July 3, 2021 – Kansas City Black mob boss Eddie (Whitey) Cox, who some say was the basis for fictional crime lord Frank White, the memorable multi-cultural don played by Christopher Walken in director Abel Ferrara’s cult-classic gangster flick, King of New York (1990). A certified urban legend in the Midwest underworld, the 86-year old Cox was finally paroled this week via a compassionate release following three decades incarcerated in federal prison on an array of racketeering counts.
Along with James (Doc) Dearborn and Eugene (Seal) Richardson, Cox founded the Kansas City Black mafia in the 1960s. Cox has a genius IQ. He teamed with the studious, mild-mannered Richardson to provide counsel for Black mob boss Doc Dearborn to build his organization into a formidable gangland entity in the region from the 60s into the 1980s. The group headquartered on the city’s eastside.
Oscar-nominee Laurence Fishburne’s “Jimmy Jump” character in King of New York resembled Doc Dearborn. Jimmy Jump was the right-hand man and main enforcer for Walken’s Frank White in King of New York.
second-in-charge at times and was a valued adviser, enforcer, drug trafficker and criminal jack-of-all-trades type whose name made people’s knees buckle in organized crime circles around not just the state of Missouri, but the entire Midwest region of the United States.
Doc Dearborn was slain gangland style in 1985, gunned down in the parking lot of a motel by the airport during a drug deal. In 1990, Cox was indicted for drug trafficking, burglary, armed robbery, weapons offenses and impersonating a federal officer. Actor and comedian Chris Rock portrayed a character based on Dearborn in the most recent season of the FX anthology television show Fargo
“Eddie Cox was one of smartest and most dangerous organized crime figures of his era in Kansas City,” retired Kansas City police detective and blogger Gary Jenkins said. “He was one of Doc Dearborn’s most trusted advisers and they controlled a lot of this area’s heroin market for a long time.”
Over the past decade, Cox has helped investigators in the cold-case murder probe surrounding the July 1970 assassination of Missouri state legislator and civil rights activist Leon Jordan. Cox told cold-case squad detectives that Jordan was murdered on a hit placed on his head from Kansas City’s Italian Civella crime family for refusing to back a bill favoring the loosening of restrictions related to the state’s bar and strip-club industry being heavily pushed by associates of the Civella clan.
The Civella crime family and the Dearborn crew worked in tandem in a number of rackets in Kansas City. Doc Dearborn was indicted for playing a role in Jordan’s murder, but the charges were eventually dropped.
The post The Real Frank White Wasn’t Biggie Smalls, It Was Eddie Cox: K.C. Crime Lord Home For July 4 Holiday After 32 Years In Prison appeared first on The Gangster Report.