Sentence of a Boss

Up for reckoning in a U. S. district court as a tax-dodger this week came Kansas City, Mo.'s sick Boss Tom Pendergast. His power to make Missouri Governors and U. S. Senators had failed to unmake charges that he evaded Federal income taxes on $443,550, allegedly took $315,000 of that sum in slush from insurance companies (TIME, April 17).

When Tom Pendergast appeared in court with Tom Jr., his nephew James, and two attorneys, his mind was made up, his face was flushed. With what dignity remained to him, he took a seat before Federal Judge Merrill E. Otis, let his lawyers speak for him: guilty on both counts.

Kansas City and the U. S. then learned how rich, mighty Tom Pendergast got into so queasy a mess. According to the prosecution, Boss Tom wagered $2,000,000, lost $600,000 on horse races in 1935 alone. "It has been a mania with him," said Defense Attorney (and Democratic County Chairman) John G. Madden. Lawyer Madden pleaded heart trouble as reason for a light sentence: "Imprisonment would mean death. He can't survive if he enters a cell . . . . Here we have death in life. . . . I ask the utmost clemency."

Prosecutor Maurice Milligan declared that Tom Pendergast since 1927 had evaded taxes on $1,240,000, did not ask utmost severity (ten years in prison, $20,000 in fines). Judge Otis leniently ordered Defendant Pendergast to pay $10,000, serve 15 months (plus a suspended sentence of three years, five years on probation). If Tom Pendergast lives and behaves, he may have to spend only twelve months in Leavenworth Penitentiary, 40 miles from the city he no longer rules.

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