The notorious ‘Tiny’ Wainwright

Part four – his sad final years

Former midget auto racer Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright lost 85 pounds he was while incarcerated in the Missouri State Penitentiary.  When he was released from prison on the morning of December 5, 1951, ‘Tiny’ had served just over thirteen months, with time credited for good behavior which included blood donations earmarked for the military. 

Wainwright left the Jefferson City prison angry because he had recently learned that his former girlfriend had gotten married.  ‘Tiny’ headed west for Kansas City and stopped along the way to purchase a knife with a 5-inch long blade. Once in Kansas City, ‘Tiny’ went directly to his former girlfriend’s residence with her new husband, a man named Harold McCroskey and pushed his way into their apartment.

As fate would have it three police officers were already in the apartment, questioning Mr. and Mrs. McCroskey about five stolen ladies’ coats, including Mrs. McCroskey’s fur coat. Once inside the apartment, the enraged ‘Tiny’ blindly charged at McCroskey, kicked him and swung his knife.  Police Lieutenant Lester Haupt lunged to grab the knife and was stabbed.

According to a report published in the Daily Capitol News, Wainwright then exclaimed “Hell, Lester I didn’t know you were in here. I’m sorry.” While Haupt went to the hospital to get eight stitches in his wounded hand, the other police officers arrested McCroskey on an outstanding robbery arrest warrant from Beverly Hills California and also took ‘Tiny’ to headquarters for further investigation.      

One would assume that with an assault on a police officer, ‘Tiny’ Wainwright had assured himself a quick return trip to the penitentiary, but somehow, he was not charged in the bizarre incident. 

Weeks later in early 1952, Wainwright was hired as the assistant business agent of the Greene County Teamsters Local 245 union with offices at Springfield, Missouri. By 1954, Wainwright had risen through the ranks to become the union local 245 president and  in that role, was questioned by Joplin Missouri police officers about violence that occurred during the Teamsters union’s attempt to unionize workers at a local Coca Cola bottling plant.

On Thursday June 25, 1958 Wainwright made a disastrous appearance in Washington DC before the United Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (known to generally to the public as the “McClellan Rackets Committee”). 

The purpose of the hearing that day according to Committee chairman Arkansas Senator John McClellan was that “we shall inquire into the effect that the type of leadership in this international union now being provided by Mr. Hoffa and a number of disreputable and questionable characters who are his associates is having on the membership of the union.”

After he was sworn in, ‘Tiny’ who was accompanied by the Teamster union's Washington attorney H. Clifford Allder, was asked several basic innocuous questions by Senator McClellan. The questions included what he did for a living, and the name of his employer, but for each of McClellan’s questions, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as he stated, “I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.”

McClellan was incredulous at ‘Tiny’s’ responses to such basic questions, then he turned the questioning over to Robert Kennedy, the Committee Chief Counsel. Kennedy asked ‘Tiny’ to confirm his criminal conviction history which included a previous publicly unknown one-year probation for a 1934 burglary and payment of a fine for a burglary conviction in 1948. Wainwright again cited his Fifth Amendment rights.

Kennedy then read verbatim testimony given in 1956, to a United States House of Representatives committee, wherein Mr. Ray L. Smith, owner of Ray L. Smith & Son, stated that “he had to pay $650.80 for the period from September 7 to September 28, 1952, as an extortion payment to Mr. Branch Wainwright.”

‘Tiny’ was asked by Committee Chairman Senator McClellan “Do you want to deny the testimony that Mr. Ray L. Smith gave against you as to your extorting money from him?” 

Once again, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, a common tactic used by Allder’s clients. Kennedy then asked if the Missouri-Kansas Conference of Teamsters, headed by Harold Gibbons had hired him in 1952 just a few days after being released from prison. After ‘Tiny’ again refused to answer Kennedy’s last question, the Committee members dismissed him.   

With the bad local publicity generated by his Senate testimony, ‘Tiny’s’ days with the union were numbered and on July 30, 1959 Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa announced that “Branch Wainwright is no longer with the local union," he said, “I immediately notified the local union officials to remove him from the payroll and from any authority in the local."

In September 1961, Wainwright whose weight had ballooned back up to 250 pounds as he lived in Independence Missouri, was arrested again and charged with the theft of $972 worth of women’s clothing after a Shawnee Kansas couple, the Georges, were arrested with stolen clothing which they claimed that “Tiny” had sold them.  

