But there was another blackmail ring operating at roughly the same time and in the same general area which even seems to have targeted some of the same people, but which doesn't suffer from these shortcomings, not least because it was actually investigated by the NYPD and the FBI who sent people to jail over it. A case which has come to be known as the chickens and the bulls. In late July 1965, a call came in to the Midtown Manhattan precinct of the NYPD from a Western Union office in Grand Central Station. A man who appeared to be impersonating a police officer had walked into the Western Union in the company of a 14-year-old runaway and had contacted the boy's father in Texas, asking him to wire $150 for Plane Fair to send the boy home. The father had grown suspicious after realizing the man was asking for nearly double the actual price of a plane ticket and decided to call police. The fake cop turned out to be a 34year-old man named John Akin, a felon with a prior conviction for child sexual abuse, who claimed he was just trying to do the boy a favor. Realizing that he was likely facing prison time, Akin told police that he could provide them with information about a much bigger crime involving famous names and large sums of money, he told the detective, James Macdonald, about an extortion ring that had targeted closeted gay men throughout the US, many of whom were married with families, listing off names of victims that included prominent politicians and entertainers. Over the next year, the NYPD and the FBI would discover the true extent of the operation. A blackmail ring of at least 70 men had extorted at least $2 million. That's about 20 million in 2025 money from thousands of victims over less than a decade with a list of victims that allegedly included Admiral William Church, the brother of the Democratic Senator and famous CIA critic Frank Church, as well as the head of the American Medical Association, two generals, the Republican Congressman and House Foreign Affairs Committee member Peter Ferrelling Hoison, Malcolm Forbes from Forbes magazine, a professor from Princeton University, the Catholic cardinal of New York, Francis Spelman, famous rock musicians, a prominent surgeon, a prep school headmaster, multiple US senators, heads of business firms, several well-known politicians, actors, singers, and television personalities, including Liberace, and perhaps most importantly, Jed Garoover and his partner Clyde Tolson. The blackmail ring, which was centered in New York and Chicago, but operated all across the country, used several methods of extortion, but the most common ones involved sending attractive, often underageed young men referred to as chickens into specific hotels frequented by older, wealthier homosexuals, intending to meet such men for purposes of prostitution. and then having members of the ring known as bulls intercede posing as corrupt vice squad detectives demanding bribes from the victim. In some cases, the chicken would lure the victim into a hotel room and then once he was in a compromising position, the bulls would bust into the room, display their fake police badges, and handcuff the victim. After explaining the penalties for violating sodomy laws or corrupting a minor, the bulls would either directly solicit a bribe or tell the victim that he could pay quote bail money upfront to prevent his arrest from going public. In other cases, the chicken would bring his victim into a hotel room and then rob him of his personal effects. The chickens would get to keep any money or valuables they stole, while the bulls kept the IDs and credit cards for themselves. Weeks later, after identifying the victim from his ID card, the bulls would contact him, posing as corrupt police officers and suggest that he'd been identified in relation to a gay prostitution ring. The fake cops would convince the victim he was facing possible arrest or subpoena as a witness, and when they felt he was sufficiently scared, offer to make it all go away for a fee. Prosecuting the extortionists proved difficult, primarily because no one involved wanted to testify. The victims were understandably scared of the effects that being publicly outed would have on their families and careers, and most decided it simply wasn't worth coming forward. The chickens were mostly runaways and transient hustlers who were hard to track down, and the ones police were able to find weren't exactly ideal witnesses. The strategy the prosecutors settled on was to try to flip as many of the blackmail ring's members as possible and have them testify against each other or take plea deals to minimize the number of victims who would have to testify in open court. The investigation would reveal that despite employing at least 70 bowls and dozens if not hundreds of male prostitutes. The ring was ultimately controlled by three men, John Pine, Sherman Kaminsky, and Ed Murphy. Operating out of Chicago was Pine, a former Chicago cop who maintained a nationwide network of police department employees as informants. When he was arrested, police found in his possession dozens of police badges and arrest forms, warrants, and extradition forms from virtually every jurisdiction in the country. Kaminsky, who used the alias Paul Vargo, was based out of New York, Baltimore, and Chicago, and is believed to have served in the Israeli army, although little else is known about his background. The third ring leader was a World War II veteran and convicted felon named Ed Murphy, who, in addition to running the blackmail ring, worked as both a pimp and a bouncer for various gay bars in New York. Just months before his apprehension in the Chickens and the Bulls case, Murphy had been arrested