\n \n \n \n Left\/top: The entrance to the 24th Ward office where Lewis was murdered. Right\/bottom: A motorcade leaving City Hall for Lewis\u2019 funeral, where thousands of people paid their respects.\n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum\n <\/figure>\n \n \n \n \nLewis had been shot three times in the back of the neck and head with what investigators determined was a .32-caliber revolver.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Police found small amounts of blood on an air conditioner and television in Lewis\u2019 office, as well as on the right side of the stairs leading down from it. The evidence suggested that the killer or killers had probably entered the building through the back door, which had been found ajar.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Less than three hours after police started going over the crime scene, they allowed reporters to examine it. Photographers took close-up pictures of Lewis\u2019 lifeless body before it was transported to the morgue, where he was identified by his only child, his adult daughter, Joan.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Lewis\u2019s death became a national news story, with headlines proclaiming that Chicago was back to its old gangster ways \u2014 the kind of bad press that made Daley irate. As the news spread, people came up with their own theories to explain why Lewis had been slain. Mitchell, the 24th Ward precinct captain, remembered that he was at his job at City Hall when he heard about the murder.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n A police officer outside the office where a maintenance worker had found Lewis\u2019 body.\n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum\n \n\n \n \n \n
\u201cA guy came in and told me, \u2018Ben Lewis got killed last night,\u2019\u201d Mitchell recalled. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018What? What happened?\u2019 And he said, \u2018The syndicate killed him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
People speculated that someone may have taken Lewis out in a dispute over gambling, possibly involving policy, the illegal lottery games that generated big money in many wards. Some Lewis allies suspected he was killed because he had started challenging the West Side\u2019s plantation politics. Perhaps, they said, his increasing demands for patronage jobs and insurance business had alienated the last of the old white power brokers in the ward.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Many West Siders simply found it too frightening or unwise to discuss.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cI remember going to the barbershop, and I\u2019m asking questions about this, and the barber said, \u2018Shhhh! Don\u2019t talk about that! We don\u2019t talk about that in here,\u2019\u201d said Davis, a Democrat who represents much of the West Side in Congress. \u201cAnd I was kind of dumbfounded by that, because in my mind, that\u2019s all there is to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n A Smear Campaign\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n As police talked to reporters about the investigation, they let it be known that Lewis had a secret life: He was a womanizer and a con man. Though the killing looked more like a crime of precision than passion, police reports indicated that they were searching for a possible jilted lover or angry husband, or perhaps a client cheated out of money. Ella Lewis was questioned by police, as were several other women Lewis knew. Detectives noted that Lewis was \u201ckeeping company with white women.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Police also released information suggesting Lewis was a shady and failed businessman. They uncovered evidence that he had dipped into his clients\u2019 insurance premiums for his own uses and borrowed money to keep his real estate business afloat. Though he dressed impeccably, was often seen dining out and furnished an apartment where he met with a girlfriend, he died without enough money to pay for his funeral.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
Within a day of finding Lewis dead, police leaked the names of two suspects. The newspapers reported that Thomas \u201cShaky Tom\u201d Anderson and Jimmy \u201cKid Riviera\u201d Williams were major players in the policy racket. Anderson, a 54-year-old accountant, was thought to report to Outfit leaders. Williams, 37, a former boxer, was Anderson\u2019s enforcer.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The pair attracted police interest because Williams had reportedly threatened Lewis for hanging around Anderson\u2019s wife. On another occasion, police were told, Anderson had loaned Lewis money. Like almost everyone else questioned in the case, both men were Black.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
After a short stakeout, police nabbed Kid Riviera at a South Side apartment building. Anderson, hearing the authorities were looking for him, turned himself in. Police relied on lie detector tests to guide the investigation, and after both men passed, they were released.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Less than a month after Lewis was killed, the investigation hit a dead end. Police officials blamed Lewis: His life had been such a mess, they told the newspapers, that there were too many potential motives.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Some of the FBI\u2019s sources in Chicago politics recognized that the police were fixated on Lewis\u2019 personal and business problems. In a report a few weeks after the murder, one FBI agent summarized what an informant told him: \u201cThe stories concerning Lewis\u2019 personal life are being manufactured to \u2018dirty him up\u2019 in order to make it appear the city didn\u2019t lose too great an alderman.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
