Lee Wentworth, former tax assessor for Broward County, was approached by Jake Lansky in 1949 and offered a $25,000 bribe. Lansky ostensibly represented the mob-run Colonial Inn and Club Greenacres, an illegal gambling joint.
Wentworth, according to historian Stuart McIver, slammed the door and went back into his house.
“Two or three nights later, strangers called,” McIver writes. “One showed Wentworth a shoebox and said: ‘We have $25,000 here. You know how these things end – either with a silver bullet or a silver dollar.’ ”
At that point, the assessor returned to his house while the men waited in their car. Wentworth came back with a shotgun. “I’m going to count to five,” he told the men in the car. “Then I’m going to start shooting.” The men drove off and never darkened his door again.
According to a report in the Las Vegas Sun, Jake Lansky was the brother of notorious organized crime figure Meyer Lansky. Meyer developed a gambling empire that stretched around the world, including in Las Vegas, Cuba and yes, South Florida. A prominent figure in the so-called Jewish Mob, he had a significant presence in Miami and Miami Beach.
Friends with Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano, Lansky was portrayed in films like The Godfather Part II, Bugsy and of course, Lansky.
Later in life, he made his home in Miami Beach, spending his final years in his Collins Avenue home. He died in 1983.
One of Meyer’s local pals — one who did not branch beyond Broward or merit movie portrayals — was our county’s own sheriff, Walter Clark. You may recognize the name of the most corrupt cop ever to serve here. He was charged with ensuring the safety of Rubin Stacy, infamously lynched in 1935 by a local mob who were tipped off to his transport route to a Miami court.
Sheriff Clark had deals with mobsters to protect illegal gambling activities everywhere in his jurisdiction. For example, at the Colonial Inn, just south of Gulfstream Park, he sent armed guards to protect the illegal casino and guard the armored cars. In exchange, Clark was allowed to tap into illegal activities himself.
The sheriff’s blind eye turned everywhere in Broward.
In the words of Sun-Sentinel writer Robert Nolin, “Slot machines, legal and otherwise, sounded their merry clatter everywhere: drugstores, filling stations, emporiums, even fishing camps. Those were the wild times. … More sophisticated gambling brazenly thrived in swank casinos or ‘carpet joints’ – so-called for their fancy appointments.”
In Hollywood City Hall, slots even operated in the bathroom.
In Sheriff Clark’s own Fort Lauderdale quarters, a numbers racket boomed. He further enriched himself through slots he controlled through the Broward Novelty Company.
Clark’s shady affiliations were not only with Lansky, but also known mobsters such as Frank Costello, Joe Adonis and Jimmy “Blue Eyes.”
Figures like the heroic Lee Wentworth were few and far between. Newspapers, however, began to cover complaints about the brazen crime. Community activists also tried to seek injunctions against various businesses.
Law enforcement in Fort Lauderdale eventually launched limited bookmaking citations. But Broward County and apparently even the State of Florida could do nothing.
It was up to a U.S. senator from Tennessee to finally shut things down. Sen. Estes Kefauver brought his Senate Crime Investigating Committee to Miami in 1950. Sheriff Clark might have thought he was out of the woods up in Broward.
But Kefauver nailed Clark, who was relieved of his office by Florida Gov. Fuller Warren.
Not our most savory time, but it might make for a good movie.
