Cerone, a hit man for the Chicago mafia and protg of mob boss Sam Giancana, according to Riggs' son and Kuhle. As he caddied for his father as a teenager in a money match against Cerone, Larry Riggs says he noticed that Cerone and his pals kept brazenly riding their carts over his father's ball. T
Larry Riggs was a child of Bobby Riggs' first marriage, which ended in divorce. Riggs' second marriage was to a woman whose family owned the American Photographic Cos. in New York, a $20 million a year corporation where Riggs worked during the 1960s. He wore a suit and necktie and took the commuter
"Steve had his maid, and she wore the French maid outfit with no underwear on the top or the bottom," Larry Riggs says. "That set the tone for the parties at nighttime. It was just a wild time to be had by everybody, including my dad."
in his left hand and a glass of Coca-Cola in his right, Bobby Riggs would take big swigs from both glasses and mix the liquids in his mouth before swallowing. And he was always puffing on a fat cigar. "I had never seen him really drink as much as he was then," Larry Riggs says. "And it concerned me.
During those weeks, Larry Riggs noticed some "unsavory characters" kept showing up at Powers' house to meet privately with his father. "They weren't golfers," Larry Riggs says. "I called them shady characters with the kind of flashy suits on and the ties and whatever. They just didn't fit in."
That's when Larry Riggs says he recognized the men as associates of Jackie Cerone, the Chicago mob hit man with whom his father had played golf and cards back at the Tam O'Shanter Country Club outside of Chicago. "Very not upright citizens of our country," Larry Riggs now says of the men visiting hi
But Larry Riggs says he worried obsessively. And he says his father never identified the men or explained why they flew from Chicago to Los Angeles to meet with him several times before the King match.
As Riggs lived the high life on the West Coast, King trained in South Carolina with the focus of a boxer preparing for a prizefight. Larry Riggs was so sure his father was going to lose to King that he refused to accompany him to Houston for the match. "You're going to embarrass yourself," he told h
However, Larry Riggs did not dismiss Shaw's story outright because, after all, his father knew and gambled with a lot of mob guys all over the country. Bobby Riggs was also a longtime member of the La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, Calif., a reputed mob-built country club where mob leader and Riggs
"Did he know mafia guys? Absolutely," Larry Riggs says. "Is it possible these guys were talking some s---? Yes, it is possible. They talked to him about doing it? Possible." However, Riggs says, it was more likely his father purposefully lost with an eye toward setting up a bigger payday rematch --
Chicago golfing buddy, Jackie Cerone. In 1986, Cerone and four other men, from the Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City mobs, were convicted of skimming a total of $2 million from the Tropicana during the mid-'70s. Larry Riggs says he is unsure who had arranged the job at the Tropicana for Bobby Riggs.