According to these sources, the agent wrote, \u201cHis death was strictly a political murder\u201d because he wouldn\u2019t follow orders.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Daley, fighting for reelection that April, tried to shake off criticism that the Lewis murder showed crime and corruption were out of control. He continued to express confidence in the police but said little about the investigation.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
But the memos from the FBI agent suggest the police avoided looking closely at the powerful people who actually dominated the 24th Ward: the political machine, the Outfit and the police themselves.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum (Vanessa Saba, special to ProPublica)\n \n\n \n \n \n
As part of the Lewis case, detectives questioned a number of Black political workers in the 24th Ward. Yet the files don\u2019t include any reports of interviews with Horwitz or other white party leaders.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Lewis had fought with the politically connected Elrod insurance company over control of ward business \u2014 a conflict some FBI sources cited as a reason for his murder. But the police records make no reference to interviews with any of the firm's owners and managers.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The police also revealed little about what their own officers knew about the murder.<\/p>\n\n
As detectives tried to piece together Lewis\u2019 final hours, they learned that Sgt. James Gilbert had called the alderman around 7:30 p.m.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Gilbert, a nine-year veteran, worked in the Fillmore police district, which included much of the 24th Ward. Seven years earlier, he had been suspended after reportedly demanding a payoff from a driver he had pulled over.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
When detectives asked him about his conversation with Lewis, Gilbert was cagey, saying it concerned a \u201cpersonal matter.\u201d If the detectives followed up and asked Gilbert what he meant, they didn\u2019t mention it in their reports.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
They did note that Gilbert said his call with Lewis had ended abruptly. After 10 or 15 minutes on the phone, Gilbert told them, he \u201cheard a noise which sounded like someone entering the victims office. The phone conversation was immediately terminated for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Gilbert offered shifting versions of the story to news reporters, telling one that Lewis had excused himself before hanging up. Yet Gilbert said he hadn\u2019t called Lewis back or tried to find out what had happened. Police were sure that Gilbert was one of the last people to talk with the alderman, perhaps just a half-hour before he was killed.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Could the call from Gilbert have been a warning or a threat? Was it meant to make sure Lewis was there before someone came by to kill him? Gilbert was given a lie detector test along with another police officer, who considered himself a friend of Lewis\u2019 \u2014 the same officer who would call me many years later. Neither was arrested. If detectives wrote a report on what Gilbert and the other officer told them, it was not included in the files released to me.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Pat Angelo, one of the first detectives on the Lewis investigation, told his son Dean Angelo Sr. that it was a \u201cheater case\u201d that he and his partners worked hard. Before the elder Angelo died in 2017, he expressed his frustration that the investigation had petered out. Dean Angelo recalled his father raising the possibility that law enforcement officials were involved in the murder.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
\u201cBack then, you literally had bagmen to collect and deliver\u201d payoffs from Outfit gamblers, said Angelo, who also became a police officer and led the Chicago lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. He retired in 2017. \u201cThe aldermen handpicked the captains and commanders of their districts so they could work with them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Police and political leaders repeatedly dismissed the idea that the Outfit was involved in the murder. Yet investigators received tips that pointed to the syndicate. One such clue came from Lewis\u2019 former personal secretary.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The aide told police that Lewis had grown up in the Outfit-run 1st Ward and still had ties there.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cMany of his boy-hood friends were now connected with people in the syndicate,\u201d one of the police officers wrote in his report. Lewis would sometimes meet these old friends at a restaurant near City Hall, the aide said. But the files don\u2019t include any reference to police following up on the information.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
FBI officials in Chicago sent investigation updates to top bureau leaders in Washington, including director J. Edgar Hoover. Without clear evidence of organized crime involvement, they concluded the case should remain with local officials.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Yet behind the scenes, the FBI had been collecting fresh information about a suspected syndicate figure long tied to political corruption and violence in the 24th Ward. As recently as Feb. 27 \u2014 the day before Lewis was killed \u2014 the FBI and the Police Department\u2019s organized crime division shared a tip that Lenny Patrick was running a horse race betting operation out of the Lawndale Restaurant, just down the street from Lewis\u2019 ward office.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Patrick was well known to law enforcement. Among his many arrests, he had been charged with murder, though never convicted. Authorities had known for years that Patrick\u2019s gambling operations were based at his Lawndale restaurant. In fact, the FBI had been told that Patrick and Lewis knew each other well.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
