# Kefauver Part 4: testimony of Thomas B. Bash, former Jackson County sheriff (29 September 1950)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/kefauver-p4-bash-testimony-1950-09-29/

The former sheriff lists the cases that confronted him, including 'the Union Station massacre,' and says juries and witnesses were intimidated; Senator Kefauver places an FBI report on Charles Gargotta (1919 to 1947; 39 charges in Missouri) in the record as Exhibit 12. Pp. 147-152.

Thomas B. Bash, who says he was sheriff of Jackson County from 1933, testified on 29 September 1950 (pp. 147-152 of Part 4). At p. 152 he lists what confronted him, "the Union Station massacre" among them, and says juries and witnesses were intimidated; he says "We could have convicted Charlie Gargotta of murder if it hadn't been for the intimidation of our jurors." At p. 151 Senator Kefauver places an FBI report on Gargotta from 1919 to 1947 into the record as Exhibit 12 (appendix p. 415), saying it shows 39 different charges in Missouri.

The exhibit prints as an image of a table whose OCR is unreadable, so none of its entries is recorded here. Bash's dates are inconsistent in the OCR (p. 147 and p. 151). The shooting he recounts at pp. 148-149 is his account of an earlier affray and is not summarized. Statements about an uncharged or unconvicted person are the witness's.

## Sources

- U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/investigationofo04unit
- Full text of the volume (Internet Archive, OCR): https://archive.org/download/investigationofo04unit/investigationofo04unit_djvu.txt