Before the start of his clothing theft trial, ‘Tiny’ and another man Ernest “Ernie” Anderson were charged with the theft of $5,000 worth of furniture from a display home in Overland Park Kansas. Anderson, a former Teamsters official, was the salesman for the builder and allegedly gave ‘Tiny’ the key to the home. “Tiny’ was also charged with the bombing of a $37,500 home under construction in Leawood Kansas that was being built with non-union labor. 

Both his daughter and his former wife were among seven witnesses who testified against ‘Tiny’ in the trial on the charge of grand larceny that began on March 28, 1962 in the Johnson County District Court in Olathe Kansas, but the key witness for the state was Doyle Howard Mace, of Springfield Missouri.

Mace, described as “a former friend of Wainwright,” was brought to the court in Olathe from the jail in Springfield Missouri to testify. Mace testified that he and Wainwright, stole the clothing from an Oldsmobile station wagon owned by salesman J. Gordon Campbell while it was parked in front of Campbell’s home at 7634 Nall Avenue in Prairie Village Kansas. 

Mace testified that on May 4, 1961 he and the ‘Tiny’ each took two bags of the stolen clothing and went to Mace’s home and the clothing was stored in his basement. The net day Mace said that several people, including Mrs. George, whom ‘Tiny’ introduced to Mace as his ex-wife, came to his home to look at the clothing.  

Mrs. George bought $175 worth of the clothing, which she paid for by check, and after Tiny cashed the check, he split the money with Mace. Mrs. George and ‘Tiny’s’ daughter both testified that he told them that Mace was a salesman for the women’s clothing company.

With his cross-examination, ‘Tiny’s’ lawyer attacked Mace’s credibility and claimed that Mace was angry with the ‘Tiny’ and had agreed to testify against him just to get even. Mace admitted that he was upset that Tiny failed to pay him $1,000 that Mace claimed he was owed for his part in Wainwright’s fraudulent $4,500 fire insurance claim for which ‘Tiny’ had already been charged. 

Mace also testified that he had been short changed after other robberies that the pair had allegedly committed, which included the safe robbery at a candy store, theft of two adding machines and a typewriter from an office, and the theft of a $650 refrigerator-freezer from an Overland Park Kansas home.  

On Friday March 31, 1962 the jury convicted Wainwright of grand larceny for the theft of the $972 worth of women’s clothing samples and in accordance with the terms of the Kansas Habitual Criminal Act, ‘Tiny’ was sentenced to a term not to exceed 10 years of hard labor at the Kansas State Penitentiary located in Lansing Kansas. 

With Wainwright free on bond, less than a month later, Wainwright’s attorney filed an appeal of the conviction on several grounds, among them the fact that a juror in the trial was not a resident of the county. 

On December 8, 1962, the Kansas Supreme Court released a ruling that rejected all three points of ‘Tiny’s’ appeal. When it came time to surrender to begin his prison term, on February 8, 1963, 49-year old ‘Tiny’ failed to appear and he forfeited his $8,000 bond.

Six months later he was arrested by FBI agents in Kansas City, Kansas on August 9, 1963 after the agents were tipped that Wainwright would be walking on Minnesota Avenue at 7 AM. Four armed agents surrounded the rotund former race driver and he was whisked to Olathe Kansas where Judge Clayton Brenner imposed sentence and ‘Tiny’ was confined at the Kansas State Penitentiary the following day. 

After serving only 2-1/2 years of his ten-year term, ‘Tiny’ was paroled in March 1966 but he was soon arrested for petty larceny in April 1966 after a patrolman saw him stuff $7.79 worth of steaks in his pockets in a supermarket.  

‘Tiny’ returned to prison on August 11, 1967 after another alleged parole violation in St Louis and he died in prison at 12:15 AM on September 12, 1967, at the age of 55, on the eve of his parole revocation hearing before the Kansas State Parole Board. 

Warden Sherman Crouse said that ‘Tiny,’ aged 55, suffered a fatal heart attack in the prison hospital where he had been confined for several days. The brief obituary in the Kansas City Times noted that “before his conviction for assault in 1949, Wainwright was a well-known midget racing car driver.” 

Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright, a decent midget auto racer but a lousy criminal, is interred in Green Lawn Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.