OP-ED: VICTOR RIESEL’S TRIAL BY ACID
By Paul F. Petrick
Last year, I was one of the few people who ventured to a theater to see Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson’s midcentury mafia movie The Alto Knights (2025). What drew me to the picture was not Levinson’s gimmick of having Robert De Niro portray both Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, the rival mob bosses at the center of the plot. I showed up to see actor Bob Glouberman play the ill-fated columnist Victor Riesel. It was almost worth the price of admission.
Seventy years ago this month, a New York City gangster paid a hoodlum $1,175 to splash six ounces of sulfuric acid in Riesel’s face. Naturally, that event would be the climax of any retelling of Riesel’s life. But it is neither the beginning nor the end of the story.
The son of a New York City garment worker/union organizer, Riesel lived and breathed union politics from a young age. His father was the idealistic president of his local, dedicated to protecting his fellow laborers from the twin threats of communism and organized crime. These threats often manifested themselves in violence. Riesel witnessed the physical toll exacted on his father by many beatings at the hands of thugs, an occupational hazard that truncated his father’s life.
By the time he graduated high school at age 15, Riesel was already self-syndicating his column on the inner workings of the labor movement. Titled Inside Labor, Riesel’s column was picked up by the New York Post in 1941 and became nationally syndicated the following year. Eventually landing at the Hearst-owned New York Daily Mirror, Riesel’s column would expand to over 350 newspapers across the country.
In print, Riesel picked up where his father left off. The wartime economy swelled the ranks of organized labor, making unions rich, powerful, and attractive to reds and gangsters seeking to expand their spheres of infiltration and exploitation. Riesel quickly became the Fourth Estate’s foremost authority on organized labor. He was a champion of the good and scourge of the rotten, earning many enemies among the latter.
Asked to guest host Barry Gray’s late-night radio talk show, Riesel began broadcasting at midnight on April 5, 1956 from Hutton’s restaurant in Manhattan. For most of the next two hours, Riesel interviewed members of Local 138 of the International Union of Operating Engineers who were rebelling against the convicted extortionists who controlled their local. After the broadcast, Riesel and his small staff moved to Lindy’s restaurant for coffee. At 3:00 a.m., as Riesel departed the restaurant, twenty-one-year-old Abraham Telvi emerged from the shadows, tossed a vial of acid in Riesel’s face, and sauntered away. It was the last thing Riesel ever saw.
A nationwide outpouring of sympathy and outrage followed. Inside Labor gained almost 100 new subscribing papers. Whittaker Chambers privately offered to donate one of his eyes to the blinded Riesel. A $41,000 reward was raised by various media outlets and labor unions, including the Operating Engineers, for information leading to the arrest of Riesel’s assailant. The U.S. Senate’s McClellan Committee was impaneled to investigate and expose corrupt union leaders and the Landrum-Griffin Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act became law.
By August, Telvi would be identified by law enforcement as the perpetrator of the vicious attack on Riesel. But it was too late. When Telvi learned of his victim’s fame, he demanded more money from the intermediaries who hired him. They made a more economical counteroffer. Telvi was found, shot in the head, in late July.
At the apex of this criminal conspiracy was labor racketeer John Dioguardi aka “Johnny Dio,” a close associate of Jimmy Hoffa. The feds would indict Dio for obstruction of justice, theorizing that Riesel’s scheduled testimony before a federal grand jury investigating labor union corruption was the impetus for the attack. But the case against Dio soon collapsed for lack of evidence. Dio eventually spent the rest of his life in prison for unrelated crimes.
Riesel would spend the rest of his life sporting dark sunglasses. He continued to type his own columns, relying on his staff to read aloud to him the news of the day, sometimes listening to different items being read simultaneously. He retired in 1990 and died five years later.
Over the years, Riesel’s life has been the subject of television and theater dramas, but none nearly as recent as Glouberman’s portrayal in The Alto Knights. It was a good performance. He got Riesel’s New York accent and diminutive stature (Glouberman is 5’4” as was Riesel) correct. Like Riesel’s story itself, it was a performance deserving of a better movie and a wider audience.
Paul F. Petrick is an attorney in Cleveland, Ohio.