A Tragic Mistake

A long time ago, I worked for a large telephone company. I know, that sounds about as interesting as being an accountant or watching paint dry. In this case though, it was a company that had a very colourful history which included a tragic incident in its past.

The company's story started in 1961 when a brilliant entrepreneur named Charles Wohlstetter raised $1.5 million and along with two partners formed a holding company, Telephone Communications Corporation.

Prior to this, Mr. Wohlstetter, who was born and educated in New York City, had other varied and rather successful careers. In 1929, at the age of 18, he graduated from what was then City College of New York and got a job as a runner at a small stock brokerage firm. He quickly exhibited his financial insight by predicting, to all who would listen, the stock market crash. Sure enough, few listened.

In 1938 he became restless and moved to Los Angeles to write screenplays. During the year he spent in Hollywood, he sold three of his screenplays, one of which was made into a low-budget film called "What Millionaire Playboy."

In 1939, he returned to New York where he organized a company to make aircraft parts for the Army. World War II brought the company plenty of business, and with the profits, Mr. Wohlstetter opened an investment banking company.

That company led to a $1.5 million investment in a small telephone company in Alaska and that investment started it all. Thirty years later, this original venture had grown into a company that had acquired and consolidated more than 750 smaller companies with total corporate assets hovering around $6 billion.

But the phenomenal growth and success was not without peril and hardship. In 1970 the company was now known as Continental Telephone Corporation had assets topping $1 billion, and sales volume had risen to $120 million. Aside from its dominating telephone business, the company's activities by that time had grown to include cable television systems, directory publishing, equipment leasing, and data services.

The president of the company at the time was Philip J. Lucier, 49, one of Charles Wohlstetter's founding partners. Mr. Lucier an exemplary executive, a respected man in business, in his church and, the father of eleven children.

It was a hot, humid day in St. Louis on July 24th 1970 when Mr. Lucier and two company vice-presidents, James Robb and James Napier decided to have lunch at the St. Louis Club in the Calyton business district of suburban St. Louis.

According to Ronald J. Lawrence, reporter for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper at the time, it was 1:10pm when the three men left the St. Louis Club and proceeded to their car. Lucier opened the passenger side door and suggested that Robb and Napier wait while he started the air conditioner to cool the interior.

The two vice-presidents stood at the open door as Lucier sat behind the wheel, inserted the key in the ignition and turned it.

There was a burst of flame and a deafening explosion as a bomb, planted under the driver's seat of the car, exploded. Robb and Napier were thrown back and onto the ground from the energy of the blast and Philip J. Lucier, president of Continental Telephone Corporation and father of eleven, died instantly.

Nobody could even begin to comprehend how such a tragedy could befall the respected and well-liked head of a business as benign and main-street as a telephone company. At the time, St. Louis was known as the "Bomb Capital of the Country" but this was beyond the pale.

As more information came to hand, however, it started to look more like this terrible tragedy had been the result of an unbelievable set of circumstances that may have resulted in the 'mistaken" taking of an innocent life.

An hour earlier, when the three men had driven into the parking lot where the explosion took place, the lot was full of cars and there were no empty parking spots. Mr Lucier saw a car leaving and noticed a man he knew, Theodore F. Schwartz, an attorney, was driving it. The two men waved at each other and Lucier parked in the spot Mr Schwartz had just driven out of. The attorney almost never left in his car for lunch but on this day, he did.

Both of the cars were black, both had a mobile telephone antenna and both had a four-digit license plate.

After the car was parked, the three men went into the restaurant. A businessman looking for an empty space in the parking lot saw a man sitting behind the wheel of Lucier's black Cadillac. The door was open slightly and the man's foot dangled outside. The businessman said, "It looked like the man was working underneath the dashboard." After the businessman found a parking space, he walked past the Cadillac the man inside pulled his foot inside, shut the door and sat there.

Later, after hearing the explosion and seeing the remains of the destroyed car, the businessman realised he had seen the person planting the bomb.

Continental Telephone offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Lucier's death and authorities interviewed hundreds of persons but no progress was made.

The same reporter mentioned above, Ronald J. Lawrence, found that the attorney whose parking spot Lucier took and whose car looked so similar to his was representing two swindlers in the St. Louis area. Apparently, the two miscreants had run a scam on a guy from New Orleans. It turned out the guy was a well-connected Mafioso. The two had upset the wrong people and were on the receiving end of the deadly fury of the New Orleans Mafia.

In a series of interviews with the underworld characters involved, the reporter was told the story of how the New Orleans mark knew of the explosion almost immediately after it occurred and how he threatened the swindlers with more trouble if they didn't pay him back the money they had scammed from him.

There was a litany of characters and schemes involved in this story, small time con men, phoney banks in the English channel and Panama, a scam against the city of New Orleans, syndicate bosses such as Anthony "Tony G" Giordano, boss of the St. Louis Mafia and even New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.

Names were given but there was never enough evidence to bring charges. As the reporter has said, "The murder, for all practical purposes is solved, but forever will remain un-prosecuted.

The incident made headlines for a few days but was soon forgotten by the general public. The company continued to grow and was eventually merged with GT&E to become the largest independent telephone company in the US.

In May, 1995 Charles Wohlstetter passed away. In his long career, he founded Atlas Aircraft (later Cyclohm Motor Corporation) and Continental Telephone, became a real-estate mogul and bought the Racquet Club in Palm Springs, Calif., and a large vineyard, complete with chateau and 600,000 bottles of vintage wine, in France.

He knew presidents, financiers and major figures in show biz and the arts--including Carl Sandburg, George Gershwin, Dorothy Parker and Milton Berle.

It is truly amazing how, on a warm summer's day, such a story can arise out of middle America. It touched so many lives, involved so much intrigue and affected so many people from both sides of the social spectrum.

A detailed account of the newspaper articles published by Mr Lawrence concerning the incident can be found in the on-line site of Crime Magazine.
http://www.crimemagazine.com/lucier.htm