Murray Humphreys: The Quiet Fixer Who Actually Ran Chicago for the Mob
Chicago 1960. While Al Capone rotted in prison from syphilis while Tony Aardo hid in his mansion while Sam Gianana faced congressional hearings on national television, Murray Humphre walked out of federal court a free man. Again, the cameras did not chase him. The reporters did not know his name.
And that is exactly how he wanted it. Because in the Chicago outfit, the real power was not the guy with the gun. It was the guy who made sure the gun was never needed. This is the story of the Welshman who spoke Italian, the fixer who owned city hall, and the mobster so smart he died wealthy, free, and silent.
Luan Morris Humphre was born in 1899 on the west side of Chicago in a neighborhood where his Welsh name might as well have been a death sentence. His parents, fresh off the boat from Wales, had landed in Little Italy, not by choice. They were poor. Little Italy was cheap. And young Luwellyn, who everyone called Murray, learned Italian before he learned proper English. Think about that.
a Welsh kid in an Italian neighborhood at the turn of the century when Chicago was carving itself into ethnic territories like a butcher’s diagram. The Irish had their wards, the Poles had their streets, the Italians had their rackets, and here was this skinny Welsh kid speaking Italian like he was born in Sicily.
By the time Murray was 10, he was running errands for neighborhood bookies. By 12, he was collecting gambling debts. By 15, he understood something most men never learn. Violence is expensive. Violence attracts attention. Violence gets you arrested or killed. But a well-placed bribe, a quiet word to the right alderman, a favor for a cop who likes to gamble, that’s power.
Murray’s first arrest came at 17. Robbery. He was caught cold. Witnesses everywhere. Evidence solid. Any other kid would have done time. Murray walked. His lawyer, a connected political operative who owed favors to the Italian crew Murray worked for, got the case dismissed on a technicality. Murray watched that entire process like a student taking notes.
He learned the Chicago way. The judges were for sale. The cops were for sale. The prosecutors were for sale. And if you were smart enough to know who to pay and when, you could do anything. Murder, extortion, robbery, it did not matter. The law was just another business expense. By his early 20s, Murray Humphre had perfected the art of corruption.
He didn’t carry a gun. He didn’t break legs. He didn’t need to. He carried a briefcase full of cash and a head full of leverage. He knew which alderman was sleeping with his secretary. He knew which judge owed money to the bookies. He knew which cop’s kid needed a job. And that made him more valuable than any hitman in Chicago.
Because hitmen are a dime a dozen. Every neighborhood had a tough guy willing to kill for a hundred bucks. But a man who could make a murder charge disappear, a man who could fix a trial before it even started, that man was irreplaceable. Murray also understood something the Italian mobsters around him didn’t. He understood that being an outsider was an advantage.
The Italians couldn’t fully trust him because he wasn’t Italian. That meant he could never be the boss. He’d never be the guy everyone wanted to kill. He’d never be the name in the newspapers. He’d be the guy behind the boss, the adviser, the consiliary, the man who made the machine run. And in Chicago, that was the safest place to be.
By 1925, Murray Humphre had a reputation. The outfit called him the hump. Not because of any physical deformity, but because he was the man you went over, the bridge between the street and city hall. If you needed a judge bought, you went to the hump. If you needed a cop transferred, you went to the hump.
If you needed a union contract fixed, a politician elected, a tax assessment reduced, the hump was your man. And then he met Al Capone. Al Capone didn’t trust easily. He was Italian. He was Sicilian in spirit, if not in blood. He believed in family, in blood oaths, in oma. So when a skinny Welshman walked into his office in the mid1 1920s and started explaining how to buy every judge in Cook County, Capone should have laughed him out of the room.
He didn’t because Capone understood something most gangsters didn’t. He understood that the outfit’s biggest threat wasn’t rival gangs. It was the law. And Murray Humphre knew how to neutralize the law without firing a shot. Capone put the hump on the payroll. Not as muscle, not as a driver or a bodyguard, but as the outfit’s political fixer.
