In this bonus episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins takes listeners back to 1970s Chicago for a series of lesser-known yet revealing stories about the Chicago Outfit, centered on violent enforcer Frank Schweihs, also known as “Frank the German.”

The episode begins with a personal side quest—tracking down the mystery of Tony Accardo and his rare red 1950s Mercedes sports car, possibly a 300 SL. These exotic cars were produced in limited numbers, and with Accardo’s history attached, the vehicle could be worth a fortune today. The question is: where did it go?

From there, the story moves deep into Outfit territory. Schweihs was a feared figure who worked under Joseph Lombardo and alongside other notorious mobsters. I recount an undercover operation involving a wired Old Town business owner who helped federal agents capture Schweihs, extorting money, one of the cases that eventually put him behind bars.

The episode also explores a remarkable undercover IRS investigation in which an agent posing as a criminal associate gained Schweihs’ trust. Listeners hear about crooked real estate deals, political corruption, bribe demands, and just how casually violence was discussed inside the Outfit’s inner circle—including talk of bombing a politician’s car when business deals stalled. These stories offer a raw, street-level look at how the Chicago Outfit operated during its peak years—how intimidation, corruption, and violence were everyday tools of business—and why figures like Frank Schweihs remain symbols of the Outfit’s brutality.
Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee”

Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information.

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.

To purchase one of my books, click here.
00:00 – Introduction and Chicago Bonus Episode
00:24 – Tony Accardo’s Red Mercedes Mystery
02:55 – The Chicago Outfit in the 1970s
03:31 – Frank Schweihs and the Extortion Case
04:42 – Undercover IRS Agent Inside the Outfit
06:33 – Corruption, Real Estate, and Political Payoffs
08:37 – Violence Threats and Taking the Case Down
09:35 – Windy City Mafia and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective here back in the studio with a little bonus episode, Gangland Wire. And I’ve been doing a bunch of Chicago stuff, as you know. Well, here’s one more before I stray away from Chicago. I had been away from Chicago for a long time and I missed it. I missed you guys up there. And, you know, here’s another thing before I really get started in this story. Okay.

[0:24] I’m on a mission right now. I remembered an old story about Tony Accardo had a 1950s Mercedes SL, and I think it was a Gull Wing, but I’m not sure. It was a 300 SL.

[0:40] He for sure had a 1950s Mercedes red sports car. And I always wondered, you know, I wonder what happened to that car. You know, I ought to be able to run that down. I interviewed a guy recently about an investigation into finding an extremely rare exotic car that was worth like $25 million or something. It was a teardrop, German-made, something about a Talbert Lago or some game like that. Anyhow, so it got me thinking. And they were talking about running down the cars and the history on cars, the Provence on cars. And they said, when you have a really good story attached to a car, it makes it worth a whole lot more money than normal. And I called up a friend of mine that wheels and deals in classic cars through Mecham’s. And I think there’s another auto auction. He said, oh, yeah. He said, man, you can find that car. If it hadn’t already had that priced into it, the fact that Tony Accardo sold it or owned it, then it would be worth a whole lot more money. So I thought, well, let’s just see if we can’t find that car. I started looking into it. These 1950s Mercedes 300 SLs, there wasn’t very many I’ve made. There was only a couple thousand I’ve made in over several years’ time. And the best I could tell, they’re all accounted for in some manner. I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. I started asking around and trying to find people that could help me with sources on that. So if you know anybody that’s a real expert on these old Mercedes sports cars.

[2:10] Send them to me. Have them email me at ganglandwire at gmail.com or something like that. And if you are, you know, give me a call, 816-931-3535. I just think it would be fun to find it. I’d do a little show on it if I found it. And find out what happened to it. Now, it might make somebody really happy. We can find it, and he didn’t know that it was Tony Accardo’s old car. Now, these old VINs, you know, now they’re 17 digits. Well, back then, they were like six or seven digits, and to trace it through the VIN, that old a car, with no more than I have to go on right now, it’s just almost impossible. I need to find, narrow down that maybe somebody has a story about who had it and try to find that person and then work down from there if maybe that person still has it. I don’t know. But it would be a fun little, it’s going to be a fun little project. But anyhow, let’s go up to Chicago in the 1970s. You know, you were rocking and rolling up there in Chicago. The outfit ruled. We just had all that information from Bob Cooley and all the things that he did and he was involved in up there. And they owned the city. You know, they damn near owned the whole city. So there’s one guy named Frank Schweihs. Now you may have heard of Frank Schweihs. He was called the German, Frank, the German Schweihs. He was a guy that Red Wemette met who has his show.

[3:31] Can’t even think of the name of it anymore. He had a show with Adam out in Las Vegas. Red Wemette. He kind of went into the employ of the FBI. Nobody really had a case on him. He was just tired of him shaking him down. So he volunteered, and Frank Schweihs was coming around extorting money from him. He had a dirty bookstore or something like that in Old Town. Frank Schweihs had a restaurant in Old Town. Frank Schweihs started coming around, and Red Wilmette let the bureau wire up his TV. So it had a camera and a microphone in it, and it recorded all kinds of information about Frank Schweihs. And they ended up convicting him of extorting money from Red Wilmette. He was also a defendant in the Family Seekers trial, and I think Red testified in that. Frank Schweihs, he had gotten introduced to an IRS agent named Johnson, but he was going under the name Virgil Williams. Now, Virgil Williams, we’re just going to call him Virgil Williams. He was a black dude. He was a big black dude, looked like a former, you know, defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears or something.

[4:42] And he had started out, the IRS had put him undercover, working the South Side and working policy back in the earlier 60s. And somehow he got introduced to Frank Schweihs as this guy who was, you know, involved in gambling and involved in the rackets in some manner on the south side and the black rackets. Frank was trying to sell him his restaurant in Old Town. Of course, he was trying to rip him off is what he was trying to do. You don’t just do business with a guy like Frank Schweihs. Absolutely, you do not do business with him. If you start going down that path, what he’s going to do, he’s going to rip you off in some manner. Guys start telling stories about later on, he’s at the trial and around that time he’s interviewed and he start telling stories about working with Frank, he said, Frank, and he would sit around the restaurant and talk and drink and, and Frank would say, we’re in about undercover agents. And he said, yeah, he said, I can spot him a mile off. He said, no undercover is ever going to get close to me. He said, uh, you know, I can just hear, I can pick out who’s going up and down the street out there and who’s an undercover agent. And he’d point out people. Of course, this guy knew that they really weren’t undercover agents, but you know, he, you know, would act like, oh yeah, you’re really cool, Frank, you’re a guy I need to do business with. You know what time it is. He said the one time, Frank told him, he said, I wish that us whites were as aggressive and binding as you blacks are. He said, t...