The Omaha police later verified that the kingpin of the local Irish crime syndicate, one Tom “Pick-Handle” Dennison, had in several other instances paid whites in blackface to attack white women, not unlike Agnes Loebeck, in order to embarrass Mayor Smith and city hall. And a subsequent grand jury report stated: “Several reported assaults [reported in the Omaha Bee] on white women had actually been perpetrated by whites in blackface.” 39