Humphrey’s job was simple. Keep Capone out of prison. Keep the beer flowing. Keep the cops looking the other way. And Humphre delivered. During Prohibition, when federal agents were raiding speak easys across Chicago, Capone’s operations ran almost untouched. Why? Because Humphre had half the police department on the pad.
Beat cops got $20 a week to ignore deliveries. Sergeants got $100 to reassign raids. Captains got $500 to lose evidence. Judges were even cheaper. A favorable ruling in a bootlegging case cost $1,000. A dismissal cost $2,500. Humphre kept meticulous records, not for the government, but for himself. He knew exactly who owed what, and he made sure everyone paid.
Capone loved it. Here was a guy who could do what machine gun Jack McGurn couldn’t. McGurn could kill a rival. Humphre could make the murder trial disappear. McGurn was a weapon and Humphre was a shield. The trust between them solidified after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929. Seven members of Bugs Moran’s northside gang were lined up against a garage wall and executed. The public was horrified.
The press went insane. The Chicago Police Department, bought and paid for as they were, couldn’t ignore this one. The heat was too intense. Capone needed someone to manage the fallout. Not with bullets, with bribes. Humphre went to work. Within weeks, key witnesses suddenly couldn’t remember what they’d seen.
Evidence disappeared from police lockups. The primary investigator got transferred to a desk job in a quiet precinct. No one was ever convicted for the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Capone’s involvement was suspected but never proven. And Murray Humphre was the reason why. But Capone made mistakes. He loved the spotlight. He loved the headlines.
He loved being Scarface, public enemy number one. He talked too much, spent too much, showed off too much. And in 1931, the federal government nailed him. Not for murder, not for bootlegging, for tax evasion. Humphre had warned him, “Pay your taxes, show some income, declare something, anything.” Capone ignored him.
And in October 1931, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. The other top Capone lieutenants followed. Frank Niti, Jake Guzzk, Paul Ra, all of them did time in the 1930s and the 1940s. Some for tax evasion, some for extortion, some for violations of the man act. Murray Humphre never touched. He filed taxes.
He declared income from legitimate businesses. He kept his name out of the papers. He attended parties with politicians and judges, not gangsters. He lived in a nice house in the suburbs, not a fortress in Cicero. When the feds came sniffing around, they found nothing. Humphre had insulated himself perfectly.
He was a labor consultant, a business manager, a political operative. Sure, the FBI suspected he was dirty. Everyone knew he was dirty. But suspicion isn’t evidence. And by the time Capone was shipped off to Alcatraz in 1934, dying slowly from syphilis, Murray Humphre had become indispensable to the outfit. Capone’s era taught Chicago’s mob a valuable lesson.
Flashy gangsters go to prison. Quiet fixers die in their beds. Humphre had a simple philosophy. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. He repeated that to young mobsters who wanted to solve every problem with a baseball bat or a 38 revolver. Humphre would shake his head, light a cigar, and explain the math.
You kill a man, you create problems. The family wants revenge. The police have to investigate, even if they are on the take. The press writes stories. Federal agents start asking questions. And worst of all, you lose a potential asset. Dead men cannot be bribed, blackmailed, or controlled.
But a compromised man, a man who owes you money or fears exposure or wants a favor, is useful forever. Humphre’s toolkit had three main instruments: bribery, blackmail, and political manipulation. He wielded them with surgical precision. Bribery was the simplest. Everyone had a price. Police wanted cash. Judges wanted campaign contributions.
Alderman wanted construction contracts for their brother-in-law. Humphre kept a mental ledger of every public official in Cook County. He knew who was greedy, who was desperate, who was stupid enough to take an envelope in a public restaurant. One story, probably apocryphal, but widely believed, claims Humphre once bribed a jury foreman by offering to pay off his mortgage.
