The Babbling Burglar and the Summerdale Scandal: The Lessons of Police Malfeasance
More than forty years after Chicago's worst police scandal, the department is again under siege. A look back at Summerdale and its aftermath.
By: Richard C. Lindberg
In the darkened doorway of a liquor store on Berwyn Avenue, Officer Frank Faraci of the Chicago Police Department's 20th District (then the 40th)—Summerdale—stumbled into an old acquaintance. "Well if it isn't the little burglar Richie Morrison," he sneered. The smell of liquor on the breath of the police officer was unmistakable. Morrison nervously asked how things were going at home. The glib little thief whose chosen career as a skilled cat burglar was firmly planted by 1958 when this encounter took place, was very polite and respectful to the boys in blue when it suited his needs but he never was very comfortable in their presence.
"Well, they would be a little better if you would cut us guys in on some of your jobs," Faraci propositioned. "You know Al Karras and some of the other fellows, and we'll go along with the show. After all we like nice things too."
Morrison's chance encounter with this Summerdale District police officer that fateful evening set in motion a historical chain of events—an incident that would forever alter the landscape for police officers in the City of Chicago—and the future administration of law enforcement across the United States. The devastating scandal involving eight Chicago Police officers who conspired with the burglar Morrison at various times to loot North Side retail stores.
The scandal rocked the Chicago Police Department and the confidence of the public to its bare foundations. The ensuing events nearly cost Mayor Richard J. Daley his career as a big city powerbroker, and led to systematic change put in place by a scholarly reformer known as the "professor:" Orlando W. Wilson from the University of California at Los Angeles. A 19th century method of police administration permanently ended along with a way of life that traded on the favors of politicians, organized crime, and ward heelers of the very worst stripe.
The scandal known as "Summerdale" was of unprecedented magnitude. even for wicked old Cook County where malfeasance on the part of elected officials was (and by and large still is) just the normal course of doing the business of government. What made this one unique as opposed to the average run-of-the-mill shakedowns perpetrated against unsuspecting motorists pulled over for traffic violations was that for the first time in departmental history uniformed police officers plotted and carried out burglaries while patrolling the streets of the "City of Big Shoulders."
Collecting bribes, expecting "presents" and other emoluments from retail merchants at Christmas time, was something that Chicago residents had come to expect of its police officers over the years. Burgling stores after-hours in the company of the accomplished sneak thief like Richard Morrison who often served as the "lookout," was quite another to the citizenry of Chicago.
By the tender age of fifteen Morrison was well on the road to becoming a professional thief. His first arrest was recorded on May 6, 1953, when he was sentenced to ten days in the Cook County Jail for possessing burglar's tools. In the next two years his burgeoning criminal endeavors reflected a dozen different pick-ups as a burglary suspect. In December 1955, he shifted his operation to Los Angeles where he served nine months in prison for retail burglary. He then served nine months in Las Vegas for the same crime, before returning to Chicago in 1957 to accept a job delivering pizzas for Wesley's, at 1116 Bryn Mawr Avenue near Broadway.
Morrison appeared to be settling in. Marriage was contemplated and his burglary tools were gathering dust. Police officers from the CPD's 40th District who were cognizant of his reputation, ticketed him for double-parking his car outside of the pizza joint work place during rush hour. In an effort to persuade the officers to give Morrison, and the other drivers a "pass," the restaurant owner invited the police to come in and eat free.
It was a common way for businessmen to befriend police who could be helpful to them by overlooking trivial matters or just being there when needed. At first the privilege was extended only to the sergeant and patrol officers assigned to Bryn Mawr Avenue. But eventually the enterprising Morrison was delivering pizzas directly to the 40th District, Foster Avenue—then known as "Summerdale." It was a convenient arrangement all around.
The police officers on duty knew the glib Morrison from the neighborhood, and of course by reputation. A man can't escape from his past. Sol Karras, one of the Summerdale cops later named in the infamous indictment grew up with Morrison and maintained a friendship with him.
