Murray Humphreys

Murray Humphreys, also known as The Camel or The Hump, was a Chicago mobster of Welsh descent who was the chief political fixer and labor racketeer, beginning with the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition. Considered to be a ruthless but also well-dressed, socially refined, and clever man, Humphreys believed in killing only as a last resort. He was known to place far greater trust in the bribability of lawmen, seemingly respectable businessmen, labor union leaders, and public officials. A favorite maxim of Humphreys' was: "The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most". But perhaps the statement that best summed up Humphreys' philosophy of life was: "Any time you become weak, you might as well die". Al Capone once said of Humphreys, "Anybody can use a gun, but 'The Hump' uses his head. He can shoot if he has to, but he likes to negotiate with cash when he can. I like that in a man."
Humphrey's value to the Chicago Outfit was also due to his abilities as a fixer: to ensure that his fellow mobsters attracted as little publicity as possible. Whereas some senior wiseguys, such as Sam Giancana and Filippo Sacco, welcomed the limelight, others took their cue from Humphreys and conducted themselves behind the scenes and out of public view. He owned a nondescript bungalow in South Shore, Chicago but frequently lived in various high rise towers on the downtown lake front in Chicago, like the apartment he had on the 51st floor of Marina City's east tower. According to FBI files, he also owned an $80,000 winter home in Key Biscayne, Florida, in his wife's name.

Early life

Llewellyn Morris Humphreys was born in the United States, the third of five children. His parents, Bryan Humphreys and Ann Wigley, were from Carno, a small village near Newtown in Powys, Wales. They had married at the Methodist chapel in Llanidloes, Powys. However, as the long depression at the end of the 19th century caused great hardship in many Welsh farming communities, the young couple found it difficult to make a living from their isolated hilltop farm in Carno. The family eventually emigrated to the United States from the village of Llandinam.
The family's fortunes did not improve following arrival in the United States. Humphreys had to drop out of elementary school, aged seven, to get a job selling newspapers because of their impoverished condition. However, young "Curly" Humphreys soon tried his hand at petty theft and became involved with the world of Chicago street gangs. By the time he had turned 13 years old, Humphreys was in the custody of a Chicago judge by the name of Jack Murray, who apparently attempted to interest the young hoodlum in a law career. While not inspiring Curly to follow in his footsteps, Judge Murray's judicial lessons proved of great value to Humphreys later on. It was at this time that Llewelyn Humphreys changed his name to Murray Humphreys.
During the next few years, Humphreys appears to have been involved in several jewel thefts and burglaries and by age 16, he was serving a 60-day sentence for petty larceny in Chicago's Bridewell Jail. The original charge had been one of felony burglary but Humphreys had convinced the prosecutor to change the charge. According to a later acquaintance of Humphreys, the young criminal's private ultimatum to the prosecutor went something like this: "You try to get me indicted for burglary and I will weep in front of the grand jury. They probably won't indict me because I am only 16 years old. But even if you get me to court, the do-gooders will say that because of my extreme youth I ought not to be sent to prison. However, if you reduce the charge to one of petty larceny, I will plead guilty. I will get a light sentence. You will get a conviction that looks good on your record. Everybody will be happy. What's more, you will receive a suitable gift before the case goes to court".
Humphreys then continued his life of crime, primarily one of jewel heists and burglaries. Murray left Chicago for his brother's home in Little Axe, near Pink, Oklahoma in 1921 after some difficulties. Taking a temporary job as a door-to-door salesman, Humphreys met an attractive young college student from Norman, named Mary Brendle. Marriage followed a brief courtship, and after a suitable time had elapsed, Humphreys took his young bride back with him to Chicago. Briefly going legitimate, Humphreys got a job as a short-order cook at a restaurant on Halsted Street, though Murray's "legitimacy" would be short-lived after he met customer Fred Evans.
The college-educated Evans was a small-time Chicago gangster in search of a partner who could help him break into the lucrative field of bootleg liquor. Evans found his partner in Humphreys, and the problem of having no product of their own was solved by the decision to hijack others' bootleg. All went smoothly for several years until Murray hijacked some bootleg belonging to the Capone mob. When Humphreys was identified by the truck's driver as the hijacker who had stuck a gun in his face, some Capone men picked Humphreys up and brought him before Capone. Exactly what conversation passed between the two is unknown, but apparently Capone was impressed enough by the smooth-talking young hood to give him a job with the Outfit. As an appreciative Capone was later to say of his chance discovery: "Nobody hustles like the Hump."

