Midwest Genealogy Center Presents: The Two Charleys

Kansas City mobsters Charlie Binaggio and Charlie Gargotta were gangsters non grata after failing to deliver on promises made to the national syndicate. Their assassinations in 1950 crushed President Harry Truman’s opposition to the investigation of organized crime in America, and thus was born the famed Kefauver Committee. Using clips from his film Black Hand Strawman: The History of Organized Crime in Kansas City, and drawing upon his research for his book of the same name, author and filmmaker Terence O’Malley gives context to the criminal events leading up to the slayings of Binaggio and Gargotta and explains how it laid the foundation for the Civella family to assume control over KC’s notorious mafia.