But according to existing records, neither the police nor federal agents ever spoke to Patrick about Ben Lewis.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n The Mobster\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n Lenny Patrick was born in Chicago in 1913, one of four sons of Morris and Ester Patrick, Jewish immigrants from England who ended up in the Lawndale neighborhood.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Lenny\u2019s mother died when he was 5, and with his father unable to care for the boys by himself, Lenny and one of his brothers were taken to an orphanage. After dropping out of seventh grade, Lenny learned to hustle. While still a teenager, he began running a regular dice game on the sidewalk at West Roosevelt Road and South Kedzie Avenue, in the heart of Lawndale.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Fights over territory and control of gambling profits often erupted into bombings and bloodshed. In April 1932, 21-year-old Herman Glick was shot in the neck outside a Lawndale synagogue. Glick \u201cmade a dying declaration that one Leonard Patrick was the man who shot him,\u201d an officer wrote in his report.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Shells determined to be from a .32-caliber revolver related to Lewis\u2019 murder.\n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum\n \n\n \n \n \n
Police issued an alert for Patrick, describing him as 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, \u201cdark comp[lexion], wears heavy rimmed glasses, brown suit, dark hat, has a slight limp in one leg, Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
When they finally tracked Patrick down a couple weeks later, he refused to open his apartment door, until officers fired shots through it. He was taken to Cook County Jail but wasn\u2019t locked up long. After Glick died, a grand jury determined prosecutors didn\u2019t have enough evidence to indict Patrick. The murder charges were dropped.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Patrick returned to Lawndale and went to work for a group of men who ran most of the neighborhood\u2019s gambling operations. He crossed paths with such powerful Outfit figures as Sam Giancana; they would become his mentors and employers.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
By 1948, Patrick had served seven years in prison for a bank robbery and was a suspect in at least three unsolved murders. That September, after three more men tied to Lawndale gambling were killed, FBI agents asked Patrick to come in for an interview. He told them that he had been friends with the slain men but didn\u2019t know anything about their deaths. He said he was the father of two girls, ages 6 and 3, and insisted his only political connection was his father, a 24th Ward precinct captain.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The conversation was the first documented contact between Patrick and federal authorities. <\/p>\n\n
Over the next several years, FBI agents kept close tabs on Patrick. For a time, agents even logged Patrick\u2019s phone calls and monitored his new home in West Rogers Park.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n A mugshot of Lenny Patrick as a younger man, from the Chicago Tribune in 1992.\n \n\n \n \n \n
But Patrick still oversaw businesses in Lawndale, including illegal gambling rooms that were allowed to operate by police and political leaders on his payroll. In February 1956, a confidential informant told FBI agents that Patrick controlled all gambling in the 24th Ward with backing from Elrod, the ward boss; in return, Elrod received cash payments. A different FBI source said Patrick had \u201cstrong police protection.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In 1960, after more than a decade of gathering information on Patrick and his operations, federal agents charged him with conspiracy to gamble. But the evidence was deemed too weak, and the charges were dropped. Once again, Patrick escaped trouble.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Patrick\u2019s position grew even stronger once Lewis was named the 24th Ward committeeman in 1961. FBI sources said Outfit leaders had been working to ensure that someone they could trust would get the post. And an informant told agents that Patrick was close to Lewis \u2014 so much so that the alderman was considered Patrick\u2019s \u201cboy.\u201d As an agent summed up the conversation in his report: \u201cLewis does not do anything without Patrick\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In April 1964, a little more than a year after Lewis was killed, the FBI received a tip that, for the first time, explicitly linked Patrick to the unsolved case.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cInformant further stated that Leonard Patrick and Dave Yaras control the ward in which Alderman Ben Lewis was slain,\u201d an agent wrote in a report. \u201cSource heard that Alderman Lewis, before his assassination, was not cooperating with the criminal element in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In essence, the informant was telling the FBI that Patrick was involved in what happened to Lewis. At the very least, he had to know something about it.<\/p>\n\n