in a separate blackmail ring operating out of the New York Hilton Hotel, which had extorted over $100,000 from wealthy gay men in much the same manner. Authorities announced the arrests as they happened, but press coverage was sporadic, and at the encouragement of the DA's office, the media refrained from identifying any of the victims or airing out any of the sorted sexual details. But there was another strange aspect to the media's treatment of the case. According to the book Stonewall by David Carter, a particularly noteworthy feature about the contemporary news accounts of the story is that the initial newspaper stories listed Edward Murphy as one of the arrested extortionists, but afterward his name disappeared from the newspaper coverage. For example, in nine New York Times articles on the case published between February 18, 1966 and July 12th, 1967. Murphy was never mentioned again after the initial February 18, 1966 story. Yet, the initial news story made it clear that Murphy was one of the three ring leaders. if not the head of the entire operation. In March of 1968, the New York Madishene newsletter published by the gay rights activist group the Madisheen Society asked why Murphy had not been sentenced for his role in the blackmail ring. The newsletter stated that not only had Murphy served several prior prison terms, but he also had recently plead guilty under a federal indictment to extortion charges and was under a number of indictments at the state level. After pleading guilty to the federal extortion charge, Murphy had merely been put on probation for 5 years. The newsletter reported that Mattisheen, New York, had been informed that Murphy's sentence had been so often postponed because he'd made a deal to turn states evidence and the delays are to work out another deal to lighten his sentence. Murphy apparently did give evidence against the two other main figures in the ring. John J. Pine, a Chicago police officer, and Sherman Chadwick Kaminsky, a Bronx native who also went by the name Paul Vargo. however, that Murphy, after having been to prison several times before, could get off with serving only part of a 5-year sentence, merely for giving evidence against his co-conspirators, despite shaking down approximately 1,000 men over almost 10 years, including a number of men of very eminent social rank, as detailed earlier, is astonishing. Moreover, while several names emerged in the newspaper accounts as key players in the scheme, word on the street said that the gang had one ring leader. The New York Machine newsletter of March 1968 named Ed Murphy as that person. The theory of a single person at the head of the enterprise is bolstered by a letter from Richard Inman, a homophile activist battling police extortion of homosexuals in South Florida. Written to Machine Washington co-founder Jack Nichols in 1965. In the letter, Inman stated that he knew via a friend inside the FBI that there was one boss man of the syndicate's homo shakeddown detail for the whole US. That Inman wrote the letter before the police uncovered the national ring adds to its credibility. But Murphy did even better in the waters he trolled. He landed the biggest fish of all, one whose value exceeded even that of money, because this one had the ability to keep law enforcement off his back. Murphy's operation landed none other than the nation's top law enforcement officer, Jay. Edgar Hoover. The same net that hauled in Hoover brought along a bonus prize. Jay Edgar Hoover's longtime companion Clyde Tlson who was moreover an associate director of the FBI. The mafia had photographic evidence implicating Hoover in homosexual activity. But it also came to light that Hoover at times dressed in female attire. Research conducted for this book strongly suggests that Ed Murphy had one or more of these photographs which allowed him to avoid serving time in prison for leading an extensive national blackmail ring. Carter attributes these claims to quote research conducted for his book. But what proof does he offer? Well, he relates some anecdotes from the famous poet Alan Ginsburg where Ginsburgg claims that he had friends who encountered Hoover in various gay spots around Washington DC. Carter mentions a 1968 publication called the Homosexual Handbook in which Hoover is listed as a prominent closeted homosexual which was later withdrawn. He also cites the Anthony Summers book, Official and Confidential, which we've already covered here. But the only actual firsthand witness testimony Carter offers comes from his interviews with a guy named John Paul Reineer. In another excerpt from his book, Stonewall, David Carter writes, "John Paul Raineeri, a former prostitute interviewed for this history, provided critical testimony for corroborating and better understanding the larger implications of Murphy's criminal enterprises for gay history." Reeri said that as a youth from Westchester County, he'd been forced by blackmail and mafia supplied drugs into a prostitution ring in which he remained active for 3 years before he escaped the mob's control. He claimed that a number of youths in the ring had disappeared after they got careless with talk. For while most of the customers were more or less average homosexual men with money, the regular clientele, according to Raineri, also included famous men such as Malcolm Forbes, Ardell Spelman, Liberace, US senators, a vice president of the United States, one of the most famous rock musicians, and Jay Edgar Hoover. Reer said that he met Jay Edgar Hoover at private parties at the Plaza Hotel, and that Hoover's name was never mentioned. Hoover was always in drag and Reeri said he could tell that the FBI director was sure that no one