William Hanhardt – Cop on the Chicago Outfit payroll
Gangland Wire
Gary Jenkins
4.6 • 647 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2018
⏱️ 59 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recently I noticed a headline in a tribune article posted by Mike Byrne on his The Chicago Outfit-Old and Current news and articles Facebook page. The headline was, "EX Chicago Top Cop who ran mobbed up jewelry ring dies.” I found that William Hanhardt had been a high ranking Chicago Cop who was exposed in the Family Secrets testimony. It was reported that even back in his early career, the Outfit paid him as much as $1,000 monthly and provided a new car every two years.
In 1953 William Hanhardt made headlines early in his career with big busts and shootouts. In 1962 encountered 3 robbers with a machine gun and had a shoot out killing 2 robbers. He made headlines in a hot case involving the kidnapping and murder of a Hillside police officer named Anthony Raymond. Three men were stopped by Officer Raymond shortly after they robbed a restaurant of $5,000.00. They got the drop on him, killed him and buried him. Our friend, William Hanhardt had an informant tell him who the suspects were and where to find the body. It will come out later was that the suspects were part of an Outfit robbery crew and the Outfit bosses decided to give them up to the cops to help Handhardt.
William Hanhardt was a bigger than life colorful character who cultivated reporters, politicians and FBI agents. He was always able to provide background information about many Chicago crimes, political liaisons. But buy 1979 he had fallen under suspicion and he was demoted down to the traffic squad after he was accused of playing footsie with mobsters who ruled the city's corrupt downtown ward. Yet, just months later, he was promoted to being chief of detectives by the new Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek after the election of Mayor Jane Byrne.
In 1993 Teamsters official Allen Dorfman was killed by a couple of outfit hitmen. Officers processing the scene found Hanhardt’s contact information in Dorfman’s phone book. Even after his name turned up in Dorfman's black book, Hanhardt was allowed to enjoy the twilight of his police career as a district commander. In 1986, while still on the job, one of his last official acts was to testify in the Nevada conspiracy trial of Anthony Spilotro, the Chicago Outfit's man in Las Vegas. Hanhardt's testimony helped discredit one of the mobster's key accusers, Frank Cullotta. Spilotro got a mistrial and was awaiting a second trial when he was killed
In October 2000, he was indicted as the leader of a band of thieves who stole $5 million in jewelry over 12 years beginning in 1984, while he was still a top cop. Hanhardt fenced the goods through friends in the outfit. It seemed Hanhardt was able to think like a criminal because he was one.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Decisions, decisions. |
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| 0:30.3 | From Chicago on the north side, doing work. |
| 0:32.9 | Getting ready to go back home. |
| 0:34.7 | It's done. |
| 0:35.4 | Listening to the gangland wire podcast on my iPod. |
| 0:39.8 | Talk to later. |
| 0:40.5 | Bye. |
| 0:44.7 | Former Kansas City Police Department intelligence detective and now attorney, Gary Jenkins, |
| 0:51.8 | produced four documentary films, most recently Gangland Wire, |
| 0:57.4 | creator of smartphone app entitled Kansas City Mob Tours. Download it now. If you like what you |
... |
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