Almost three years elapsed before Kayo was brought from prison in New York, in February 1967, to be tried for extortion. He was convicted and faced additional sentences of up to 174 years. Again he sought leniency by offering to talk about the gang cemetery. It was, he said, on Celso's chicken farm - at the site of an illicit whisky still once operated by Zicarelli. The bodies, said Kayo, were in the wooden mash pit of the still. One, he said, was that of Strollo.

Kayo led FBI agents to the mash pit. Close by he pointed out the graves of two more victims, Angelo Sonessa and Kenneth Later, whose bodies were indeed unearthed and identified by the agents. But in the pit itself the diggers found no bodies. Authorities are now convinced that the corpses of Strollo and the others had been disinterred and buried in other places at about the time Celso bought the frontloader. But they did turn up one piece of evidence at the pit: a pair of orthopedic shoes. These were traced to the Jerry Miller I.D. Shoe Company of Brockton, Mass. Officials of the company said the shoes had been ordered by Dr. Leon Linsen, of Bayonne. And Dr. Linsen said he had obtained them for Bernard O'Brien.

Kayo also repeated a story he had first related in 1965. It concerned the disposal of O'Brien's body. This, LIFE has learned, is what Kayo told the officials:

On a night in October 1962, Konigsberg was summoned by Gallagher himself to the congressman's home at 102 West Fifth Street, Bayonne. Kayo quoted Gallagher as saying, "There's something I want you to do." Kayo said that, at first, he protested: "I didn't come to you when I was in trouble." Then Gallagher led Konigsberg to the basement. There was the body of Barney O'Brien.

Kayo insisted that he didn't know how O'Brien had died. He said there were no marks on the body and that he thought O'Brien may have died of natural causes. Kayo said Gallagher asked him to get rid of the body. He said he replied that he wouldn't touch it without approval from the Mob.

According to Kayo, Gallagher then made several telephone calls. Within a few minutes a call came back for Konigsberg. It was Zicarelli, said Kayo, who told him to do what he could for Galla gher. At that point, Kayo said, he carried the body of O'Brien from Gallagher's basement, dumped it into the trunk of his auto. Then he telephoned Celso and told him to take his wife to a movie. When the Celsos had gone, Kayo said, he drove to the farm and buried O'Brien's body in the mash pit.

LIFE confronted the congressman with Konigsberg's story. Gallagher agitatedly pronounced it was "the most bizarre story I have ever heard in my life." There was no dispute over this. Later he said, "I can see why you've been nailing me for a year if you believe anything like that. Whew! Holy Christmas! I can see why you'd be damn curious about me. I would too!

"And it's preposterous," he went on, "that you would take a guy like Kayo Konigsberg and take a story like that and match that against my life."

The character of Kayo Konigsberg and the very sordidness of the O'Brien story would normally entitle a man in Gallagher's position to the benefit of the doubt. Yet the federal authorities who have checked other details of Konigsberg's disclosures have found the imprisoned killer consistently accurate.

Before asking the congressman about the Konigsberg story, the reporters had asked if O'Brien had ever been in Gallagher's home.

"Gee, I don't know that," said Gallagher. "I don't think so. But when Barney would get drunk he was liable to turn up any place and on election night all sorts of people would come into the house. But I don't think he was there then."

Q: He wasn't in vnur house on the night ... he disappeared?

A: Oh, come on . . . of course he wasn't.

Q: Do you know whether there were any telephone calls made from your house in connection with Barney's . . . [death] on or about Oct. 14, 1962? A: If there were, they were not made by me.

Q: There were no telephone calls made from your residence to Joe Zicarelli?

A: No.

Q: None?

A: Hey, let me tell you something about my house. It's open. There are literally numbers of people who have access to my house . . . they're guests. They're like the regular political kind of people that move in and out of any politician's house. Once people know you're home . . .

A reporter asked if Kayo Konigsberg had ever been in Gallagher's home. "Never," said Gallagher.

Q: Did O'Brien die in your house? A: I don't know where O'Brien died, or if he died, or anything else about O'Brien, other than what appeared in the newspapers.

Q: The question is: did he die in your house?

A: Barney O'Brien was never in my house.