On this day, March 24, in 1982, the grandson of a St. Louis crime boss and a former Missouri police chief were both charged in a series of underworld car bombings.
James A. Michaels III, whose grandfather died in a 1980 car bombing that ignited a mob war in St. Louis, was charged with setting a bomb that maimed rival Paul J. Leisure. Milton Schepp, the former police chief in St. George, Mo., who built the bombs with Michaels, went on the run for a year.
The bloodshed began after the chief of organized crime in St. Louis died of cancer in 1980.
Michaels got five years. Leisure’s cousin was executed for Michaels’ grandfather’s death, even though Michaels petitioned the governor to spare his life.
— Scott McCabe
