Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Hearing

1950-10-18

Internet Archive, scan of the printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois (Boston Public Library copy)

Kefauver Committee, Chicago: testimony of Theodore Roe (18 October 1950)

Theodore Roe told the committee in Chicago that his business was "Operating a policy wheel," that he had been a partner for about ten years with the Jones brothers, then living in Mexico, and that he had started working for them about twenty-two or twenty-three years earlier.

Date
1950-10-18
Kind
hearing
Source
Internet Archive, scan of the printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois (Boston Public Library copy)
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Docket
Hearings, S. Res. 202 (81st Cong.), Part 5: Illinois (GPO 1951)
Rights
A work of the United States Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States. 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is of a GPO printing; Internet Archive marks it not in copyright.

Printed pages 743 to 749 of Part 5, in the session dated Wednesday, 18 October 1950. The first page number is inferred from the running heads in the OCR, which lack it; check the page images before citing a pinpoint. Roe was sworn by the chairman, Senator Kefauver, and appeared with his attorney, Edward J. Hess. Questions came from the chairman and from committee counsel George Robinson and Rudolph Halley.

Asked the nature of his business, Roe answered: “Operating a policy wheel.” He said, “I think that I have been a partner about 10 years,” and agreed that it was with the Jones brothers, who “are in Mexico.” He named the partners as “Clifford Davis, and he takes care of that business of the books; and the other is George Jones and Ed Jones and their mother, Harriet Jones, five partners.” He recalled one year in which the wheel was “around $800,000” ahead (the OCR garbles a second figure) and said, “I can’t recall, but the records will show.” He described the game as drawing twelve of seventy-eight numbers, and estimated the writers at “somewhere around 300 or 400.” Asked where the books were written, he said “all over in the colored belt, Twenty-third Street on out to Sixty-sixth, or something like that”; “colored belt” is his phrase and the committee’s. He said that Ed Jones had been kidnapped, “about 6 years ago, I think,” and that the brothers had left for Mexico about two weeks later.

On the wheel’s history he said: “I worked for the Jones brothers, and I guess from the time I started, it must have been about 22 or 23 years ago that I worked for them. But when they got indicted and were closed, they couldn’t bother with opening any more soon, and they gave me the privilege to go ahead and open up.” Asked why he was not indicted, he said: “Because I was just working.” He denied paying the police captain anything and said he knew nothing about a syndicate beyond gossip and the newspapers.

These are a witness’s sworn answers. The indictment of the Jones brothers that he mentions is not filed, and no record of it has been opened. In December he dated the kidnapping to 1946 (his second appearance). The committee did not charge him.

itemKefauver Committee hearings, Part 5: Illinois (1950–1951)Printed hearings of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Part 5, Illinois: testimony taken from September 1950 to January 1951, including Paul DeLucia, Louis Campagna, Anthony J. Accardo, and Joseph Aiuppa.itemKefauver Committee, Chicago: Theodore Roe's second testimony (evening of 19 December 1950)Recalled in December, Roe named his partners in the Maine-Idaho-Ohio policy wheel, said the earlier owners were the Jones brothers Edward, McKissick and George, and described the kidnapping of Edward Jones, which he dated to 1946, and a ransom of $100,000 paid by George Jones.itemKefauver Committee, Chicago: testimony of Edward P. Jones (evening of 19 December 1950)Edward P. Jones, living in Mexico City, told the committee he shared in the profits of the Maine-Idaho Club policy wheel, agreed that he had been convicted of an income-tax violation on income from the wheel, and described being kidnapped near Forty-third Street and South Parkway and held blindfolded for almost a week.itemKefauver Committee, Part 5, Exhibits 60 to 62: the Jones brothers' and Idaho-Maine Club's earnings and the Chicago policy-wheel chartAppendix exhibits printed at pages 1407 to 1409 of Part 5: a staff table of the gross and net earnings of the Jones Bros. and the Idaho and Maine Club from 1939 to June 1950, taken from records Theodore Roe furnished; a further table; and the staff chart of Chicago policy wheels, 1945 to 1950.