The Reign of the Old Gray Wolf grips the City
Subscribe Now!Crime boss Tom Dennison ruled for decades through terror and cunning
On a warm, late-September evening in 1919, the streets of Omaha erupted in mob violence that left two white men dead, one black man brutally lynched and the Douglas County Courthouse in flames.
In the aftermath, citizens attempted to assign blame to the spurious charge that the black man had assaulted a white woman. But the responsibility for the deliberate, politically motivated murder lay on one man, a powerful boss whom the law would rarely touch – because he owned the law.
When we think of the heyday of organized crime and the “roaring” days of Prohibition in America, the city that often comes to mind is Chicago. Yet, before there was an Al Capone or a Bugs Moran, a ruthless, charismatic Nebraskan held the city of Omaha in thrall.
He exercised control with equal measures of political corruption, violence and charm. His name was Tom Dennison. Nebraskans called him the “Old Gray Wolf,” and he ran Omaha practically unopposed for decades.
Born in Iowa in 1858, Dennison made his first move to Nebraska as a toddler when his Irish immigrant parents transplanted the family to a farm near present-day Jackson. At 15, Dennison left home, spending the next six years as a farm laborer, and then roaming the West, making his way as a blacksmith, gambler, gold seeker, bandit and saloon owner in Kansas, New Mexico and the rough-hewn mining towns of Montana and Colorado.
Although the Wild West was fast becoming a wistful memory, Omaha was far from tame, so Dennison began to make his mark. Still considered a wide-open town, it was often referred to as the wickedest city in America. In 1892, Dennison found himself back in Nebraska, this time in Omaha and with $75,000 in his poke.
Omaha was among the nation’s leading agricultural and meat-processing centers, with 10 railroads passing through it. The city’s population had more than doubled in 10 years.
But along with prosperity came lawlessness and corruption, and Omaha’s notorious Third Ward – located between the Missouri River and the commercial-retail district – boasted its fair share of gambling dens, brothels and saloons. And, as the saying went, “As goes the Third Ward, so goes the city.”
Dennison set about establishing himself as the city’s “king gambler.” He was an impressive-looking man, 6 feet tall, with cold eyes, a deep voice and quiet manner, broken by occasional bursts of laughter and explosions of anger. As befitted his calling, he was a sharp dresser and given to wearing diamonds.
Dennison emanated power, and he established control over the Third Ward. He set up his own headquarters at the Budweiser Saloon, 1409 Douglas St., now the Union Pacific Center. By the century’s end, both the chief of police and the mayor were reputedly on Dennison’s payroll.
Houses of prostitution sprang up – some 100 brothels and 2,500 “soiled doves.”
Dennison became involved in local politics, both to protect his interests and to further line his pockets. He discovered that by gaining the support of the immigrant population, he could control the vote and the city’s purse strings.
Although Dennison never held or ran for public office, he became directly responsible for filling Omaha’s public seats. In short order, he was acting as liaison between city government and Omaha’s businesses – legitimate and otherwise.
Within 10 years of his return to Nebraska, Dennison had become Omaha’s most powerful and influential resident. He was practically untouchable, and on the rare occasion when he was arrested, inevitably, he was acquitted, the charges were dropped, or the witnesses and claimants vanished.
Perhaps the most flagrant example was on Nov. 4, 1892, when a masked bandit boarded a Sioux City and Pacific Railroad train at Sioux City and singlehandedly robbed a diamond merchant of $20,000 worth of precious stones. After his arrest and conviction for another crime several years later, the thief implicated Dennison as the mastermind behind the “Great Diamond Robbery,” swearing that half the loot went to the boss. Dennison was arrested, tried – and acquitted for lack of evidence.
In the early years of the 20th century, Dennison formed bonds with Omaha’s businessmen by personally directing city contracts, adjusting taxes, selling licenses, and playing fast and loose with the building codes. In time, two of his brothers and a nephew held important city jobs, as did several saloonkeeper associates.
Dennison’s influence over both the courts and the law enforcement community gave him two major advantages. It provided him with the power to fix juries throughout the county, through bribery and violence. And it enabled him to open Omaha as a safe haven to the nation’s worst gangsters and hoodlums.
His ticket to power in City Hall occurred within the realm of mayoral politics in 1906. The Progressive Movement’s reform candidate advocated Prohibition, and for Dennison, who controlled all the liquor, gambling and prostitution in Omaha, this was unacceptable. He threw his considerable support behind the candidacy of the more socially tractable James “Cowboy Jim” Dahlman.
The easygoing Dahlman had indeed been a cowboy and ranch foreman in his native Texas. He had won a statewide riding competition when only 17. However, there was a dark side to Cowboy Jim. Before leaving Texas on the run, he had killed his sister’s abusive husband.
After the killing, Dahlman changed his name to “Jim Murray” and fled to western Nebraska, where he worked as a cowhand and range boss. In time, Dahlman discovered the courts had ruled the killing self-defense, and he reclaimed his name. He became a brand inspector and was elected sheriff of Dawes County.
Dahlman took to politics, eventually serving as mayor of Chadron, chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, delegate to two Democratic National Conventions and Democratic State Chairman before his election at age 49 to the Omaha mayor’s office. A natural politician despite having little formal education – as he was the first to acknowledge – Dahlman’s rope tricks, tall tales and “aw, shucks” knack for simple talk appealed to the working public. And more vital to Dennison than his lariat twirling, Dahlman practiced a liberal, laissez-faire approach to government. Dahlman’s live-and-let-live political philosophy ensured Dennison a problem-free run so long as Cowboy Jim stayed in office.
