The Chicago Tribune once described Joey Glimco as a “darkly handsome man with a touch of silver at the temples, a natty dresser with a predilection for carefully matched ensembles in shades of blue, and a lavish night club spender.”
They went on to describe an incident in 1928 when Glimco was only 19 years old and owned his own newsstand. Details are sketchy, but Glimco was arrested and charged with murdering a man named Joseph Elias. During a coroner’s inquest, he told the jury that Elias had stolen $73 from his pants pockets which he claimed was all the money he had. He said the theft left him “with nothing, not even carfare.”
He was eventually acquitted of the charge, but as we’ll learn in this racketeer snapshot, Joey Glimco’s days as a “newsboy” would be short-lived as he moved onward and upward to become “the biggest fish” in Chicago’s labor rackets.
