The wall of the old warehouse crashed down one windy afternoon last month, throwing debris across an East Baltimore street. Rubble buried one pickup truck and dinged another. A brick hit a man passing by. Fortunately, everyone walked away.
This wasn’t the first time one of Baltimore’s old buildings collapsed in the wind. So the familiar questions return.
Who is the owner? Where are they?
The tale of 710 E. Eager St. recalls a character from the heyday of Baltimore’s red-light district, a manhunt stretching nearly 30 years and the FBI theory that a once-prominent businessman known as “Crazy John” jumped bail with a chunk of money and escaped to a faraway island.
Born in Greece, Ioannis Markos Kafouros arrived in Baltimore’s Greektown neighborhood in the 1970s. He opened a little restaurant on The Block a few years later that sold subs and pizza, a carryout spot that gave rise to his reputation. It was called Crazy John’s.
Baltimore’s downtown was the center of nightlife then, and Kafouros was one of the fixtures.
Next door to the Crazy John’s carryout was the 408 Club. Kafouros bought the strip club building in 1984, and soon after a fire ripped through the nightclub and killed several people who lived in the apartments upstairs, The Washington Post reported in April 1984.
Police arrested and charged a maintenance man with arson, but he was acquitted at trial. Eventually, the 408 Club reopened.
Kafouros started buying up more properties in the late 1980s, state property records show, including the warehouse on East Eager Street in 1987, along with a handful of other buildings in the Johnston Square neighborhood. Then there was Volcano’s.
He bought the East Baltimore building in the 1980s and ran Volcano’s nightclub with an ex-wife, according to news reports. The club held community events and became legendary for huge nighttime crowds. Volcano’s was within view of the old city jail, and men locked up inside were known to shout down when the party spilled into the street. News articles also recall trouble with underage drinking, fights and gunfire.
Kids, meanwhile, would come next door to play games in Crazy John’s arcade.
Legal troubles started for Kafouros by the 1990s. He pleaded guilty in 1992 to two counts of tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison. In 1996, city officials closed Volcano’s after two college students were gunned down. Authorities revealed that the club had been operating illegally for years under improper zoning, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Kafouros ran into bigger trouble two years later when federal prosecutors charged him in a $130,000 scheme to sell stolen canned tuna, laundry detergent, jewelry, cigarettes, beer and sugar, Baltimore’s City Paper reported. He made bail by putting up five of his properties as collateral, according to City Paper.
A federal jury convicted him of conspiracy to transport stolen goods over state lines. A judge ordered him to 51 months in prison, but by then Kafouros was gone.
Crazy John was on the run.
FBI agents circulated wanted posters of the 42-year-old fugitive, offering a reward for information about his whereabouts. He left behind two kids and a wife, Diana K. Kafouros, City Paper reported. She filed for divorce, court records show.
Almost three decades later, the old warehouse remains listed in state tax records as owned jointly by John and Diana Kafouros. She did not return messages. Neighbors believed the warehouse had a property manager, but he didn’t return messages, either.
Plywood boards now cover the collapsed east wall of the warehouse. City officials condemned the building and ordered it to be repaired or demolished by the owner. The notice was addressed to John Kafouros.
It’s routine for building inspectors to address the notice to a property owner as listed in tax records. If the work doesn’t begin, authorities could investigate and take legal action to seize the building.
The FBI wants John Kafouros, too. There remains an active arrest warrant for him from decades ago, Jimmy Paul, the special agent in charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office, said through a spokesperson.
Back then, agents said they believed Kafouros was long gone, having escaped to the Greek island of Santorini. He would turn 70 this month.
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