The records released by the FBI offer no evidence that agents ever followed up.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n Confessions\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n Over the next 25 years, the FBI continued to keep an eye on Patrick as he ran Outfit-backed criminal enterprises on Chicago\u2019s West Side and then North Side, according to bureau investigative records. In 1977, Patrick refused to testify before a federal grand jury about payoffs he\u2019d allegedly made to a police officer. He served 18 months in prison for contempt of court. But even after the FBI and the Chicago Police Department repeatedly gathered evidence on Patrick, he continued to profit. By the 1980s, agents learned that he was supervising a street crew that specialized in extorting well-off business owners.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
It was still dark on the morning of Nov. 6, 1989, when two FBI agents stepped onto the front porch of a yellow-brick two-flat on the far Northwest Side. When Patrick came downstairs, they let him know he needed to start answering some questions. If he didn\u2019t cooperate, they told him, they had enough on him to put him in prison for 20 years. The leader of Patrick\u2019s street crew had already been talking. In case he didn\u2019t believe it, they played him tapes.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
Patrick was stunned. He was 76 years old and had a heart condition. The agents were telling him that they could lock him up for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In addition to his extortion schemes, federal authorities had other reasons to try to get Patrick talking: Another wave of violence had left more people dead. In 1982, Allen Dorfman, an Outfit-connected insurance executive who worked with the Teamsters union, was convicted of attempted bribery. As he awaited sentencing the following January, Dorfman was shot and killed outside a hotel not far from Patrick\u2019s turf. His murder was viewed as the Outfit\u2019s way of making sure he didn\u2019t talk. Two years later, Lenny Yaras, a longtime member of Patrick\u2019s crew and the son of his late friend Dave Yaras, was murdered on the West Side.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
By 1992, as the feds built cases against the Outfit\u2019s top leaders, Patrick agreed to cooperate. Almost immediately, FBI agents and federal prosecutors began grilling him about his time in the Outfit.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cSome days you\u2019d feel sorry for him, like he was your grandfather, walking with a cane, slumped over,\u201d recalled Mark Vogel, a former federal prosecutor who questioned Patrick in preparation for his trial testimony. \u201cAnd then other times he would look you in the eye, and if looks could kill, you\u2019d be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum, and the John Binder Collection (Vanessa Saba, special to ProPublica)\n \n\n \n \n \n
And as other lawyers and law enforcement officials had found, Patrick was practiced at evasion. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t get a direct answer out of this guy,\u201d Vogel said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Patrick was worried that other Outfit figures would kill him when word of his cooperation got out. He had good reason. On May 17, 1992, a bomb exploded outside the home of his daughter, Sharon, blowing a crater in her driveway, destroying her fiance\u2019s BMW and shattering the windows of neighboring homes.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Over the course of several weeks, Lenny Patrick confirmed what informants had told the FBI for years: His gambling operations in Lawndale were rarely disturbed because he paid off politicians and police, who did favors for him and top Outfit leaders.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Eventually, the federal officials started asking Patrick about old murders. Chris Gair, another former federal prosecutor who had convinced Patrick to cooperate, said they told Patrick \u201cno one was going to believe he\u2019d never killed anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cHe would deny stuff and then I would dig up a 45- or 50-year-old FBI report, and he would be livid,\u201d Gair said. <\/p>\n\n
The federal officials went back to the first murder Patrick had been suspected of, the 1932 shooting of Herman Glick. Patrick confessed that he\u2019d done it, just as Glick had said before he died.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
By the end of the summer of 1992, Patrick had confessed to being involved in six murders and offered new information about another. Officials suspected there were likely other killings. But they said they went through all the files they could find that included evidence or witness testimony pointing to Patrick.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Gair and Vogel both said they don\u2019t remember FBI officials or Patrick mentioning Lewis.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
If Patrick had brought up the Lewis murder, \u201cthe FBI agents would have been on top of that like a duck on a junebug,\u201d Vogel said. \u201cWhen you have the mob go into city government, that is a big deal. That\u2019s not just an ordinary mob murder.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Vogel noted that, as much as he and other officials wanted Patrick to own up to his past, they had to stay focused on building cases against Outfit leaders who were still operating.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cThe only way to do that is to go through the lower guys,\u201d Vogel said. \u201cPriests and ministers and rabbis are not going to be the ones involved in this. The ones who can tell you firsthand what happened are the criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In September 1992, Patrick testified in the trial of longtime Outfit leader Gus Alex and a former member of his own street crew on extortion and racketeering charges. To establish his credibility, Patrick discussed his criminal background. He described bribing police officers, the late 24th Ward boss Arthur X. Elrod and other \u201caldermen.\u201d Asked which aldermen, Patrick claimed he couldn\u2019t remember their names.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