recognized him. Reeri said that he had ensured his own survival by having in his possession a photograph of himself with Hoover given to him by the photographer. So, if you're keeping track, this brings us to a total of five alleged photo sets featuring Hoover in a compromising sexual position. But how credible are these claims? Well, unfortunately, the evidence overwhelmingly points to John Paul Reeri being an unreliable witness. Reary was actually the subject of my first YouTube video, which I believe is the most complete collection of information about Reer currently in existence. But if you haven't seen it, in short, Reer was a press hound who gave wildly inconsistent accounts of his own background to multiple different journalists over time, including claims that he was a member of the supposed satanic cult in Yoners, New York, that went on to commit the Son of Sam murders and later became a friend and confidant of Jeffrey Dmer during his killing spree in Milwaukee. all the while telling journalists contradictory stories about his early life. In fact, David Carter even acknowledges this in a footnote in his Stonewall book. John Paul Reeri had a lifetime of mental health issues, and I did not always find his accounts of events to be reliable. For these reasons, I only used information from him that was corroborated by other sources. Following the section on Reer, Carter cites a 1993 New York Post article titled, "Jay Edgar's slip was showing." Shortly after Hoover's homosexuality and transvestism became public and Anthony Summers' book, Official and Confidential, was published, a newspaper story about the 1960s National Homosexual Blackmail ring suddenly appeared after a quarter of a century of silence on the subject. Without mentioning Murphy's name, it quoted law enforcement sources who had worked on the case as saying that their investigation into the nationwide blackmail ring had turned up a photograph of Hoover posing amiably with the racket's ring leader and had uncovered information that Clyde Tolson, Hoover's lover, had himself fallen victim to the extortion ring. After federal agents joined the investigation, both the photograph of Hoover and the documents about Tolson disappeared. This New York Post story referenced by Carter apparently cites anonymous law enforcement sources who worked on the case who said they'd actually found a photo of Hoover in a compromising position with the head blackmailer Ed Murphy and uncovered evidence that Clyde Toulson had been blackmailed. Curiously, all traces of this article seem to have been wiped from the internet. It isn't available on any newspaper archive sites or the New York Post website, and it doesn't appear to have been transcribed anywhere. For a mainstream news article published in 1993, this is pretty anomalous. Unfortunately, Carter gives us no indication whether or not he was able to track down these anonymous law enforcement sources cited by the Post, so it's hard to judge the credibility of these claims with any level of certainty. Personally, I couldn't shake a nagging suspicion that one of these anonymous sources could have been old James Rothststein himself. But that is and seemingly will remain pure speculation on my part. On the other hand, despite the DA's moratorium on naming the victims, the chicken and the bulls case did receive relatively substantial press coverage following the arrests and prosecutions of its ring leaders, even if it was largely treated as a local story compared to the cases covered thus far. The Chickens and the Bulls case was the only one which received contemporaneous press coverage, and more importantly, it actually went to trial and at least some aspects were proven in court. In this sense, Ed Murphy's blackmail ring is among the best substantiated in American political history with the most evidence to back it up. One fact that can't be discounted is the wild discrepancy in the sentences handed down to the different ring leaders. The ex- Chicago cop John Pine got two consecutive 20-year sentences. Sherman Kaminsky agreed to plead guilty, but during plea negotiations, one of his victims committed suicide and fearing the possibility of additional manslaughter charges. Kaminsky fled, becoming a fugitive for 11 years. Kaminsky was apprehended in 1978, long after any press attention or political pressure had subsided, and he struck a deal with prosecutors to testify in a different case. this time against one of the central conspirators and the Orlando Latutellure assassination in exchange for admission into the federal witness protection program. This is perhaps one of the most bizarre intersections with intelligence agencies in this entire video. Latellier was a critic of the Agusto Pinese regime of Chile who was assassinated with a carb bomb in Washington DC ostensibly by agents of the Pinese era Chilean intelligence agency known as Dina. The assassination occurred in 1976 in the midst of the CIA's Operation Condor, a yearslong campaign of terror in which the US government helped its Latin American allies, virtually exclusively right-wing dictatorships, to carry out intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations against their left-wing opponents, both domestically and internationally. It's long been speculated that the CIA had at least tacitly approved, if not directly, participated in Latellier's assassination as part of Operation Condor, either through training, funding, or just looking the other way. Kaminsk's role was as a jailhouse informant testifying in court that one of the plots's alleged ring leaders had divulged incriminating information to him. It seems notable that this ex-con fugitive Kaminsky almost immediately