St. Louis, Missouri

By mid-April of 1961, Julian M. “Tex” Avila, age 22, was a well-known Mexican thug from the mean streets of north St. Louis. He was a street brawler, burglar, thief, and robber who had been running wild since he was just a little kid, which accounted for how he had been arrested more than 100 times.

Since becoming a certified adult in 1955, Tex Avila served two terms in the City Workhouse. First, there was a 6-month sentence. Then, there was just a 10-day sentence. The police actually had to shoot at him during a daring high-speed chase in 1957. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t wounded.

When he wasn’t out stealing, Avila supplemented his meager income by operating a combination shoeshine/tailor shop out of a business front in his north St. Louis neighborhood. His small business was located at 1407 St. Louis Avenue. He lived nearby (less than a mile away) at 3309 North Ninth Street.

Lately, he had been recruiting younger, impressionable kids in his neighborhood who looked up to him because of his criminal exploits. He began teaching them the finer points of professional thievery.

He probably hoped that some day in the not-too-distant future he could stop going out on capers himself and simply send out a crew to carry out felonies he masterminded. Typical of young crooks like him, he had street dreams of becoming a big-time hoodlum and gang leader. Not surprisingly, his street dream was a pipe dream he would never fulfill.

Tex Avila’s sin against the organized underworld was using bad judgment: He robbed the two top gangsters in the St. Louis area—John J. "Johnny V" Vitale and Frank L. "Buster" Wortman.

* * *

By early 1961, John Vitale, age 51, was the acting boss of the St. Louis Mafia. Anthony J. "Tony the Pip" Lopiparo Jr., the godfather of the St. Louis Mafia since 1953, died the previous year of a heart attack while in federal prison for tax evasion. He began his sentence in 1958.

Anthony J. "Tony G" Giordano was also in federal prison. He and another prominent Mafioso named Raffaele "Shorty Ralph" Caleca were caught up in the same tax-evasion case as Lopiparo. Caleca was paroled in December of 1960. Giordano would not be paroled until July of 1961.

Interestingly, Vitale would not ultimately succeed Lopiparo as boss.

He had been harassed for years by the St. Louis Police Department. Anytime any mob-related crime occurred, he was picked up for questioning. It had become routine for him.

Although Vitale had a better resume, it was Giordano who would officially succeed Lopiparo, probably because Vitale was tired of the harassment.

Whatever the case may be on how the succession came about, Giordano became the boss and Vitale became the underboss of the St. Louis Mafia. In reality, however, both men would run the St. Louis faction of the Cosa Nostra for the next two decades on a near-equal footing.

As the official boss, Giordano would receive the most attention in the decades ahead due to Vitale's cagey decision of stepping aside and encouraging Giordano to step up as the boss.

Of course, Giordano would not become the boss until he got out of prison. Until then, Vitale ran the St. Louis mob.

* * *

Buster Wortman, age 57, whose father was German and mother Irish, ran a branch office of the Chicago Mafia. He looked after Outfit interests throughout Southern Illinois from his base of operations in East St. Louis, Illinois, located just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in the Gateway City’s eastern suburbs, known collectively as the East Side.

The East Side racketeer was a legend in the annals of St. Louis crime.

Wortman was recruited by the notorious Shelton gang in the mid-1920s after his father moved from the Kerry Patch (the old Irish ghetto in north St. Louis) across the Mississippi River to East St. Louis, Illinois, where the Shelton Gang ran the rackets. He allegedly got his start stealing cars for the gang. They would use the stolen cars to transport bootleg liquor.

After getting out of prison in 1941 for assaulting a Revenue agent in 1933, Wortman began to slowly organize his own mob with the backing of Chicago mob leaders, thanks to connections he and his associates made with Outfit guys while in federal prison. His new gang was carved out of the old St. Louis area gangs, including the Shelton Gang, which once lorded over the Southern Illinois rackets, and the Egan's Rats and Cuckoo gangs of St. Louis.

Wortman’s smartest move was becoming allied with disgruntled members of the Shelton Gang. This alliance assured his success in killing three of the notorious Shelton brothers (Wortman’s sworn enemies after getting out of prison) between 1947 and 1950. A fourth Shelton brother was also shot, a Shelton nephew was shot, a Shelton sister and her husband were shot—all nonfatal. Real estate owned by the Shelton family was burned to the ground. The Shelton clan was devastated.

By the early 1950s, the surviving Sheltons went into hiding (most relocated to the Jacksonville, Florida, area).

Thereafter, Buster Wortman was the most notable gangland figure in the St. Louis area from the late 1940s until the late 1960s.

From his East Side base, Wortman's territory was reputed to stretch from Jefferson City, Missouri, east to Springfield, Illinois—both state capitals—and south to Paducah, Kentucky. It was a huge triangle of power.

* * *

The first of the two gang chiefs Tex Avila robbed was John Vitale.

He broke into a delivery truck at the Automatic Cigarette Sales Co. and snatched $900 in cash and enough cartons of cigarettes to equal $1,500 in lost product.

