ST. LOUIS — Anthony Leisure, a member of one of the organized crime families that shook St. Louis with a bloody feud in the 1980s, died in prison Sunday.
Leisure, 78, was pronounced dead of natural causes Sunday in the transitional care unit at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Leisure was was found guilty along with other family members for his role in mob violence in the 1980s.
On Aug. 29, 1980, St. Louis mob boss Anthony Giordano died of cancer. He had long held the rival Leisure and Michaels crime families together.
The ensuing war for control of a St. Louis labor union would shake the city from the late summer of 1980 to the fall of 1981.
Nineteen days after Giordano's death, gang warfare erupted on Interstate 55 when his ally James Michaels Sr., was killed in a car bombing while behind the wheel.
Eleven months later, James Leisure's brother, Paul Leisure — who had been Giordano's bodyguard — was critically injured in another car bombing. A parishioner who had been nearby gave him his last rights at the scene, but he would survive, losing the bottom portions of both legs.
One month later, a grandson of Michaels and a friend were shot as they arrived at a LaSalle Street restaurant for lunch.
A month after that, George Faheen, who was a nephew of Michaels, was killed in a car bombing in the Mansion House parking lot in downtown St. Louis.
Paul and Anthony Leisure were both eventually sentenced for their roles in the car bombings. Their cousin, David Leisure, was sentenced to death and was executed in 1999.
Paul Leisure died in prison in 2000 of natural causes.
Kay Quinn contributed to this report.