Dennison was so satisfied with Jim’s performance that he backed him in nine consecutive mayoral elections – eight of which Dahlman won, earning him the epithet, the “perpetual mayor.” Dahlman’s one loss introduced a progressive, reform candidate named Edward Parsons Smith.
Apparently, by 1918, a number of Omaha’s citizens had had enough of Dennison and backed the well-intentioned reformer. Dahlman was out, along with seven Dennison-owned city commissioners, including the police commissioner. As events would soon prove, Dennison was not a good loser, especially when money and power were at stake. In order to destroy the new mayor’s chances of success, Dennison helped instigate a race riot that stained Omaha’s reputation.
In 1919, the year following Dahlman’s single loss at the polls, Omaha boasted a population of nearly 200,000, some 10,000 of whom were African-American.
Throughout the year, at the instigation of Dennison, the Omaha Bee ran a number of false articles detailing assaults on white women by Omaha black men. The Daily News ran similar tales.
The stories served as not-so-thinly veiled attacks on Mayor Smith’s ability to maintain order. Smith was particularly vulnerable to political assault, having recently run on a platform that promised to “clean up Omaha.” He had defeated Dennison’s pet candidate, and now he would reap the whirlwind of the boss’s fury.
As the year progressed, the newspaper articles continued to stoke the flames of racial unrest. The situation was exacerbated by the return of the doughboys, who arrived home from World War I to find the national economy in a major slump and prices inordinately high. Jobs were in short supply, and rumors swirled that black men were standing ready to claim what jobs there were. The city was a powder keg, and Dennison held the match.
Inevitably, the powder blew. On the evening of Sept. 25, a young white woman was reportedly raped, and her crippled companion beaten and robbed. The police arrested a black man named Will Brown and locked him in the Douglas County Courthouse jail.
Three days later, inflamed by rabblerousers and newspaper articles, a mob of several thousand men broke into the jail, set the courthouse aflame and slashed the fire hoses. They dragged Brown from his cell, and in a stunning display of brutality, hanged him, riddled his struggling body with bullets and dragged his corpse behind an automobile, finally burning his remains on a woodpile at 17th and Dodge.
Mayor Smith bravely attempted to stop the lynching, but members of the mob put a rope around his neck as well and hoisted him off the ground. Only the timely arrival of a carload of policemen saved the mayor’s life.
Although Dennison was out of town when the atrocities occurred, it was alleged – and later acknowledged by turncoats – that he had not only aided in instigating the events, but he had sent his chief lieutenant to arouse and lead the mob.
By the time authorities set out to apprehend Dennison’s henchman, Dennison had spirited his accomplice out of Omaha. The police arrested a number of participants, however, and in the subsequent trials, the grand jury determined that several reported assaults on white women had been perpetrated by whites in blackface.
The grand jury further found that the attack “was not a casual affair; it was premeditated and planned by those secret and invisible forces that today are fighting … the men who represent good government.”
As in all previous attempts to hold Dennison accountable, no charges were brought against him, and no one was ever convicted of the savage murder of Will Brown.
Despite the negative publicity that associated him with the riot, Dennison reasserted his hold on the city, re-electing the cowboy in the next mayoral contest. The timing could not have been better for Dennison.
With the advent of Prohibition, the Old Gray Wolf established the “Omaha Liquor Syndicate” and formed alliances with other noted bootleggers, including Chicago’s Al Capone and “Boss Tom” Pendergast of Kansas City, Mo. Once again, Dennison maintained control of the police and the city government, and with it, the illicit flow of booze in and out of Omaha.
Dennison was not without feeling, however, as evidenced by the death of his first wife, Ada, in 1922. By all accounts, her death grieved him terribly and caused him to turn a more attentive eye to his daughter and two grandsons.
By the next decade, the Old Gray Wolf suffered a series of setbacks. He had a stroke in 1932, and was indicted that same year, along with nearly 60 others, for violations of the Prohibition statutes. The trial ended in a hung jury, and as before, all charges against Dennison were dropped.
The trial, combined with the debilitating effects of his recent stroke, took a toll on his stamina. The legendary Gray Wolf walked away from the trial an exhausted old man. He suffered a collapse, and contracted and barely survived pneumonia.
The following year, his second wife, a local Omaha woman named Nevajo Truman, filed for divorce. Some pointed to the vast difference in their ages as the cause of the rift. Dennison was 75, and she was 20. He had married her three years earlier when she was still in her teens.
And to put a final rock in his path, Dennison was roundly condemned by public opinion for the vicious slaying of a popular Omaha philanthropist, businessman and anti-crime crusader Harry Lapidus. No evidence connected Dennison with Lapidus’ murder, but Omahans speculated that Dennison had the most to gain from it.
Omaha finally had enough of Dennison. In the 1933 elections, with the new local radio station continually broadcasting a newly minted tune, “The Old Gray Wolf, He Ain’t What He Used To Be,” the opposition party swept into power.
Later that year, Dennison traveled to San Diego, Calif., to visit friends and regain his strength, and one suspects, to put some serious distance between himself and Omaha. In January 1934, Dennison was injured in a car accident near Chula Vista, Calif. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and on Feb. 14, he died. His funeral at Omaha’s St. Peter’s Catholic Church six days later drew a crowd of more than 1,000 mourners and curiosity seekers. More than 100 cars followed his funeral procession to Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Dennison’s death occasioned eulogies from local and national newspapers, some of which had tirelessly crusaded against him and now reminisced about the “good old days.”
The Omaha World-Herald credited him with “the qualities of natural leadership, of the fighter, and he was industrious and persevering.” The writer further mused, “Suppose he had been directed into a better path for a better end. … Our guess is that he would have gone far and won for himself a deservedly honored name.”
This story was originally published in the November/December 2011 issue of Nebraska Life.
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