# Kefauver Part 1-A: Senator Hunt's opening statement at Tampa (29 December 1950)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/kefauver-p1a-hunt-opening-tampa-1950-12-29/

The opening statement of the one-member subcommittee at Tampa, pp. 49-51, giving the committee's reasons for coming to the city, including a reference to the telephone numbers of Santo Trafficante, Sr. found among Jack Dragna's effects.

Senator Lester C. Hunt opened the Tampa hearing of 29 December 1950, held in the United States courthouse in Tampa, as a subcommittee of one under a designation by Chairman Kefauver. The statement runs across printed pages 49 to 51 of Part 1-A.

Hunt says the committee had noted criminal activity in other cities and states "tied in to some extent with individuals operating in Tampa." He says that when police seized the effects of Jack Dragna, "a notorious California hoodlum," they found "the telephone numbers of Santo Trafficante, Sr., and James Lumia," whom he describes as a recent victim of Tampa's gang murders. He says the Bureau of Narcotics found in Kansas City that Tampa criminals were "key figures" in the narcotic trade, that a weapon used in a Tampa killing had been traced to New Orleans, and that there was "reliable information" that much criminal business in Tampa was "hatched up in New Orleans." He also says the committee had issued subpoenas to Tampa residents who had "absented themselves."

The statement is the Senator's characterization, offered as the reason the committee came to Tampa. It is not testimony from a witness with personal knowledge. Hunt adds that being subpoenaed "should carry no implications of any kind" and that the committee "is not a prosecuting body." A telephone number in a seized address list is not a finding about the person who owned it.

## Sources

- U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/investigationofo01aunit
- Full text of the volume (Internet Archive, OCR): https://archive.org/download/investigationofo01aunit/investigationofo01aunit_djvu.txt