Not cash, not a bag of money. A legitimate bank transaction arranged through a shell company that cleared the man’s debt. Legal and traceable only with an audit no one would ever conduct. The foreman then voted not guilty. Blackmail was more elegant. Humphre employed private investigators, offduty police, even newspaper reporters to gather dirt.
He knew which politicians were having affairs, which judges were gambling addicts, which prosecutors were secretly gay in an era when that could destroy a career. He did not use this information recklessly. Humphre was not a thug waving threats. He was a businessman making offers. You help us with this case and we will make sure those photos never surface.
You assign this construction contract to our guy and we will forget about that weekend you spent in Milwaukee with your secretary. The leverage was never explicit. Humphre rarely made direct threats. He simply let people know that he knew, and that was enough. Political manipulation was his masterpiece.
Humphre understood that Chicago ran on a machine, the Democratic machine controlled by ward bosses, precinct captains, and patronage armies. Elections were not won by the candidate with the best ideas. They were won by the organization that could deliver the most votes. Humphre helped deliver those votes.
The outfit controlled unions and unions controlled workers and workers voted how they were told. Humphre also controlled gambling operations in key wards which meant he employed hundreds of people who owed their jobs to the outfit. Those people voted how they were told. Two, by the 1940s, Humphre had relationships with mayors, governors, and congressmen.
not friendships, relationships, business arrangements. The outfit would deliver votes and campaign contributions. In return, the politicians would look the other way when the outfit ran gambling, prostitution, lone sharking, and labor racketeering. The most famous Humphre story, repeated by FBI agents and mob historians alike, involves his pet parrot.
Humphre owned a parrot and allegedly spent weeks teaching it to say one phrase, “Fuck the FBI.” Whenever federal agents came to his house, the parrot would scream it over and over. Humphre would shrug, smile, and say, “I can’t control what the bird says.” It was a joke, but it was also a message. You can surveil me, wiretap me, follow me, and you will get nothing because I’m smarter than you.
And he was. The FBI hated Murray Humphre. They knew he was the outfit’s political mastermind. They knew he fixed trials, bribed officials, and corrupted the entire Cook County political machine. But they couldn’t prove it. Why did the outfit need Humphre more than any hitman? Because hitmen are funible. You can always find a guy willing to kill.
But a man who can make murder charges disappear, who can rig a trial, who can get a governor on the phone, that man is irreplaceable. In the Chicago outfit, Murray Humphre was irreplaceable. By 1943, the outfit’s leadership had changed. Capone was gone, dying in Florida. Frank Niti, Capone’s successor, put a bullet in his head rather than go to prison.
Paul Ra and Tony Aardo were running things now and Murray Humphre was still there quietly pulling strings. Aardo was different from Capone. Capone loved attention. Aardo avoided it. Capone wore silk suits and fedoras. Aardo dressed like a suburban businessman. Capone gave interviews to reporters.
Aardo never spoke to the press. In other words, Aiccardo understood what Humphre had been preaching for years. Stay quiet. Stay invisible. Let the lawyers and politicians take the heat. Humphre became Aardo’s consiliary, his trusted adviser. Not because they were friends. They weren’t. Aardo was a killer. Humphre hated violence.
But they respected each other. Aiccardo knew Humphre was the smartest man in the outfit. Humphre knew Aardo was the only boss disciplined enough to listen. Together they ran the most profitable criminal organization in America. But in 1943, Humphre made a rare mistake. He got involved in the Hollywood extortion scheme.
The scheme was brilliant. The outfit through frontmen Willie Boff and George Brown had taken control of the International Alliance of theatrical Stage Employees, the union that controlled movie projectionists. If projectionists went on strike, movie theaters went dark. If movie theaters went dark, Hollywood studios lost millions.
Humphre, Paul Ra, and other top outfit members extorted the studios for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pay us or we’ll shut down every theater in America. The studios paid. It worked for years until Willie Boff got caught for tax evasion and flipped. Boff testified to everything. the extortion, the bribes, the threats.