upon his arrest turned federal informant in a highly politically sensitive case providing information the government considered so valuable that it canceled out his years of blackmail. Was this a pre-existing relationship between Kaminsky and the feds? had he been an informant all along and the prosecutors or case agents just planted him in the same jail as the assassins knowing they could rely on him to elicit a confession or just concoct one. This became an issue in the Latellier case when the judge ultimately ruled that Kaminsky had been acting as an agent of the US government when he questioned the alleged assassins in jail. But even Kaminsk's seemingly incredible good luck doesn't match the leniency shown to the actual ring leader, Ed Murphy. Despite having been charged in a separate blackmail operation just months before his arrest in the chickens and the bulls case, being under state level indictments for blackmail in multiple states and already having a long rap sheet, Murphy came out with a sentence of just 5 years probation with no prison time. And even more incredibly, the evidence suggests that Ed Murphy continued or even expanded his blackmail operation after being put on federal probation. According to David Carter's book, Stonewall, information uncovered in researching this history suggests that having the goods on Hoover, Ed Murphy continued to blackmail homosexual men using the Stonewall Inn as a prime local for this new extortion operation. There, he targeted professional gay men, especially those working on Wall Street. According to the same 1968 New York Machine newsletter that asked why Ed Murphy had not been sentenced for his role in the national blackmail ring, Murphy had an interest in several gay bars in New York, including the Stonewall in the only club identified in the article and these clubs membership lists had been used for blackmail. The Machine Society of New York has also been informed that Murphy has an interest in the Stonewall, a club on Christopher Street and several other gay clubs in New York. Our source claims that the membership lists of some of these clubs are used to further extortion and shakeddown schemes. Stronger evidence of Murphy using the Stonewall Inn for blackmail comes from a 1969 publication that quoted the Madison Society of New York. In the 1960s, it was not easy to find gay bars. And so, as a service, the Madison Society of New York began compiling lists of these bars. Eventually, a local guide was published by a small business venture as the Gay Scene Guide. and the publishers on friendly terms with Mattishene New York quoted material from that organization's newsletter. Still, the bar lists remain just that, lists of gay bars, but with one exception. In the 1969 gay scene guide after the entry for the Stonewall in, there was a long quote from the New York Madishine newsletter inserted in the midst of the brief descriptions of gay bars. The following news item was reported in the March 1968 Madison New York newsletter and is presented here in condensed form. The Mattishene Society, Inc. of New York was instrumental in aiding DA Frank Hogan's office with information that led to the arrests of a number of black mailers. Edward FP Murphy, an ex-convict who is alleged to have been the head of the National Ring, which recently was active in extorting money from homosexuals, has served prison terms for lararseny and for carrying deadly weapons and was arrested for impersonating an officer and for extortion under federal indictment on extortion charges, permitted to plead guilty and received a 5-year probation. On a number of indictments in the state courts, Murphy pleaded guilty on May 16, 1966. Sentencing has been postponed six times. He could get up to 15 years in prison as a second offender on the robbery charge alone. MSNY has also been informed that Murphy has an interest in the Stonewall, a club on Christopher Street, and several other gay clubs in New York. We caution our readers never to use your real name when cruising. Never give your address to a questionable bar or club. And remember, that trick or hustler you've just picked up may be working for the management. We urge you, if you've been intimidated or blackmailed in the past, to report it to the DA's office or to the MSNY. That a local guide book took the unusual step of inserting a warning against giving out information to employees of the Stonewall Inn in the middle of a bar listing is more than suggestive. Indeed, several years later, Dick Lish was quite forceful about Murphy's role at the Stonewall Inn, writing that he seemed to be the manager of the place. The homosexual handbook reported that the burly at the door of the Stonewall Inn keeps boxes that hold or are rumored to hold thousands of cards upon which are printed the particulars of the many thousands of customers which echo some of the ideas found in the New York Machine newsletter article and may explain part of how the blackmail routine operated. Did some customers naively believe that they were really being screened for membership in a private club and that the screening would protect them by both excluding police officers and helping to establish the identity of the place they patronized as a legitimate private club? Beyond Murphy's involvement in the Stonewall Inn and in blackmailing gay men, he was deeply involved in male prostitution. Chuck Shaheen, who had a very high regard for Murphy, told Marty Dubberman, "I knew Eddie Murphy for a long time. He was into young boys, most definitely and was very, very involved with procurement of young boys." Danny Garvin recalls how he would always see these hustlers hanging out with Murphy. He had connections