Charles Binaggio
Described on a Kansas City police list entered in the Senate record as a 'prominent political leader' reportedly involved in nation-wide gambling operations, and recorded there as found shot to death in a political club on 5 April 1950; a former police commissioner testified about two meetings with him in 1949.
- Died
- 1950
- Rights
- Biography on this page is limited to what the cited federal records state.
On the record
- 5 April 1950 — Exhibit 20 lists Charles Binaggio and Charles Gargotta as "found shot to death in political club at 718 Truman Road" (Kefauver Part 4, appendix p. 417).
- 20 July 1950 — Henry McKissick gave the address of the Fifteenth Street Club as "716 and 718 East Fifteenth Street. It is now known as Truman Road" (Kefauver Part 4-A, p. 355). The testimony does not say Binaggio was killed there.
- 28 September 1950 — Police commissioner Hampton Chambers testified that Binaggio asked to see him in early 1949, raised a gambling house called the State Line on Southwest Boulevard, and said Henry McKissick would represent him in police matters; Chambers said his knowledge of who ran the State Line was hearsay (Kefauver Part 4, pp. 41, 47-48).
The murder is unsolved in the sources filed, and no court record for Binaggio was located. The day of death is not settled by the filed records: the police list prints April 5, 1950, while in the same hearing volume committee counsel and witnesses, among them Chambers, put the killing on April 6, 1950 (Kefauver Part 4, testimony of 28 September 1950). The died field therefore gives the year only. The police list’s description of him as a “prominent political leader” “reportedly involved in Nation-wide gambling operations” is a police department’s description entered as an exhibit; it is not a finding, and no role is set from it. The commissioner’s testimony is about what Binaggio said to him and what the witness heard; it is not evidence of Binaggio’s business.