Gargotta and his close associate, Charles Binaggio built a gambling ring that grossed as much as $34,500,000 a year on dice and card games, numbers racket, and bookmaking.
Gargotta was arrested more than 40 times over a 30-year period for murder, illegal gambling, liquor law violations, carrying a concealed weapon, robbery, auto theft, extortion, attempted burglary, and vagrancy.
Kansas City police officers switched the evidence tags on several guns recovered at the scene so as to shed doubt on the question of who held the murder weapon.
On April 5, 1950, Binaggio and Gargotta drove to the Jackson County, Missouri Democratic Club in Kansas City to meet a trusted associate.
However, the high-profile murders of Gargotta and Binaggio, along with their subversion of the criminal justice system, created public pressure on President Harry Truman to support a congressional investigation into organized crime.