BONNE TERRE, Mo. – A St. Louis mobster and member of an organized crime family in the early 1980s died in prison on Sunday from natural causes.
Anthony J. Leisure was sentenced to life in prison in 1980 for bombing a car on Interstate 55 in south St. Louis County on Sept. 17, 1980. He was 78 when he died on Sunday while imprisoned at the Easter Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.
According to our partners at the Post-Dispatch, Leisure detonated a bomb planted under his boss James Michaels’s vehicle, which scattered debris across I-55 and shattered windows home near the Interstate.
Reportedly, Leisure’s family thought if Michaels were killed, Anthony Leisure could move up in position at a St. Louis labor union, Local 110. The labor union had put violent tension between the Michaels’s and Leisure’s family as both families fought for control of the union.
Leisure was just one family member within the mob that was put behind bars in the early 1980s for a string of violent crimes and car bombings.
The Post-Dispatch says the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed Leisure’s death on Monday. He is survived by very few relatives, as his brother Paul Leisure died in 2000 while in federal prison and David Leisure, who was executed in 1999 for his role in the car bombing that killed James Michaels.
