On November 16 a 34-count bribery-and-extortion indictment was lodged against Kenny and 11 others-Mayor Whelan; council president Flaherty; Commissioner Sternkopf; Police Chief Kropke; purchasing agent Murphy; county engineer Manning; plus John J. Kenny (no relation to John V.) and Walter Wolfe, both Hudson County freeholders (commissioners) and successively chairmen of the Hudson County Democratic organization; Philip Kunz, Jersey City's business administrator; Joseph P. Stapleton, treasurer of both Hudson County and the Hudson County Democratic organization; and James R. Corrado, secretary of Pollak Hospital.

The first two counts were catchalls, one alleging an overall conspiracy to bribe, the other to extort. The remaining 32 dealt with specific payments-$98,000 from Gerard Engineering, $68,282 from Warren George, Inc., and $15,000 from Ashland Oil.

In addition, Kenny, Whelan, Flaherty and Murphy were charged with income-tax evasion.

As in the Addonizio case, the investigation continued long after the indictment, with the assistants compiling a veritable catalog of contractors who had kicked back or had been asked to.

Once again they received a major break.

About six weeks before the trial was scheduled to start, John J. Kenny's attorneys approached Stern with an offer to cooperate. Secret sessions were set up at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. Like Mario Gallo, "Jack" Kenny, as he was called to distinguish him from John V., didn't want to be seen meeting with the authorities in New Jersey.

He had broken with John V. Kenny in 1969, when the Little Guy endorsed William Cahill, the GOP candidate for governor, while Jack Kenny stuck with the Democratic nominee, former Governor Robert Meyner. Despite the political break, Jack Kenny maintained a personal loyalty to the Little Guy. He was a gold mine of information, but, according to Stern, "one of the most difficult things we had to do was elicit his testimony about John V. Kenny."

He finally opened up and told Stern how he had approached the Little Guy at Newark Airport shortly after the indictment had been returned and asked him for $50,000 supposedly to "discredit" Manning. John V. Kenny made a phone call, and the money was delivered that night.

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