He named names. Humphre, Ra, Louie Campa, Phil DeAndrea, Charles Gio, all were indicted. In 1943, they were convicted. Humphre was sentenced to 8 years in federal prison. He was 44 years old. For the first time in his life, the fixer couldn’t fix his way out. But even in prison, Humphre remained powerful.
He was sent to the federal penitentiary in Levvenworth, Kansas. Inside, he continued advising the outfit. Letters went back and forth, coded messages hidden in discussions about family and business. Humphre told Aardo how to manage the political machine, which judges to pay off, which politicians to support.
He also worked on getting himself released early. Humphre had always been a long-term thinker. He knew that if the outfit could get a politician into the right position, that politician could commute sentences, grant pardons, or pressure parole boards. In 1947, Humphre and the other convicted mobsters filed for parole. They were denied.
But in August of 1947, something unexpected happened. President Harry Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark, personally intervened. The parole board was pressured to reconsider. In some accounts, they were bribed. In August of 1947, Murray Humphre and the others were parrolled. After serving less than 4 years of their 8-year sentences, the public was outraged.
Newspapers screamed about corruption. Congressional hearings were held, but Humphre was free, and he immediately returned to Chicago to reclaim his position. By 1949, he was back in his office. His briefcase full of cash, his rolodex full of judges and aldermen. He’d survived prison. He’d survived a conviction.
And he’d learned a valuable lesson. Even when the system works, it doesn’t really work because the system was corrupt from top to bottom. And as long as you had the right connections, you could survive anything. Tony Aardo welcomed him back. The outfit was expanding. Las Vegas was opening up. Labor unions needed to be controlled.
Politicians needed to be elected. And Murray Humphre, the hump, the Welshman who spoke Italian, was the only man who could do it all. The 1950s were Murray Humphrey’s golden age. While other mobsters were getting indicted, arrested, and exposed, Humphre operated in the shadows, more powerful than ever.
By this point, he was not just a fixer. He was the architect of the most sophisticated political corruption machine America had ever seen. Chicago’s first ward was the key. The first ward included the Loop, the city’s downtown business district. It also included the Italian neighborhoods where the outfit’s power base lived.
Control the first ward and you controlled Chicago politics. Humphre controlled the first ward through two men, John Darko, the alderman, and Pat Marcy, the ward secretary. Darko was the public face, the guy who showed up to city council meetings and ribbon cutings. Marcy was the real power, the man who decided which judges got elected, which cops got promoted, which city contracts got awarded.
And both men reported to Murray Humphre. Humphre did not need an office in city hall. He had something better. He had the alderman and the ward secretary in his pocket. When the outfit needed a zoning variance for a new nightclub, Marcy made it happen. When they needed a favorable ruling from a judge, Darko made a phone call.
When they needed the police to ignore gambling operations, the Ward organization handled it. This was not small-time corruption. This was systemic. The first ward elected judges to the Cook County Circuit Court. Judges who owed their positions to the Democratic machine, which meant they owed their positions to the outfit.
Once on the bench, these judges ruled favorably in mob cases, charges dismissed, evidence suppressed, light sentences. It was a perfect circle. The outfit controlled the ward. The ward controlled the elections. The elections controlled the courts. And the courts protected the outfit. Humphre also expanded the outfits influence beyond Chicago.
In the 1950s, Las Vegas was booming. Casinos were going up on the strip, financed by Teamster pension funds that the outfit controlled through Jimmy Hoffa. Humphre helped orchestrate the skimming operations that funneled millions of untaxed casino profits back to Chicago. The scheme was simple. Casinos reported lower revenues than they actually earned.
The unreported cash, the skim, was counted in hidden rooms by trusted outfit members, then transported to Chicago in suitcases. The money was then distributed to the bosses, Aicardo, Ra, Gianana, and Humphre himself. Humphrey’s role was ensuring that the skim never got detected. He bribed Nevada gaming officials. He placed outfit loyalists in key casino positions.
