Leonard Patrick

Leonard "Lenny" Patrick (October 6, 1913 – March 1, 2006) was Jewish-American organized crime figure affiliated with the Italian-American Chicago Outfit. Along with his partner David Yaras, he was one of the most active of the organized crime hitmen during the 1940s till the 1960s. Together with Yaras, he rose to become the leader of Jewish organized crime in Chicago. Patrick was involved in bookmaking and extortion, later becoming the highest-ranking organized crime informant in Chicago up until that time.

Biography Early life Patrick was born on 6 October 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Morris and Ester Patrick, both Jewish immigrants from England. His mother died when he was five, leaving his father unable to care for Patrick and his three brothers. They were placed in the care of an orphanage. He attended Shepard Grammar School, which he left after completing the seventh grade. He then got a job as a delivery boy.

Criminality In April 1932 Herman Glick was shot outside of a synagogue in Lawndale, Chicago. Before he died from his wounds Glick named Patrick as his killer. When the police succeeded in finding Patrick he refused to open his apartment door until the police started firing through it. Patrick was taken to Cook County Jail and brought before a grand jury which decided that there was not enough evidence to indict him for the murder.

Patrick's partner in crime was his fellow Jewish Chicagoan, David Yaras. They were particularly close, so much so that Yaras named one of his sons after Patrick. Lenny Yaras would go on to become one of Patrick's lieutenants. On 14 January 1944 Benjamin "Zukie the Bookie" Zuckerman, the boss of an independent gang in Lawndale, Chicago was murdered, with Yaras and Patrick considered the likely culprits. On 24 January 1946, Yaras, Patrick and William Block ambushed James Ragen at an intersection. They hid behind crates of fruit inside a stolen truck before firing at Ragen with shotguns when his car stopped at a traffic light. Both of Ragen's bodyguards were injured and Ragen himself was rushed to hospital where he later succumbed to his wounds. On 8 March 1947 all three were indicted on the charge of murdering Ragen. One witness named Yaras and Block as the shooters and Patrick as the getaway driver. Although on 3 April 1947 the indictment was dropped after one of the three witnesses was murdered and the two others refused to testify. The same trio would also be arrested for the shotgunning of Theodore Roe in August 1947. Yaras and Patrick were also suspected of involvement in the 1947 murder of Bugsy Siegel. He would later confess to the murders of Harry Krotish in 1948, Eddie Murphy in 1950, David Zatz in 1952, and Milton Glickman in 1953, all gambling rivals of Patrick.

Yaras and Patrick were suspects in the murder of Alderman Benjamin F. Lewis in February 1963, after the FBI received a tip from an informant that the duo had killed Lewis. Patrick was reportedly running a horse race betting operation out of Lawndale Restaurant, down the street from Lewis's constituency office. However neither were charged or even spoken to by the police and the murder remains unsolved to this day. The FBI considered Patrick as "undoubtedly responsible" for the murder of his one-time gambling partner Arthur "Boodie" Cowan, who was found in the trunk of his own car in 1967.

In 1992, Patrick agreed to become a government witness following his indictment for racketeering charges. His testimony would result in the conviction of Gus Alex and several other key figures involved in the city's extortion rackets. Up until that point, he was the highest-ranking Chicago mobster to cooperate with authorities. As a warning a small bomb was set off outside the home of his daughter. To establish his credibility as a witness, Patrick confessed to six murders, although the number is believed to be far higher. When asked during the trial if he had killed any other people he replied that he had not, as "I run out of cemeteries". In return for his cooperation, he was given a seven-year sentence and sent to Sandstone federal prison in Minnesota.

Jack Ruby Patrick had an acquaintance with Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald. His brother Jack Patrick was married to a distant cousin of Ruby. On 25 November 1963, a day after Ruby assassinated Oswald, Patrick was interviewed by the FBI after they received a tip that Patrick had run Ruby out of Chicago. The FBI interview report, records that Patrick was a "neighbourhood chum" of Ruby and that they attended the same school. It adds that Patrick "frequently saw Rubenstein [Ruby] in the neighbourhood and always spoke with him, as did everyone else who grew up in the West Side", but that they were not close friends. Patrick's denial to the FBI that Ruby was involved in organized crime was among the evidence the Warren Commission, charged with investigating Kennedy's assassination, cited for its assertion that "the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime".

He claimed that "I never was what you would call running around with him or anything like that. I knew of him. I knew him when he was a kid. He lived in the next block from me". However the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined that Ruby had called Patrick in the summer of 1963.