In December of 1960, the police became aware that Avila was selling the stolen cigarettes and arrested him. However, luckily for Avila, no charges were filed against him due to insufficient evidence.

Automatic was run by John Vitale, who sent word to Avila through the right channels to cut the crap and don't ever target a mob-connected business again.

Avila ignored the warning and again targeted a mob-connected business to burglarize. Either he was stupid or suicidal.

A month later, in January of 1961, Tex Avila was riding with his brother, Manuel Avila, when they were pulled over by the St. Louis Police Department.

In the vehicle the cops found an 800-pound safe. They were on their way to take it somewhere where they could crack it open.

The Avila brothers were promptly placed under arrest.

It turned out that the safe had been stolen from the Wortman-owned Plaza Amusement Co.

The unforgiving Buster Wortman did not play around. The arrogant kid was preying on mob businesses and that couldn’t be tolerated. There would be no more warnings. He put out a hit on Tex Avila.

Tex Avila probably targeted mob-connected businesses on the belief that if he stole from mobsters they wouldn’t report it to the police.

That may have been so and it may not have been so, but, either way, he would have stood a better chance going up against the law than challenging the mob.

* * *

Buster Wortman assigned the contract to his chief enforcer, George A. "Stormy" Harvill Jr., age 35, and 30-year-old Raymond H. (Ray) Flynn, a new recruit in the Wortman mob.

Flynn was first introduced to Buster Wortman sometime in 1953 by William “Speedy” Wilhite, a legendary master thief and tough guy with a lot of connections who had been a member of the old Cuckoo Gang. Whoever stole with Wilhite stole with the best.

Sometime in 1954, Wortman offered Flynn a job with his Outfit crew. Flynn politely turned down Wortman’s offer because he was doing pretty good on his own as a thief.

It was not long after that—still in 1954—that Ray Flynn’s luck finally ran out. He got busted in a safecracking burglary case in Syracuse, New York. He pled guilty and was given a 10-year prison sentence. He spent nearly six years behind bars inside Attica State Prison from December 23, 1954, until his parole on December 3, 1960.

Once granted parole, Flynn returned to St. Louis and decided to finally take Wortman up on his offer. A few months later, he was given his first murder contract. The victim was Tex Avila.

* * *

On Wednesday, March 22, 1961, someone shot at Tex Avila outside a tavern in his north St. Louis neighborhood and missed.

The bungling triggerman shot an innocent bystander instead.

This was not the Wortman-ordered contract being botched, but was, in fact, another person Avila crossed who was seeking retribution. He had numerous enemies.

Thankfully, at least for his future killers, Avila’s large pool of known enemies would make for numerous potential homicide suspects for the police detectives who would try—and fail—to solve his murder.

A month later, on the night of Thursday, April 20, 1961, Avila was inside his shoeshine/tailor shop with his brother and a young kid named Royal Robinson, who Tex hired to be the shoeshine boy.

The trio were standing around talking to one another towards the back of the storefront.

Tex Avila was facing away from the back door, which had a glass window pane in it.

Stormy Harvill and Ray Flynn crept up behind his shop in the darkness of the alley.

The designated shooter leveled a shotgun at the window, aiming for the back of Tex Avila's head.

The man with the shotgun fired a single blast.

The glass shattered and Avila, who was only about ten feet away, took the full force of the buckshot, which knocked him flat on the floor.

Neither Manuel Avila nor Royal Robinson were wounded.

The murderers made good their escape as their victim bled out in front of his brother.

* * *

The day following the murder, John Vitale, per usual, was arrested for “investigation” in the Avila homicide case and questioned.

The detectives knew Vitale was not happy about the theft the previous year at his place of business and, also, they enjoyed harassing the man they viewed as the top Mafia leader in town.

The detectives grilled Vitale about the Avila hit for five hours—to no avail. He denied any involvement in the murder and was released with no pending charges.

Also brought in for questioning was the man believed to have taken a shot at Tex Avila a month earlier. He was also released.

Stormy Harvill and Ray Flynn were never even questioned about the murder because no one outside of Buster Wortman and his inner circle knew they killed him. Neither had a beef with the victim and, so, neither was a suspect in his murder.

The killing of Julian Avila was never officially solved.

* * *

On January 21, 1966, 40-year-old Stormy Harvill was killed in a domestic dispute in Caseyville, Illinois, an East Side town. His ex-wife's boyfriend shot him to death after Harvill threatened to kill them. For once in his life, he was unarmed at the time. The boyfriend was subsequently put on trial, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to 50-to-99 years in the Illinois prison system.

Buster Wortman died from complications of surgery on his larynx (cancer) at the age of 63 on August 3, 1968. He was succeeded as the Outfit's East Side rackets boss by 56-year-old Arthur J. (Art) Berne, a notorious old-school hoodlum who was arrested over 250 times by the time he was 40.

Ray Flynn died behind bars at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, on May 22, 2002. He was 71 years old and spent the last sixteen years of his life in prison, most of it on a RICO/murder conviction.

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