Charles Gargotta was a lynchpin in the old Kansas City Mafia/Political organization run by Tom Pendergast. He was a lieutenant to Charles Binaggio who took over the Pendergast outfit beginning in 1944. Gargotta and Binaggio were slain in a political meeting house in KC during the early morning hours of April 6, 1950. Both men had offered testimony in the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee hearings in Washington, DC. Gargotta had also testified in front of a Jackson County, Missouri grand jury probing criminal activity in the Kansas City area.