In a short period of time Morrison had become one of Chicago's cleverest burglars. He learned about safes by visiting Michigan Avenue showrooms. He completed his apprenticeship by posing as a buyer of industrial safes and vaults in order to familiarize himself with the location of the tumblers, the thickness of steel, and the vulnerabilities of strong boxes. At all times he carried with him armor-piercing ammunition capable of blowing the locks off the most resilient safes. With manila rope purchased in 10,000-foot lengths, he fashioned rope ladders to help gain after-hours entry through the roof ventilation system and skylights. Morrison never used the same equipment twice. It was his personal quirk to leave his tools at the scene of the crime.
James McGuire, a former Superintendent of the Illinois State Police, and a retired Chicago Police officer, remembers Morrison's escapades in the city and the North Shore suburb of Evanston.
"He was a pretty sharp kid, a cocky little fellow who talked like an old-timer. But he was just a kid...a kid, with exceptional abilities," McGuire recalls. "He liked to open the outer safe at a North Side Walgreens Store. That was one of his favorite places. There was usually $1,500 and loose change locked inside the safe, and he would stash the money nearby and pick it up the next day. Well, a suburban police officer caught him in the act one day going through an air vent. He handcuffed him to a telephone pole while he went off in search of a possible accomplice. The officer quickly returned after a look around but Richie was gone. He had used a secreted handcuff key taped to the back of a religious medal that he wore around his neck to escape."
McGuire, an honest police officer whose career was on the upswing, was assisted by Chicago Detectives Howard Rothgery, Pat Driscoll, John Kettler, and James Heard from the burglary detail in their arrest of Morrison on the evening July 30, 1959 inside a flat on Sacramento Avenue while he was out on bond from an earlier pinch. As a result of an earlier arrest in the summer of 1958 by detectives from the adjacent suburban Evanston Police Department, the full story of Morrison's connivance with the "Summerdale" police officers unraveled ever so slowly. Morrison confessed to committing commercial burglaries with reported losses of over $100,000 in the City of Chicago alone.
Looking back upon the Morrison collar, Jim McGuire states: "We got a tip he was holed up in this flat on Sacramento Avenue, but he wouldn't open the door. We found an open window and climbed through. When we entered Richie had a gun - a .38-caliber revolver - but he got scared and threw it down behind the refrigerator."
There seemed to be no limit to the thieving escapades of Morrison, as investigators probed deeper into his exploits. His activities extended north of the city limits into Evanston. His second story jobs compromised the reputation of the entire police department of this city in a scandal that embarrassed the department and ultimately cost Chief Hubert G. Kelsh his job.
Long before the scandal broke, in June 1958 to be exact, a detail of Evanston Police nearly killed Morrison during one of his nightly forays into the northern suburb. Retired Evanston Police Chief William McHugh and his former partner James Walsh (who later served as Chief of the Cook County Police Department) were a part of the response team that apprehended the thief forever known as the "Babbling Burglar."
Several years ago, McHugh told this writer about his own personal encounter with Morrison. "We had a rash of automobile thefts in Evanston and the evidence pointed to Morrison."
"Between relays during a target shoot at the practice range another policeman we knew who also happened to know Morrison told us that this was the guy who was hitting the hell of us in Evanston," added Walsh. "We concluded that this was our prime suspect and heard he was looking for a set of new golf clubs for his next score."
McHugh, Walsh, along with Sergeant Sam Johnson, Officers Al Breitzman, Dick Braithwaite, and Eddie Tuczyinski, began a two-day stakeout on Forest Avenue, a quiet residential street off of Sheridan Road in Evanston late one evening. They used Officer Ted Arndt's set of new golf clubs as the decoy. "We figured that if Morrison was coming in to our town, this would be the route he would most likely travel," McHugh explains.
