# Kefauver Part 11: Owney Madden in the testimony of Harry Stromberg and Frank Wiener (1950–1951)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/kefauver-p11-stromberg-wiener-on-madden-1950/

Pennsylvania hearings in which Harry Stromberg, indexed as alias Nig Rosen, said he saw Owney Madden at Hot Springs ("He lives there") but "never went to see" him, and a former state athletic commissioner said men including Madden pressed him to reinstate a boxer he had suspended about 1929 or 1930.

[Part 11](/items/kefauver-part-11-pennsylvania-1950/) of the Kefauver hearings prints the Pennsylvania sessions of 13–14 October 1950 and 19–20 February 1951. Owney Madden is named in two witnesses' testimony, read from the archive's OCR of the printed pages. Page numbers after 94 and 105 are taken from the OCR's running heads and may be off by a page.

Harry Stromberg, addressed in one session as "Mr. Rosen," is asked by counsel Mr. Halley whether he saw Owney Madden at Hot Springs. He answers, "Yes. He lives there," and that he talked to him (page 94). The Chairman later asks whether he knows "Owney Madden down at Hot Springs"; Stromberg says he does and that he visits Hot Springs "Mostly once a year" (page 245). Asked by Mr. Rice about going to see Madden, he answers: "I never went to see Owney Madden. Never went to see him," and that he went to "the only restaurant in that town and everybody congregates there" (pages 262–263).

Frank Wiener, a former chairman of the Pennsylvania athletic commission, testifies that after he suspended a boxer and said he would never fight in Philadelphia again, "Fellows like Duffey and Owney Madden, and those fellows from New York who were managers of" the boxer "did everything they could to me to try to make me reinstate him" (page 105). He dates the fight to "1929 or 1930." The OCR prints the boxer's name as "Camera"; the scan was not checked for this page, and the name is left as the OCR gives it.

This is sworn testimony about Madden by other men. Madden did not testify. Nothing here is a finding of the committee, and Wiener's account of pressure is his own.

## Sources

- U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/investigationofo11unit
- Full text of the volume (Internet Archive, OCR): https://archive.org/download/investigationofo11unit/investigationofo11unit_djvu.txt