He made sure the cash flow never stopped. By the mid 1950s, Humphre was a millionaire. He owned a 400 acre estate in rural Oklahoma, a sprawling property with horses, a lake, and total privacy. He also owned homes in Chicago, Miami, and Key Biscane, Florida. He drove Cadillacs. He wore tailored suits.
He vacationed in Europe, and the FBI could not touch him. Agents followed him constantly. They photographed him meeting with politicians, judges, and union leaders. They wiretapped his phones, though Humphre was careful never to say anything incriminating. They investigated his finances, but Humphre declared income from legitimate businesses, consulting fees, and real estate investments.
On paper, Murray Humphre was a successful businessman. In reality, he was the political mastermind of the Chicago outfit, the man who made Las Vegas profitable, the fixer who owned city hall. But the 1950s golden age was about to end because in 1957 the mob made a catastrophic mistake and Murray Humphre for once was not there to stop it.
November 14th, 1957, Appalachin, New York, a small town in the southern tier, population barely 1,000. That day, 63 mafia bosses from across the country gathered at the estate of mobster Joseph Barbara for a national commission meeting. It was supposed to be secret. It was not. A New York State trooper noticed an influx of expensive cars with outofstate plates.
He became suspicious. He called for backup. When police raided the estate, mafia bosses fled into the woods like teenagers at a busted keg party. Some were caught, others escaped. All of them were humiliated. The Appalachin meeting was a disaster. For decades, the FBI had denied the existence of a national crime syndicate.
Jed Garhoover insisted organized crime was local, not coordinated. Appalachin proved him wrong. On national television, Americans wa watched as mobsters with names like Veto Genevvesi, Carlo Gambino, and Sam Gianana were questioned by police. The FBI’s priorities changed overnight. Hoover, embarrassed and furious, launched a massive investigation into organized crime.
Wiretaps increased. Surveillance intensified. For the first time, the mob was in real trouble. Murray Humphre did not attend Appalachin. He had advised Tony Aardo not to go and Aardo listened. Sam Gianana did go. Humphre had warned them, “A national meeting is a target.
Too many bosses in one place, too much attention, too much risk. But the commission wanted to discuss narcotics, territory disputes, and the future of the mob. They thought Barbara’s estate was secure. They were wrong. Humphre watched the news coverage from his estate in Oklahoma, shaking his head.
This was exactly what he had spent 30 years trying to prevent. Publicity, exposure, headlines. The mob worked best in the shadows. Appalachin dragged them into the spotlight. And now the federal government was coming. Robert F. Kennedy, a young, ambitious senator from Massachusetts, saw Appalachin as an opportunity. He had been investigating labor racketeering for years.
Now with proof of a national crime syndicate, he had the ammunition to launch a full-scale war on organized crime. In 1958, Kennedy became chief counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, better known as the Mlelen Committee. His targets included Jimmy Hawa, Sam Gian Kana, and other top mobsters.
Murray Humphre knew his name would come up. He had been fixing labor unions for decades. He had bribed Teamster officials, controlled union elections, and embezzled pension funds. The Mlen committee had evidence, witnesses, documents, and in 1958, Murray Humphre received a subpoena.
For the first time in his career, the hump could not hide. He was about to be humiliated on national television by a Kennedy who hated everything he represented. Chapter 7. Humiliated on national television. The Senate Caucus Room, Washington, DC. 1959. Murray Humphre sits at a witness table flanked by three lawyers in expensive suits.
Across from him, a panel of senators led by John Mlelen. Behind them, leaning forward like a boxer waiting for the bell, Robert F. Kennedy, the committee’s chief counsel. Kennedy had been waiting for this moment. For years, he had pursued the Chicago outfit, building cases against Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Gian Kana, and the entire corrupt machine that ran America’s labor unions.
