million in bets a year his ring handled. He died on Oct. 22, 1997, after suffering a heart attack. He continued to deny he was a member of the Mafia despite documentation to the contrary.

Tony Giordano, Trupiano's uncle who was a nationally recognized don whose connections went back to Lucky Lucianno, died of cancer in 1980. Without his control and guidance, the St. Louis Mafia in St. Louis fell into chaos. Under the leadership of Trupiano, it became known as the "gang that couldn't shoot straight."

Stram has been in an out of trouble. His whereabouts are unknown. Stoneking doesn't want to know.

Ronald J. Lawrence