Patrick again admitted his involvement in six murders.<\/p>\n\n
Sam Adam, a defense attorney for Alex, responded by portraying Patrick as a sociopath and noting he had admitted to lying under oath before.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWho else did you kill?\u201d Adam asked.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s about it,\u201d Patrick said. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cWell, anybody \u2014 anybody you can think of you haven\u2019t told us about yet?\u201d <\/p>\n\n
\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t,\u201d Patrick told him. \u201cI run out of cemeteries.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
But Adam wasn\u2019t the only one who thought the government\u2019s star witness was downplaying his history. Gair said an attorney who had represented other crime figures approached him following Patrick\u2019s testimony about the six murders.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cHe came up afterward and said, \u2018I believe your witness misplaced a decimal point,\u2019\u201d Gair said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n Prison Time\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n Patrick\u2019s cooperation helped prosecutors win convictions of Alex and other Outfit leaders. In return for his help, Patrick was given a seven-year sentence and sent to Sandstone federal prison in Minnesota.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In prison, Patrick hit it off with another inmate. Daniel Longoria Sr. was in his early 50s, and serving 16 years for dealing heroin and cocaine in Portland, Oregon. A former college psychology student, Longoria fancied himself a jailhouse lawyer.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
There is no statute of limitations on murder, and some prosecutors and investigators in Chicago were outraged that Patrick might not be held to account for the murders he\u2019d testified about in federal court. In February 1994, Cook County prosecutors secured indictments against Patrick for three of those killings, which occurred between 1947 and 1953.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Patrick\u2019s mugshot in 1994, when he was indicted for murder, from the Chicago Tribune.\n \n\n \n \n \n
Patrick turned to Longoria. In return for help with his case, Patrick signed a document promising to give Longoria \u201ca portion\u201d of the proceeds from a book about his life he was thinking about writing.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
But Patrick likely didn\u2019t know that Longoria was in the federal witness protection program, or that he had repeatedly served as an informant to get his sentence reduced.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In June 1995, Longoria got in touch with the organized crime division of the Cook County state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office. He said he had collected statements from Patrick about the six murders he had discussed in federal court.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In addition, Longoria\u2019s lawyer told county officials that his client could provide details of other killings he had learned about from Patrick.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office was interested. Over the next few months, officials from the office spoke on the phone repeatedly with Longoria. In two calls, Longoria said Patrick had discussed the unsolved 1983 hit on Dorfman, the insurance agent who had worked closely with the Teamsters. Longoria said Patrick told him one of the killers was the former West Side police officer who had been questioned about the Lewis killing, according to a state\u2019s attorney report summarizing the call.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The information Longoria passed on was detailed and jarring \u2014 and if true, would offer fresh leads in some of the most notorious open murder cases in Chicago history. But he wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
On Oct. 4, 1995, Longoria recounted a conversation he said he\u2019d had with Patrick about Ben Lewis. According to a report of the call, Longoria said the alderman had been killed because unauthorized horse race betting was run out of his office. Patrick had sent a Chicago police officer to kill Lewis, according to Longoria \u2014 and it was the same officer who had allegedly helped carry out the Dorfman hit. The officer and his partner \u201ctied up, chained, tortured and killed Lewis,\u201d Longoria told the officials.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Longoria\u2019s account raised questions of its own. According to the original police and coroner\u2019s reports, Lewis was found in handcuffs \u2014 not rope or chains. The reports did not mention signs of torture.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Investigators couldn\u2019t know whether Patrick or Longoria had mixed up the details, or if one of them was lying.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Wayne A. Johnson, then a detective in the Chicago Police Department\u2019s intelligence section, worked with the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office on the Patrick investigation. After participating in a call with Longoria, Johnson found him credible.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cThis guy\u2019s talking a hundred miles an hour \u2014 you can tell he\u2019s scared to death,\u201d Johnson recalled.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