The clubs were positioned in a station wagon on loan from a local automobile agency when the headlights of Morrison's mint-green Cadillac convertible were spotted by the detectives who were lying in ambush. Morrison was a skilled driver. He made a series of deft moves and the heavily armed Evanston officers made theirs, letting loose with a volley of gunfire from a shotgun and a Thompson sub-machine gun. The bullets flew wide of the mark.
Morrison crouched down low in the car seat and spun away as the bullets whizzed by, striking the trees, parked cars, the curb—everything except their nimble criminal target. How badly did these Evanston cops want to kill Morrison? The deadly fury of bullets unleashed on a quiet residential side street in the dead of night endangered citizens, resulted in property damage, and was the kind of reckless police work out-of-control departments often engaged in when they had something to hide. Fortunately for the "Babbling Burglar" fate intervened and he escaped unhurt. Shaken, Morrison abandoned the car on Sheridan Road in Chicago. "All we saw was his tail lights," McHugh recalls. "When he took off nobody could see him."
McHugh and Walsh were a team in those days. Armed with a search warrant, they entered Morrison's apartment on Lakewood Avenue in the Rogers Park-Edgewater community looking for stolen contraband. "Little did we suspect at the time what Morrison was really up to," McHugh sighs. "We found a TV worth a small fortune and other expensive items strewn about the apartment." However, their man was not at home. When Walsh and McHugh returned a second time the apartment was "cleaned out," completely empty. "It was my belief that Richie received a tip from some of his friends in Summerdale that we were coming back," Walsh said.
Walsh vividly remembered Morrison's cocky, defiant nature when they eventually located and transported him into the Evanston police station for interrogation and booking. "We asked him what he did for a living, and he told us that he was an 'electronics genius." 'That means I'm not a dumb asshole!' snorted the thief.
Shortly afterward, the Morrison case came up for a hearing before Judge Charles Doherty in Branch 44 of the Felony Court at 26th and California. Again, Richard Morrison was apparently counting on his friends from the Summerdale police district to pull him out of a legal jam. He seemed confident that despite the serious charges stemming from his activities in Evanston, things would be "handled." The fix was in - or so Morrison was led to believe. Judge Doherty however, was of another frame of mind. He convicted the canny little burglar and sentenced him to two years in prison. "Hey! Wait a minute!" Morrison bellowed, casting about the courtroom for someone to listen. "Something is wrong here! I want to talk to the State's Attorney!"
Snug inside the Cook County Jail, Morrison weighed his options. With the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence looming before him, he summoned representatives from the office of the Republican State's Attorney, Benjamin Adamowski, and told them that he had sensitive information to share about crooked cops in return for a deal—the customary promise of leniency. Negotiations continued with the public defender and Adamowski's right-hand man, Chief Investigator Paul Davis Newey from the State's Attorney's office, until Morrison finally agreed to be placed in a secret witness protection program.
For the next fourteen months, the cat burglar enjoyed the comparative luxury of the County Jail witness quarters, complete with free TV, quality food, and special treatment accorded a valuable informant. Explained (then) Warden Jack Johnson: "If I put him in with the other prisoners I'll have a corpse on my hands within 24 hours.
Ben Adamowski, a former Democratic politician who had his eyes on the bigger prize—the Chicago mayoralty—was slow to grasp the significance of the enormous political possibilities that lay before him. Others sensed that the impending Summerdale Scandal was a trump card to be played at all costs, and the best chance for the embattled Republicans to discredit the mayoral regime of the late Richard J. Daley.
John D. Donlevy was a young Assistant State's Attorney assigned to Cook County's Criminal Division during the time when the imprisoned "Babbling Burglar" first began talking to prosecutors. "At first the State's Attorney Adamowski seemed reluctant to do anything. He just turned the matter over to a special prosecutor," Donlevy recalls. "There was a belief that the case wasn't strong enough to merit prosecution. Based on what Newey uncovered, "the decision was eventually made by Adamowski and First Assistant State's Attorney Frank Ferlic to bring it to trial."