Wallace Davis Jr., the rail-thin, first-term alderman from the Near West Side`s 27th Ward, has long had a penchant for the bizarre.
But some of the strangest, and most unpleasant, incidents he`s been involved in have also brought him a kind of strange good fortune.
Recently, he wound up with a ”substantial” windfall in settling a lawsuit against a New Orleans funeral home after the funeral director cut Davis` dead brother`s legs off to fit the body into a shorter coffin, Davis said.
The 35-year-old alderman said he made the discovery during an unannounced visit to the funeral parlor.
Previously, he was awarded $352,000 to settle a lawsuit against the Chicago police for a 1976 incident in which he was shot in the back by police after reporting a burglary and being mistaken for the criminal. The fame that resulted from the case helped launch his career in politics.
But Friday, his up-and-down fortunes took a sharp turn downward.
Davis was one of seven men indicted in the first wave of charges resulting from a 2 1/2-year federal inquiry into corruption in Chicago`s City Hall.
And in the indictment, Davis, an amiable young man not always taken seriously by colleagues, is portrayed in a much more sinister light.
Davis is described as a politician who demanded and received money from a city contractor, from businesses in his ward and even from his own niece so that she could keep her job on his payroll.
As the indictment tells it, Davis, who`s not as well-known or as powerful as Clifford Kelley, another alderman charged Friday, seemed to have had rare good fortune last year to meet a businessman willing to pay him $5,000 cash in order to get business with the City of Chicago.
But the unfortunate side of this story for Davis was that the businessman, Michael Raymond, turned out to be not just an executive but an undercover informant for the FBI.
He`d never seemed a sinister figure before. But he certainly got involved in some unusual scrapes.
There was the case of the dead bodies that weren`t. In June, 1984, he called police and reporters to tell them about a double homicide in the 1400 block of West Monroe Street.
But the bodies just turned out to be foul-smelling rotten meat that had been left in an unplugged refrigerator.
And there was the time in July, 1984, when, driving near Madison Street and Damen Avenue at about 1 a.m., he saw what he thought was a kidnaping and got into a fight with two men who he thought were kidnapers.
But they turned out to be police detectives in an unmarked car. And the
”victim” was a suspected prostitute.
And there was the time in late 1983 when he told police someone stole his new Cadillac Fleetwood from south suburban Glenwood when the car contained a walkie-talkie, a bullet-proof vest and a plastic garbage bag containing $3,000 in $50 bills. The badly damaged car was later found, but not the money. Davis explained he was carrying the money to pay contractors who were working on his house.
But the federal investigation may be his most difficult scrape.
The federal grand jury charged that he extorted $2,000 from A. Charles Scala and William Kasten, owners of Restaurant Raffael at 322 S. Racine Ave., in exchange for efforts to convince the city to drop a condemnation lawsuit against the restaurant property. Davis also attempted to help the restaurant owners buy adjacent property for a parking lot, the indictment alleged.
He also extorted a $1,500 campaign contribution from the owner of Vogt`s Wine Shop in his ward after agreeing to assist the shop in purchasing a public alley, according to the indictment. And he also ”did unlawfully request and demand money which he characterized as a political contribution from a representative of Wertheimer Box and Paper Corp.,” which was seeking to purchase a city-owned parcel of property in the 27th Ward, the indictment charges.
Davis also was charged with demanding and receiving money from Etta Harris, his niece, ”which money Harris paid to defendant Wallace Davis Jr. in order to keep her job.” Harris worked as Davis` aldermanic secretary from August, 1984, until November, 1985.
The money, described as ”in excess of $10,000” and involving some 20 separate cash payments, was taken from her salary checks, according to the indictment.
Dennis Berkson, Davis` lawyer, did not comment on the charges except the $5,000 allegedly paid by Raymond.
On that score, Berkson said, ”Wallace has maintained all along that he received only $1,500, as a campaign contribution, and he still maintains that.”
