“Prohibition was dead, but mobster Mr. Big, Al Capone, operating from a federal prison where he was doing time for income tax evasion, was still active. The top money-maker in his new empire was a Chicago white slave ring run by Capone’s partner, Mig Torrance. March 31, 1934; Eliot Ness led a raiding party on one of Capone’s houses of prostitution. It was the seventh such raid since federal man Ness had been assigned to break up the ring. Inside the house, the inmates having been tipped off by certain corrupt police officials in the city government were escaping through a trap door in the cellar leading to a tunnel on the waterfront. In one of the rooms a girl lay dead. Mourning at her side was twenty-one year old Ernie Torrance, kid brother of Mig Torrance.”

Read More

“The men behind the attempted murder of Cermak were the gang who had served Al Capone in enforcing a reign of terror during 13 years of Prohibition. In the absence of Capone, serving time in Atlanta, his hatchet man, Frank Nitti, ruled the roost. Nitti’s board of directors in the operation of horse parlors, gambling joints, bawdy houses and other rackets were Louie ‘Little New York’ Campagna, enforcer of protective rackets; Frank Diamond, protege and devoted disciple of Al Capone, one of the original Capone gunmen; ‘Three Finger’ Jack White, Eddie Zion, general troubleshooters for the organization. Crusading activities of Chicago’s mayor had stepped up the processes of law enforcement to such a point as to severely cripple the operations of Nitti and company. And, rendered desperate, that gang had agreed that Cermak must die. The failure of the first assassination attempt only meant that greater care would be taken next time.” Read More

”November 9th, 1932. At 15 minutes past midnight, Eastern Standard Time, the Associated Press from Palo Alto, reported this three-word flash: ‘Hoover concedes defeat’. Three years of depression had thrust Herbert Hoover and the Republicans from control of the government and elected New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States. The Volstead Act was doomed. Repeal of the 18th amendment, prohibition, was inevitable. At 2:15 a.m. Chicago time, the Untouchables led by their chief, Eliot Ness, celebrated the beginning of the end of prohibition by destroying the last of the breweries operated by Al Capone and company. ”
Read More

“Prior to May 1934, robbing state banks was not a federal offense. Bandits had only local police to contend with, and these were frequently understaffed, inefficient or corrupt. With all the odds in favor of the hoods, there was a rash of successful though clumsily executed bank robberies carried out with complete disregard for human life. But, in addition to these rip and tear robbers, there were many experts of an older school, like the men who silently looted the Farmers and Drovers Bank of Kansas City, of $150,000, and left the small change behind for the muscle men. In Chicago, March 7th, 1934, a meeting took place in the office of Beecher Asbury, the federal district attorney.” Read More

“Election night, 1931, in the City of Moraine, the heart of the gangster ­infested area of downstate Illinois, known as Little Egypt. Marcus Stone, the new mayor., was thanking the people for sweeping his entire reform ticket into office.” Read More

“Chicago, February, 1932. Crime was a big business that was spreading from the dark alleys of Cicero, across town to the gentler, social atmosphere of the Gold Coast. Times were changing and crime was changing with them. Like any big business, it had to change, but it still required the services of hoodlums and gunmen, like Al Barberry and George Colleoni; the courtroom techniques of unscrupulous attorneys such as Paul Curtiz, and the guiding hands of the man at the top, the man who had come up from the ranks and had made the transition from gangster to big businessman: Augie Viale.”

Augie Viale had never made in inner circle of the Capone syndicate; he had never tried, not even after Capone was sent to Atlanta for tax evasion. With the help of men in public office willing to look the other way, Viale was too busy making a place for himself with narcotics and hot cars, and a new enterprise.” Read More

“On a peaceful evening in the Spring of 1931. Gang warfare had broken out with sudden violence on the streets of St. Louis. Tim Harrington, long-entrenched as the undisputed boss of the city, was fighting the challenge to his leadership. And the challenger was an upstart hoodlum: Joe Courtney. The most outraged citizen in St. Louis was Dink Conway, the owner of the swanky Jockey Club, a fashionable club house attached to the old Maxwell Race Tracie, converted into the finest restaurant and nightclub in the State of Missouri.”
Read More

Read More

“A nice day in Chicago, March 31, 1933. At No. 1229 Houser Boulevard lived Joseph H. Bucco, his wife and daughter. