Charles “Chuck” O’Conner is born on January 23, 1909, to Alice, a young Irish American girl, and Fred, his abusive alcoholic father. The second of two children, Chuck is born on a train heading up to Sparks, Nevada, where his father holds a job as a brakeman for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
In 1916, Chuck is seven years old and witnesses the brutal murder of his mother at the hands of his drunken father. Chuck and his sister are subsequently separated, and he is taken in by his destitute grandparents. This marks a major turning point in Chuck’s life.
Because of his grandparents’ financial difficulties, Chuck is forced to earn a living at the age of seven. He lands a job as a newsboy just as the U.S. is entering World War One, and hustles his sheets in the heart of San Francisco's Tenderloin District.
He sells his papers next to a famous brothel known as the Dahlia Hotel, and Chuck is eventually taken in by the hotel’s Madame, Marie “Mama” Pappens. She takes an instant liking to young Chuck, and quickly becomes a second mother to him - helping Chuck and his grandparents out with gifts, overpaying for Chuck’s newspapers, and introducing the young boy to San Francisco’s elite. Chuck is raised part-time in this bordello and, at seven years, quickly gains a level of street wisdom well beyond his years.
After his stint at Oregon State Penitentiary, Chuck moves back to San Francisco and gets involved with a young woman (and fellow syndicate member) named Lou, and the two move back into the Dahlia Hotel. He soon links up with a young man named Scarface Murphy, and the boys run a crime racket across the entire city. After a botched armed robbery, Chuck is charged for a stolen car, and sentenced to Folsom State Prison.
Chuck enters Folsom State Prison, and once again is the youngest inmate to enter the prison - he is just 18 years old.
In 1927, Chuck is caught up in the middle of the infamous Thanksgiving Day prison massacre. After a failed escape attempt, six desperate prisoners rush into the prison library and hold their fellow inmates captive. The state militia surrounds the prison and fires a hail of machine-gun bullets at all the hostage prisoners, while the six ringleaders hide safely behind a concrete wall.
Shaken, Chuck is consequently given his first shot of morphine by a fellow inmate. For the first time in his life, Chuck escapes his emotional pain. He is instantly hooked, resulting in a thirty-five-year addiction to morphine and heroin. He is eventually paroled from Folsom by age twenty, now carrying the burden of his newly acquired addiction.
Chuck gets into more trouble in San Francisco and violates his parole. He heads to Aberdeen, Washington, where he opens up a speakeasy called “Chuck’s Place.” The speakeasy gets raided, and Chuck is arrested for possession of counterfeit checks. He is sentenced to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington. He spends a short stint and makes some new friends, including Al Capone’s older brother, Ralph “Bottles” Capone. A few of his old friends are there as well, including Scarface Murphy.
Chuck’s bank heists continue, and he is eventually caught and charged with four counts of conspiracy. Turning down an offer to act as an informant for a lighter sentence, he now faces life without the hope of parole. Chuck hires his old attorney to pay off some higher-ups and gets his sentence reduced to five years.
Chuck swallows two packets of heroin en route to Folsom Prison, where he serves a third term. He soon figures out how to smuggle heroin balloons through the plumbing system and into the sewage plant. The drugs are then gathered by convict workers, to be sold (and consumed) by Chuck. This becomes one of the most successful drug smuggling rings in Folsom Prison history.
Chuck tends bar at an underworld nightclub in San Francisco and runs a successful steakhouse. He also meets the love of his life, Millie – the most sought-after escort in town. They are married within weeks and move to Long Beach, California.
He ultimately makes his way to Mexico City and begins purchasing large amounts of heroin from a one-time Mexican president, Abelardo L Rodriguez - now Governor of the state of Sonora.
This begins Chuck’s foray into a massive heroin smuggling operation, moving drugs into the United States from Mexico. The drugs are hand delivered to him by the Chief Inspector of Airports for Mexico. He and an ex-con friend, Sammy Goldstein, become two of the biggest heroin suppliers on the West Coast, with celebrity customers like Judy Garland.
Eventually, Chuck flees the state and is picked up by police during a cross-country trip. Although charged with a crime that he has not committed, he pleads guilty in order to avoid extradition to California and is taken into federal custody. Chuck claims that his drug dependency led him to commit the so-called crime, and as a result, he is locked up in the United States Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky.
Chuck has been an escaped federal prisoner for two years when he is finally captured and held at Alcatraz while awaiting transfer to the East Coast. He is placed in solitary confinement. He befriends Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” who is located two cells away. The two of them communicate in Morse code by tapping on the water pipes.
Chuck is transferred to the District of Columbia Jail – one of the most brutal prisons he has experienced. He witnesses gang rapes and other depraved acts, but nothing is ever reported. Chuck appears for his sentence and winds up with a four to fourteen-year term, to be served at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
During the 1960’s, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary is known as a Mafia haven. Chuck is assigned to an eight-man cell with seven notorious Italian Mafia members. At various points in time, his cellmates are Godfather Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, Johnny Dio and mob hitman Joe Beck Di Palermo (Chuck’s soon to be best friend). Chuck’s new Mafia friends accept him due to his criminal reputation, coupled with a good word put in by infamous gangster and O'Connell kidnapper, John "Sonny" McGlone.
On April 1, 1968 he was released on conditional and/or mandatory release. Gone too was his devil-may-care attitude. The penal system had finally managed to rehabilitate him, or at least convince him that he never wanted to see the inside of a jailhouse again. Clearly, then, his old way of life was over, which meant that he was a thief who wasn’t stealing, a drug addict who wasn’t using, and a gambler who wasn’t gambling. Without his old life he wasn’t sure what or who he was. All he knew was that he was old, alone, and nearly broke. Yet, he also knew that he was alive and free.
Before Frank Costello gave him his first Screwdriver at the Copacabana club in New York City for his coming home party, he had never had a problem with alcohol. As time progressed, so did his alcoholism. At no time would he allow himself to be too far away from a drink. He woke up every half-hour on the hour and drank at least a half of a water glass of vodka. As long as he had at least two fifths of vodka, he could make it through the night.
When Chuck walked into the Alano Club in 1982, he was seventy-three years of age. Emotionally, he was completely bankrupt. His self-respect was nil, and he always knew that some impending doom of his making would catch up with him on that day. Each dawn he died.
In 1984, with the financial backing of rock star Huey Lewis, Chuck started a non-profit halfway house and rehabilitation center called the O'Connor House Marin Services For Men in Marin County, California. It helped hundreds of recovering addicts and ex-convicts find a path to a better, healthier life.
