Kansas City Mafia Suspected In 1970 Hit On Civil Rights Leader Leon Jordan

The cold case unit at the Kansas City, MO Police Department has re-opened the 1970 assassination of black civil rights leader Leon Jordan amid suspicion that local mobsters were involved as reported by Mike McGraw and Glenn E. Rice for The Kansas City Star in Part I of their story: "A police report . . . shows the shotgun used to kill Jordon may have made its way into the hands of the mob several years before the murder. * * * In addition, key sources have said that a low-profile mob associate known on the street as 'Shotgun Joe' may have provided the gun and recruited the killers in what appears to have been a complex plot to murder Jordan. The man, Joe Centimano, died of cancer in 1972, and police never questioned him." Centimano "was such a little-known player at the time, few in law enforcement circles knew he even existed" although "sources interviewed by The Star . . . contend that Centimano was friendly with key people in the mob's hierarchy" as reported by Mike McGraw and Glenn E. Rice for The Kansas City Star in Part II of their story.