Mob career

He was skinny and dapper and handsome in a sinister sort of way, a representative of the new breed of racketeer, part thug and part businessman. And he enjoyed Capone's favor.

—Capone: The Man and the Era, by Laurence Bergreen

The 27-year-old Humphreys was put into the racketeering side of the business but also carried out some killings for the mob around this time. His two most commonly known nicknames were "The Camel" and "The Hump". It has been suggested that the nickname, "The Camel", derived from his preference for wearing camel hair coats; however, a more likely explanation is that "The Camel," evolved from his other nickname, "The Hump", derived from his surname. The names given to him by his friends, however, were more revealing: "Mr. Einstein", "The Brainy Hood" and "Mr. Moneybags".
From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, Humphreys, along with "Red" Barker, William "Three-Fingered Jack" White and William "Klondike" O'Donnell, was one of the mobsters who orchestrated the Outfit's takeover of a number of Chicago labor unions. Humphreys was later indicted for the December 1931 kidnapping of a union president, Robert G. Fitche, but escaped conviction.
In 1933, with Capone behind bars for income tax evasion, the chief investigator for the State Attorney's office described Murray Humphreys as "'public enemy No. 1' and 'the czar of business rackets in Chicago.'" Later that same year, Humphreys was indicted for income tax evasion himself. On the run for 18 months, he finally gave himself up near Whiting, Indiana and entered a plea of guilty. Sentenced by a federal judge to 18 months in Leavenworth Prison, Humphreys wound up serving only 13 months of his sentence.
It is likely that Humphreys had a hand in arranging the 1933 fake kidnapping of John "Jake the Barber" Factor, a British con artist wanted in England for stock swindling. Factor, a Capone friend, was facing extradition proceedings when the Outfit staged a fake disappearance and framed Capone rival Roger "Terrible" Touhy for allegedly kidnapping Factor. Touhy received a 99-year prison sentence but was released in 1959, only to be murdered several weeks later. Six months after Touhy's death, Humphreys supposedly bought several shares of an insurance company and eight months later redeemed the shares for $42,000. An Internal Revenue Service investigation soon determined that these shares had been originally owned by John Factor. The IRS claimed that the $42,000 was a payment from Factor to Humphreys for the fake 1933 kidnapping; they forced Humphreys to declare the money as income and pay taxes.
Other career highlights for Humphreys include his discovering and exploiting the intricacies of the legal system's "double jeopardy" rule and the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment for the Mob's benefit.
When Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik died in 1956, Humphreys became the Outfit's chief political fixer and financial manager or, in the words of one Mafia historian, their "strategist, councilor, and master schemer". Knowing that Guzik's body could not be found at the restaurant without compromising some of the Outfit's most valuable judicial resources, Humphreys had the body surreptitiously removed from the restaurant and taken home to Mrs. Guzik, who was curtly informed that her husband had officially died at home.
Giancana and his much valued "adviser" had rather dissimilar styles, illustrated by the following: both men were constantly tailed by Federal agents, but when Giancana grew impatient of a car tailing him, he put his foot to the gas and brought about a race between him and his pursuers. Humphreys, however, one day when he had had enough of being followed, got out of his car, sent his driver home, went up to the car that was following him and said: "You've been following me all day. There's no need for two cars. I'll ride with you."
Sam Giancana and Murray Humphreys both topped the FBI's Top Hoodlum list, "Top Hoodlum" being a program put into operation in 1957 for the purpose of combating organized crime and the Mafia in particular. When Chicago FBI agents under the leadership of William F. Roemer finally discovered that a second-floor tailor shop on North Michigan Avenue, in the heart of what is now "Magnificent Mile", was a frequent meeting place for such Outfit notables as Humphreys, Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana and Gus Alex, the FBI painstakingly installed a hidden microphone in the shop after hours. "One microphone was worth a thousand agents", said Roemer, fondly remembering the bug they christened, "Little Al." "Little Al" remained in place undetected for five years, and gave the FBI invaluable knowledge about the inner workings of the Mafia.