John's OLD BOSS & DADDY-IN-LAW, James Hensley, was BAD BOY with crimes of illicit booze, gambling, and probably murder. With Johnny boys love of craps, play in fourteen-hour stints, how DEEP could he be in with this family? Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, said they used to play craps in Las Vegas standing at the tables from 10 a.m. until midnight.
It starts in 1948 with the Hensley brothers, Eugene and Jim, being convicted of falsifying records to conceal the illegal distribution of hundreds of cases of liquor. The sales occurred from 1945 to 1947, postwar years when liquor was rationed and in short supply.
James Hensley was convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records. Hensley also was charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of persons involved in a liquor industry racket with two companies he managed, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a monopoly in Arizona, organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of mob ties by a reporter who was murdered in 1977.
In 1953, Jim Hensley was again charged with falsifying records at Marley's liquor firms. The companies were defended by non-other-than William Rehnquist, who would go on to become chief justice of the Supreme Court. Hensley was found not guilty. According to Marley's longtime public relations man, Al Lizanetz, the Marley liquor empire was founded by the Bronfman family dynasty of Canada which operated Allied Finance Company, Northern Export Company and Distillers Corporation - the Seagrams, Ltd. empire. The Bronfman family made millions in bootlegging, accounting for half the illegal liquor crossing the border, working in a profitable distribution deal with the infamous mobster Meyer Lansky, who later moved on to establish the crime syndicates in the casinos of Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s and 50s.
In December 1952, the Hensley brothers bought into the Ruidoso Downs racetrack in New Mexico, with Eugene running it and Jim returning to Phoenix.In a May 1953 hearing before the New Mexico State Racing Commission, the Hensley brothers concealed the existence an equal partner, Clarence "Teak" Baldwin, who had been banned from any ownership role due to illegal bookmaking activities. A 1953 New Mexico State Police investigation found further that Kemper Marley was a financial backer for bookmakers and had connections with Baldwin and with the bookmaking operations of organized crime a conclusion echoed decades later by the Arizona Project investigative reporting team The Hensley brothers gained their Ruidoso Downs racetrack license in 1953, as no New Mexico law barred convicted felons from race track ownership, although in 1955 new Governor of New Mexico John F. Simms would say he was "appalled" by the previous administration's decision to do so.
In 1955, Hensley founded the beer distributorship to have his own name, borrowing $10,000 against everything he had to buy a small existing distributorship. He was given a state liquor license despite his normally disqualifying past felony conviction.
In 1981, Hensley hired his new son-in-law John McCain, recently married to his daughter Cindy, Vice President of Public Relations for Hensley & Co. McCain soon left to begin his Congressional career. Jim Hensley's past record with the law, as well as his connection to Marley (who was suspected by some in the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles, became issues in McCain's 1986 campaign for the U.S. Senate.) The rest is history.
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There is just so much more to this organized crime story.....
Read More on this "family":
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&am
p;pageId=57354
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2000-02-1
7/news/haunted-by-spirits/full
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/m
ccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter6.ht
ml
http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/
tv_guide/full_details/Crime/programme_22
99.php
Johnny's craps addiction:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05
/30/050530fa_fact_bruck?currentPage=2
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