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Hobart Gazette, 29 Mar. 1978
This article included enough information (home on Lake George, reached by a private road from 61st Avenue) for me to identify a likely location for Fred Mackey's home, and reference to the 1972 Plat Book confirmed that I had the right place:
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According to one newspaper article, the house cost $200,000 when it was built[1] — per the county records, in 1958. That would be about $2.2 million in today's money.[2]
Here is an aerial view of the house from 1978:
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Image from the Lake County Surveyor GIS Website.
That's a lot of driveway to plow in the winter, isn't it? But I'm sure Fred could afford to hire someone to do that.
The recent construction of the Amber Creek subdivision has eaten up some of the private road, making the property only slightly less isolated.
Fred Mackey's murder made the front page of the Sunday Post-Tribune, which ran this article summarizing his career in Gary:
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"Gary Policy Baron Murdered," Post-Tribune (Gary, Ind.), 26 Mar. 1978.
His story seems to be the classic American success story gone awry, something like Al Capone's: poor boy works his way to millionaire status, but on the wrong side of the law. Like Al, Fred seems to have been known for his generosity to poor people. Also like Al, Fred went to prison for tax evasion, not for the criminal activity that built his wealth.
My research in the online newspapers did not reveal that anyone was ever convicted of Fred's murder, although police did have suspects.[3]
Among the property Fred owned, according to one source, was a "farm in Arkansas."[4] Was it the farm where he had been born in 1902? I wish I knew — I can't find any on-line plat maps for Hickory Ridge Township, Phillips County, Arkansas, to figure that out. But let's visit that farm, and see what else we can find out about Fred's background from the census and other records, shall we?
The 1900 Census shows his parents on the farm where Fred would be born two years later. In May 1900, 37-year-old Bruce Mackey married 16-year-old Jennie Davis. The census, taken the next month, shows the newlyweds along with Bruce's two sons, 18 and 16 years of age, from his previous marriage.[5] The household also includes a boarder. Bruce owned the farm himself.
The enumerator of the 1910 Census may have made a mistake: Bruce and Jennie's oldest child is listed as an 8-year-old daughter named Leler, who is never heard from again. That probably should have been an 8-year-old son named Fred. Jennie and Bruce had four more children by then (Bruce Jr., Ruby, Fanny, and Bob).
By the 1920 Census — if we can trust the enumerator — Fred, 18, had left the family farm in Arkansas. But where he went and what he was doing, I do not know. The rest of his family, which now included three more children, was still on the farm.
The next trace I can find of Fred is in September 1929, when he appears in this list of Lake County, Indiana court cases (compiled by Hobart's own Alvina Killigrew):
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Alvina M. Killigrew (comp.), "County Court Calendars," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 26 Sept. 1929.
And so the 1930 Census records Fred as a prisoner in the "Indiana Reformatory" in Madison County. By then, his parents and some siblings had come up north to Gary. His parents ran a grocery store and lived with their daughter, Fannie, and her husband, Ardie Jenkins (a medical doctor).
By 1940 Fred was free again, living in Gary with his widowed mother (along with other family members, including his now-divorced sister, Fannie) and working in an unspecified "mill." But two years later, we find Fred as some kind of entrepreneur, a member of his own firm:
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Image from Ancestry.com.
This may have been his first insurance firm. In a 1948 Gary directory,[6] we find him listed as an insurance agent. Sometime between 1942 and 1948 he married Ella Esmond.
He was the proprietor of an insurance company in the 1950 Census. He was also father: his five-year-old son, Fred Jr., was living with him — but his wife was not, apparently. At least, she is not recorded there. A widowed woman was boarding in Fred's house.
In the online newspapers, I came across the son's name a few times in connection with high-school sports in the early to mid-1960s. He was on the track team at Roosevelt High School in Gary.
In 1957, per the county records, Fred built the Gibraltar Building. In 1958, as mentioned above, he built the limestone house on Lake George.
And that brings us nearly to the start of his legal troubles, where the Post-Tribune article above picked up. I would like to know more about the missing years, but I don't suppose I ever will. I'm not the person to tell that story, anyway, given that I know absolutely nothing about illegal gambling in Gary. And very little about legal gambling anywhere.
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[1] David Mannweiler, "To Many, It Was More Than Just a House ("IRS Auction Set")," Indianapolis News, 17 Mar. 1975.
[2] Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator, https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.
[3] "Ex-Gang Leader Linked to Slaying," Times (Hammond, Ind.), 15 June 1978; "Lake Drops Charges," Times, 15 May 1979.
[4] Mannweiler, supra.
[5] Per a family tree on Ancestry.com, in 1881 Bruce married Josie Woods, who died in 1885.
[6] Polk's Gary (Lake County, Ind.) City Directory 1948 (Detroit: R.L. Polk & Co., 1948), via Ancestry.com.
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