This section holds the South Florida records filed so far, grouped by place. Each statement below comes from the record linked beside it. Almost everything said in these records about named people is allegation: counsel’s questions, secondhand testimony, informants’ reports passed on by the FBI, or a committee’s characterization. Each page says which, and none of it is a court finding unless the page says so. No role is copied to a chart.
Tampa and Hillsborough County, December 1950 to February 1951
Senator Lester C. Hunt sat as a subcommittee of one at the United States Courthouse in Tampa on 28, 29 and 30 December 1950; the printed volume is Part 1-A. Hunt’s opening statement says police who seized Jack Dragna’s effects found the telephone numbers of Santo Trafficante, Sr. and James Lumia. Charles Wall testified about his gambling background and that he left it in 1939 or 1940; the police chief’s testimony covers unsolved killings and the attempts on Wall’s life, and the state’s attorney gives his opinion of Wall. A former patrolman (Marvin), a restaurant owner (Licata), a chauffeur (Perez) and a former deputy (Dugan) mention the Trafficantes, each by rumor, by counsel’s question or secondhand and each saying so; the sheriff’s answers deny the premises of the questions. A St. Petersburg broker testified to John Torrio’s 1944-45 Pass-a-Grille property dealings. Santo Trafficante, Sr. did not testify in this volume.
Santo Trafficante, Jr.
The FBI Vault’s Trafficante file is filed from its OCR text only, because its page images returned HTTP 403: the 1953 background memorandum, the March 1957 memorandum on the gambling-tax charge and the Havana casino, a 1967 informant report and a 1968 headquarters memorandum. The Fifth Circuit’s 1964 opinion concerns the government’s tax-lien suit. The Church Committee’s report calls him “the Cosa Nostra chieftain in Cuba” and records a Miami meeting; the House Select Committee on Assassinations calls him “the La Cosa Nostra leader in Florida” and also concludes it is unlikely he plotted the President’s death. Those are committees’ characterizations. His page is Santo Trafficante, Jr.; a National Archives file unit of House immunity orders is a pointer only.
Miami, Broward County and Miami Beach, 1950
The first Florida volume, Part 1, records sessions in the courtroom of the United States district court at Miami on 26-27 May and 13-15 July 1950. The Broward County clubs are described in the Eisen accountants’ testimony, Abe Allenberg’s, Daniel P. Sullivan’s charts, the sheriff’s answers and a witness’s refusals on Chicago acquaintances. A 1957 FBI Miami report says a Broward grand jury indicted twenty-two persons on 24 August 1950; the pages do not state the outcome. The FBI Vault’s Meyer Lansky file also holds a 1952 Justice Department release and a 1955 summary; the Fifth Circuit’s 1974 opinion reversed a contempt conviction from a Miami grand jury investigation of Flamingo Hotel income; and a 1958 Library of Congress photograph is filed elsewhere.
Havana
Federal records name the Tropicana and the Sans Souci casinos in Havana: the 1955 FBI summary, the 1957 memorandum, the House committee’s report on Lewis McWillie and the Tropicana and on Trafficante’s detention at Trescornia in 1959, and Senator Baker’s additional views. No record opened gives a street address for either casino.
Al Capone on Palm Island
Two federal records in the Capone section place his house on Palm Island: a 1929 affidavit by his physician and a 1964 Hoover letter giving his death there on 25 January 1947. No opened record gives a street address or the dates of his residence.
Not filed yet
Kefauver Part 16 (Florida) is filed as a volume page from the Kefauver section, but its testimony was not read for this hub, and most Part 1 and Part 1-A witnesses, the exhibits and the Third Interim Report’s Florida chapter were not read. Trafficante Vault Parts 02-06, the page images of the Trafficante file, the HSCA staff reports and the 1957 federal gambling-tax case records are not filed. The outcome of the 1950 Broward indictment is not stated in any opened record.
