You see, by 1979, Irish mobster Timothy O'Brien was considered by Chicago law enforcement as a "reputed top figure" in the Outfit’s stolen auto parts and counterfeit rackets. He had a record of arrests for auto theft going back to 1957 when he was only 16, and his latest was when he was arrested at his junkyard in 1977 during a visit there by a Tribune reporter, followed by state and police investigators.
O’Brien was the owner of one of the largest salvage auto parts places known to accept stolen auto parts at the time, and had been a prime suspect for many years in the chop shop racket in the Blue Island area.
He was the operator of the Irish Keystone Auto Parts, a junkyard at Clair and Sacramento avenues in Robbins, and another storage yard with the same name in Blue Island.
Some reports say that his main connection to the Outfit was Richard Ferraro, who in turn was killed in 1977 and was considered one of the main car theft operators for the Chicago Heights faction at the time. One main proof for their close connection is when O'Brien got out of prison, he immediately took Ferraro’s son Jerry under his auspices.
With O'Brien's help, Jerry Ferraro operated a chop shop garage, one block south of O'Brien's junkyard, known as J & A Auto Parts. Also few of O’Brien’s best car thieves at the time were David O’Malley, Tommy Bahrs and the Neviles brothers, Harold and Phillip.
The so-called crew leader was O’Malley who in turn was O’Brien’s right-hand man. Usually O’Malley met with O’Brien and received a “steal list” with cars which were usually ordered by members from the Outfit, who in turn received the orders from famous sport players, musicians, businessmen or even politicians. This was one quite professional auto-theft crew which was mainly involved in stealing luxury cars such as Lincoln Continental, Ford Thunderbird or Mercury Cougars.
The thing was that they were already under investigation for income tax evasion and burglary charges, and were on the brink of indictment by a federal grand jury, mainly because the police already intercepted a truck containing 230 stolen car doors as it left O’Brien’s junkyard.
The arrest of his main car theft crew occurred during a federal operation in February, 1979. The crew was arrested in a stakeout while transporting four stolen luxury cars with prices over $13,000.
The cops also found an order list with 120 high-priced cars, many of them had been crossed off. All of the recovered cars were also on the list. They even discovered a huge stash of burglary tools and licence plates.
The investigators immediately connected O’Brien to the case because of his close connection to O’Malley and so the boys in the Outfit might’ve seen the whole situation as potential danger. On top of that, during the late 70s, his Italian associates in the Outfit also increased the monthly tribute for their chop shop operators which in fact represented a huge problem for O'Brien's control over his own crew.
So story goes that O'Brien balked and threatened to quit but he was told that he could not quit, and so O'Brien retaliated by ordering a "labor slowdown", meaning his people began stealing fewer cars, thus reducing the income, or he kept most of the cash for himself.
Some reports also say that from that point on, O'Brien fancied himself as an "Irish big shot" who could stand up to the Outfit by not paying his street tax and by allegedly being involved in the narcotics trade, which in fact was a big "no no" for the Chicago Mob at the time.
To make things worse, O'Brien also faced criminal charges for shooting and critically wounding a man romantically involved with a female employee of his Irish Keystone Auto Parts junkyard.
So in a short time period, O'Brien received word that a contract was put out on his life and so on May 21 1979, at 1:30 p.m., O’Brien phoned Terry Delaney, chief investigator for the secretary of state, asking for a one-on-one meeting at a "neutral" location.
Later that night, around 8 p.m. O’Brien left his house and told his wife that he was going to visit some friend, to whom he complained "I'm being tailed" and from that point on he was not seen alive ever again.
On May 23, an employee of O'Brien's Robbins junkyard reported him missing and later on June 1, 1979, the Blue Island police received an anonymous phone call at 12:30 p.m. saying that a suspicious car was parked on Old Western Avenue in the suburbs. When the cops arrived, they found O’Brien’s car and when they opened up the trunk, O'Brien's body was lying on its right side and clad in black trousers and a black sports shirt which had been pulled up around his neck. The body was quickly identified with the help of his drivers license which was found in his pocket and also a characteristic snake and cross tattoo on his right arm.
At the time the cops labeled O’Brien as being the 16th victim of the so-called Chicago’s “chop shop wars”, a murder spree which lasted for over a decade.
you are right, i didnt notice that