But Johnson said his investigation was cut short. Longoria was transferred to another prison. The police brass weren\u2019t interested in the old murders. And the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office decided not to pursue any cases beyond the three that Patrick had already been charged with.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cIt was a lost opportunity,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWhatever Lenny gave up on the witness stand, there was a lot more to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
In 1996, after doctors concluded Patrick was showing signs of dementia, a Cook County judge found Patrick unfit for trial on the three decades-old murders of his former associates. The charges were dismissed.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
After his release from prison, Patrick spent his last years living in the northern suburb of Morton Grove. He died in 2006 at the age of 92.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n Inside Information\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n I was not the only person who heard that the retired West Side officer might be connected to the Lewis murder. Joe Kolman, a writer based in New York, was doing research for a possible novel seven years ago when he came across old news stories about Lewis. He was fascinated and outraged that the case had never been solved.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Kolman had his own connection to Chicago politics. His family has roots on the West Side, and his father and uncle were politically involved lawyers. When Kolman\u2019s father died in 1967, Mayor Daley attended the funeral, making sure to shake Kolman\u2019s hand before he left.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Joe Kolman shows research about Lewis in 2019 at his home in New York.\n Andrew Seng, special to ProPublica\n \n\n \n \n \n
\u201cI was 12 years old, and I couldn\u2019t stop staring at the wattles on his chin,\u201d Kolman said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
When Kolman started gathering information on Lewis, a former politician told him that the word was out that a cop was involved. Kolman\u2019s contact even gave him a name. It was the retired West Side police officer who had been questioned in the early days of the investigation \u2014 the same officer whose name had been raised by Longoria.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Kolman called him. The retired officer said he had been friends with Lewis, but denied having anything to do with his murder. Almost six decades after the killing, the retired officer said it was unsafe for him to discuss it. Still, he made Kolman a promise: He would leave him a note revealing who did it \u2014 but Kolman wouldn\u2019t get it until the officer died.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
By the time the retired officer called me, I\u2019d learned that Longoria, the jailhouse informant, had linked him to two notorious murders 20 years apart. In a series of phone conversations, he said that was \u201ccrazy\u201d and \u201cbullshit.\u201d He said he knew nothing about the hit on Dorfman other than what he\u2019d read in the newspapers. When I asked him about Lewis\u2019 murder, he told me what he\u2019d told Kolman: He and his family could be in danger if he discussed what he knew.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
But the retired officer said he wanted me to know some background about Lewis and the West Side. He asked that I not use his name, noting he had never been charged in connection with the murder.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Lewis, he said, had been picked to take over the 24th Ward because its political and organized crime leaders knew they needed someone Black as a front. They paid for Lewis\u2019 house, car and clothes, he said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cThey took care of him,\u201d the former officer said. \u201cHe lived pretty good. He golfed a lot. They took him to country clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Because he had spent time with Lewis, the former officer said, he was taken to police headquarters for questioning hours after the body was found. He denied having anything to do with the murder, and a polygraph test found that he wasn\u2019t lying, he said. News stories at the time offered a similar narrative, though they didn\u2019t identify the officer by name.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cIf I had flunked the test, they would have charged me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n
He said his former colleague Gilbert, the sergeant who was also questioned in the case, had called Lewis the evening of the murder to talk about a tavern owner who had complained to the alderman about Gilbert demanding payoffs. But the retired officer said he didn\u2019t think Gilbert was involved in killing Lewis.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The retired officer told me he had never met Patrick. And he was just as insistent that Patrick had no part in the murder. <\/p>\n\n
He said he hoped he had been helpful.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Not everything he said added up. While he admitted he knew West Side underworld figures, he distanced himself from Patrick. Yet Patrick obviously knew the officer well enough to mention his name to Longoria. That is, if Longoria was telling the truth.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\n A Possible Clue\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n After Kolman first reached out to her, Sharon Patrick began sharing some of her recollections about her father. Eventually, she agreed to sit down with Kolman and me.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Now in her 70s, Sharon Patrick calls people \u201cdear\u201d and \u201chon,\u201d and enjoys talking about the feral cats she feeds on the South Side. She often pauses, speaking carefully, when discussing her father. She said their relationship was sometimes rocky.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