Now he had Murray Humphre, the man who made it all work under oath on camera with nowhere to hide. Camera’s roll. America watches. Kennedy starts simple. Mr. Humphre, what is your occupation? Humphre leans into the microphone. His voice is calm, almost bored. I respectfully declined to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.
Kennedy does not blink. Have you ever been employed by the Chicago outfit? I respectfully declined to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me. Are you acquainted with Anthony Aardo? I respectfully declined to answer. Have you ever bribed a public official? I respectfully declined to answer.
It goes on like that for hours. Question after question, decline after decline. Humphre invokes the Fifth Amendment 37 times in a single session. He does not fidget. He does not sweat. He sits there stone-faced, reciting the same phrase over and over like a mantra. Kennedy grows frustrated. He knows Humphre is guilty.
He has witnesses who will testify that Humphre controlled labor unions in Chicago for decades. He has financial records showing payments from mobc controlled businesses to Humphrey’s shell companies. He has former associates granted immunity who described meetings where Humphre discussed bribing judges and fixing trials.
But Humphre himself says nothing. And without his testimony, without his confession, the evidence is circumstantial enough to embarrass him, not enough to convict him. Bobby Kennedy tries a different approach. He stops asking questions and starts making speeches. He calls Humphre a corruptor of democracy, a parasite feeding on honest working people, a coward hiding behind the Constitution while destroying everything it is supposed to protect.
Humphre sits there expressionless. He knows what this is. Political theater. Kennedy is building his reputation, positioning himself for a future run at the presidency. And Humphre is the perfect villain, the shadowy mob fixer, the man who represents everything corrupt about American politics.
But Humphre also knows that as long as he keeps his mouth shut, Kennedy cannot touch him. The Fifth Amendment protects him. And even if it did not, talking would be suicide because testifying would destroy everything. If Humphre named the judges he bribed, the alderman he controlled, the union officials he corrupted, the entire outfit political machine would collapse.
Politicians would distance themselves. Judges would recuse themselves. Union members would revolt. More importantly, the outfit would kill him. Omera was not just an Italian tradition. It was a survival strategy. You do not cooperate. You do not talk. You take the heat. You do the time. And you keep your mouth shut.
The mob takes care of its own, but only if you stay loyal. Humphre had watched Willie Boff testify in the Hollywood extortion case. By off names gave up secrets and destroyed the outfit’s entire Hollywood operation. What did Bofoff get for his cooperation? Witness protection, a new name, a new life in Arizona.
In 1955, someone put a bomb under his truck and blew him to pieces. Humphre learned the lesson. Silence is survival. The committee refers Humphre for contempt of Congress. Even with fifth amendment protection, refusing to answer questions can be prosecuted if the committee believes the refusal is unjustified.
Humphre is indicted in 1959. He faces up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. His lawyers fight it. They argue the fifth amendment is absolute. The trial drags on for months and then conveniently Humphre’s health fails. He suffers a heart attack in 1960. His doctors testify that the stress from the trial is endangering his life.
The judge delays proceedings. Humphre recovers just enough to avoid prison, then relapses when the trial resumes. Is it real? The FBI suspects he is faking, but doctors sign affidavit. Medical records look legitimate and judges, many of whom owe favors to the outfit, are sympathetic. The contempt case fizzles.
Humphre is fined, but avoids jail. He returns to Chicago, weaker, but still free, but the damage is done. Humphrey’s name is public now. His face has been on television. The FBI knows who he is, what he does, how he operates. The invisibility he cultivated for 30 years is gone.
And Bobby Kennedy is not finished. In 1961, Kennedy becomes attorney general under his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He launches a new war on organized crime, targeting the Chicago outfit specifically. Wiretaps multiply. Surveillance intensifies. Informants are cultivated. And for the first time in his career, Murray Humphre can’t fix his way out. The world is changing.
And the Hump, the smartest guy the outfit ever had, knows his time is running out.