"They Called My Husband a Gangster!"

I spent some time in a used bookstore today, and this was the hands-down find of the day: a 96-page paperback from 1952 entitled They Called My Husband a Gangster, by Mrs. Jim (Alice) Vaus. For only two bucks, and with a title like that, how could I pass it up?

But there was another reason this one caught my eye. The publisher was "Church Sales Corporation" in L.A., and a quick look at the foreword by Mrs. Billy Graham explains why: Alice's husband Jim was a former Mickey Cohen associate who "found Christ" and reformed. Now the name "Jim Vaus" would have meant nothing to me if I hadn't coincidentally been reading John Buntin's excellent L.A. Noir, a history of the war between Cohen and Police Chief William Parker during the 1950s. Vaus indeed was a Cohen man; he was a wiretapper who gave Cohen some primo blackmail fodder to use against the head of the LAPD's vice squad. This was in 1949; by 1952, Vaus had apparently found God at a Billy Graham "Big Tent" meeting and rejected a life of syndicate crime. All of which is utterly fascinating.

Apparently there's also a "he says" version of the story from Vaus himself (see below, from the back cover copy). Wonder if I'll be able to track this down. I'm also wondering if Vaus found Jesus for the long haul, or if he crept back into his old ways. Guess I'll have to keep reading L.A. Noir to find out...