# Kefauver Committee, Cleveland: testimony of Governor Frank J. Lausche (January 1951)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/kefauver-part-6-lausche-testimony-1951/

Ohio Governor Frank J. Lausche described the gambling clubs 'run by Cleveland men' that moved out of Cuyahoga County, among them the Mounds Club, Pettibone Club, Jungle Inn and Colony Club, and the state action he took to close them.

Printed pages 3 to 13 of Part 6, the first testimony of the Cleveland sittings. Governor Frank J. Lausche spoke from his experience as a municipal judge, a common pleas judge, mayor and governor.

He described gambling clubs that operated inside and outside Cuyahoga County, naming the Harvard Club, the Thomas Club and the Ohio Villa, and then "the Mounds Club in Lake County, Pettibone Club in Geauga County, the Jungle Inn in Trumbull County, and the Colony Club on the Ohio River, a large-scale operation with slot machines, roulette, crap tables, chuck-a-luck, horse-race betting, and every type of gambling in existence, run by Cleveland men." He said that as governor he called in the sheriffs and told them, "Close up these places," that the clubs closed "for a day or two, and then they would open," and that the state then acted to close them.

Graphs of the Jungle Inn, Pettibone and Mounds Club operations were received as exhibit 1; the schedule of exhibits lists them, but they are not printed in the volume. In the passages read, Lausche does not name the operators of the clubs. His account is testimony.

## Sources

- Internet Archive, scan of the printed hearings, Part 6: Ohio-Kentucky (Boston Public Library copy): https://archive.org/details/investigationofo06unit
- Full text (OCR) on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/download/investigationofo06unit/investigationofo06unit_djvu.txt