and these hustler kids would hang out with him. Bob Kohler, who hated Murphy passionately, cited as evidence of Murphy's lonesomeness that he paid the use he pimped with counterfeit money. Research on this book uncovered a couple of elusive references to a prostitution ring that was run on the second floor above the Stonewall Inn. When one looks at all the available evidence today, there is little doubt that such a ring operated out of the floor above the Stonewall Inn, although few know it existed. But by Murphy's own account upstairs, the mafia retained a room. But beyond the Stonewall being linked to blackmailing Wall Street employees and blackmailer Ed Murphy being connected to the Stonewall in, is there any piece of evidence that directly connects Murphy himself to blackmailing men on Wall Street? There is. In the late 1970s, a friend of Murphy's told Morty Manford that Ed Murphy said that he had been informing on the mob to the FBI. Murphy's friend went on to explain that because the mob had discovered that Murphy was an informer, Murphy had decided to come out, stop working with the mob, and quit informing because he wants to become a good guy, Manford reacted skeptically to Murphy's claim of being an FBI informer by saying, "I've heard that he was involved in a ring that was blackmailing homosexual men down at Wall Street." So, does Carter's evidence here stand up to scrutiny? Much of his information came from gay rights organizations like the Madisheen Society in the context of explicit warnings to other gay men about Murphy's blackmail operations. It seems unlikely that activists like this would intentionally lie or report unsubstantiated rumors about a matter of such significance to their community. And the existence of contemporaneous documentary evidence like the Machine Society newsletters as opposed to just decades old anecdotes like in other cases certainly lends the allegations some credibility. The quote where Murphy allegedly admitted to being an FBI informant came from an interview conducted by the International Gay Information Center with a famous gay rights activist named Morty Manford. But Manford was reporting secondhand information, something he'd allegedly heard from a friend of Murphy's. But even the most skeptical reading still has to explain Murphy's incredible ability to avoid arrest and incarceration despite having been perhaps the most prolific gay blackmailer of his era with a reputation for extortion that was so well established that gay rights organizations were printing warnings about him in their newsletters. Carter offers two possible explanations. Under one interpretation, Murphy was in possession of those alleged compromising photos of Hoover, and law enforcement prevented his incarceration and tolerated his later blackmail and pimping operations out of fear that he might expose the FBI director and his assistant. In the other version, Murphy had become a prolific FBI informant, and instead of blackmailing the agency, he was passing them information ostensibly about the mafia. It's also easy to imagine a scenario in which Murphy was collecting the exact kinds of sexual blackmail material that Hoover coveted and rather than snitching on the mafia, he was actually providing the bureau with a point of leverage over certain powerful figures from Wall Street or the federal government. Carter even speculates that the raid which precipitated the Stonewall riots was actually intended to bust up Murphy's blackmail ring being operated out of the Stonewall Inn rather than just to harass the bar's patrons as conventional wisdom dictates. Murphy would never be prosecuted again after taking his plea agreement in the chickens and the bulls case. And by the late 70s, his reputation had been transformed into that of an elder statesman of the gay rights movement and a fixture at gay pride events in New York City, including those commemorating the Stonewall riots. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that of all the alleged sexual blackmail rings of this era, the most wells substantiated one with the most convincing evidence was not motivated by some lofty ideological concern like Roy Conn and his supposed anti-communist blackmail, but rather by the exact same thing that has motivated most criminals throughout history, greed. Murphy and his chickens weren't seeking political power or social status. Their goal was simply to make money. and Murphy's relationship with the FBI appears to have been purely transactional to keep the John's and their money flowing. It's also worth noting that informants are typically made to testify in court cases against the people they're informing on, but there's no evidence in the public record that Ed Murphy ever testified against anyone. Maybe Murphy's arrangement with the FBI was similar to Whitey Bulgers, where he just fed the bureau information on other mafia figures and in return was allowed to run his criminal operations free from state and federal interference. It does seem oddly coincidental that of the three ring leaders, two proved so valuable to the feds that they avoided prison completely, while the third was stuck with a then rare 40-year sentence. By all accounts, Murphy continued running his blackmail ring for another decade or so after taking the plea deal years after his operation had become common knowledge among the moreworked members of New York's gay scene. Was the FBI leveraging Murphy's ring to target diplomats, foreign spies, Wall Street bankers, UN delegates? At this point, we'll likely never know.
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By: Psych History Show
Raped by: Otto Heckel
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