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MURRAY THE HUMP

Based on a wealth of unseen personal movie archive and diaries, this film tells the story of one of America's most powerful gangsters. Murray Llewelyn Humphreys (1899 - 1965), graduated from a street hoodlum to become one of the most influential members of the mafia.

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The film documents his rise through the ranks of the Chicago outfit, through the days of Prohibition, his association with Al Capone, his involvement in the St Valentine's Day Massacre and his pioneering exploitation of the 5th Amendment which hampered so many prosecution cases against the mob.

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Humphreys also had a very important role to play in the election of JFK. The mafia believed that a Kennedy in office would take a more hands off attitude towards their activities and restore their Cuban playground. Humphreys' role in that campaign is documented in his second wife's diaries. They got their man elected by a slim majority and once elected Kennedy had different ideas and the mob go-between Frank Sinatra was no longer welcome at the White House. How much did Humphreys, a former associate of Jack Ruby, know of an assassination plot?  Humphreys took the answer with him to the grave because on November 23, 1965, suspiciously close to the date of the Dallas assassination, he himself was dead following a bruising encounter with the FBI at his Chicago apartment. Due to hasty embalming and quick cremation the autopsy was invalid clouding the mobster's death in suspicion.

 

At the time of his death Humphreys was still the Chicago crime syndicate's master fixer, the man who could 'reach out for' a judge, a policeman or even a Congressman.

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