From an early age, she said, she understood \u201che was a big shot and he controlled certain areas of Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Sharon Patrick also saw another side of her father, who often gave food or rent money to struggling neighbors. \u201cA lot of people would call him if they needed help,\u201d she said. \u201cHe had a lot of compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
After her father went to prison in the 1990s, Sharon Patrick embraced the idea of working with him on his book project. They never finished, but she thought she still had notes from their conversations.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
Soon after our interview, Kolman was helping Sharon Patrick dig through her old files when they found some of those notes. On a sheet of lined paper, she had scribbled two sentences about the slain alderman: \u201cLewis was killed by certain people all he knows. He was giving information to FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum and Chicago History Museum\/Getty Images (Vanessa Saba, special to ProPublica)\n \n\n \n \n \n
If Lewis was suspected of sharing information with federal agents, that could very well have gotten him killed. Still, there is no public evidence that Lewis talked to the FBI. In 40 pages of FBI reports on Lewis and more than 900 pages on Patrick that I obtained through open records requests, nothing suggests Lewis was an informant.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
One thing was clear: Over the course of more than three decades, officials with the Police Department, the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office and the FBI all gathered information that connected Patrick to the 24th Ward and to Lewis. Yet there is no evidence that those agencies ever talked to Patrick himself about the case.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Mourners view Lewis\u2019 casket during his wake on the West Side.\n Chicago Daily News\/Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago History Museum\n \n\n \n \n \n
\n Seeking Justice\n <\/h3>\n \n \n \n At the time, Lewis\u2019 murder was widely seen among Black Chicagoans as a message of what would happen to anyone who challenged the white political bosses, said Mitchell, the former precinct captain. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t obey orders,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cIt was a power struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n
After spending years looking into the murder, Kolman reached the same conclusion. Patrick was almost certainly involved, he said, but the white politicians he worked with may have signed off on the murder.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cMaybe it was clear there would have been no consequences for doing this thing,\u201d said Kolman, who has written a book manuscript and is finishing a documentary about the case<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n \n \nAfter Lewis\u2019 murder, the West Side remained under the grip of absentee political leadership. No West Side ward elected an alderman independent of the machine until 1979, when Danny Davis won the 29th Ward seat. In the 24th Ward, a succession of Black aldermen served at the pleasure of Horwitz, the de facto ward boss, through the 1970s.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n U.S. Rep. Danny Davis at his office on Chicago\u2019s West Side in 2019. Davis was a graduate student and learning about Chicago politics when he first met Lewis.\n Tonika Johnson for ProPublica\n \n\n \n \n \n
Decades of failed government programs and private sector neglect have left North Lawndale and other West Side neighborhoods reeling from disinvestment<\/a>. Across the city, police solve only a fraction of homicides, most of which involve Black victims, and community leaders continue to demand greater police accountability.<\/p>\n \n \n \nAbout 20 detectives are currently assigned to the Chicago Police Department\u2019s cold case unit. It doesn\u2019t follow a strict protocol in deciding when to reexamine an old case, said department spokesperson Luis Agostini. But given its modest size, he said, \u201csolvability\u201d is a key consideration.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
The last activity in the Lewis investigation came in 2000, Agostini said, when a detective made a request for case records.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cWe encourage anyone who may have any information related to the murder of Alderman Benjamin Lewis to reach out to Area Detectives,\u201d Agostini wrote in an email, noting police could also be contacted anonymously at CPDtip.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n \n \nMost of the people who might have known what happened to Lewis are ailing or dead; both Gilbert and Horwitz are deceased. Others still don\u2019t want to talk about it. But at a minimum, a new inquiry could reexamine the earlier investigation, laying out what was done and what wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \n \n \n
\u201cI think it would be a revelation,\u201d Davis said. \u201cNot just in terms of looking at what may have happened, but also understanding that as things change, they also have a tendency to very much remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n
This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Mick Dumke <\/p>\n
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that inv…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52964"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52964"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58329,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52964\/revisions\/58329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}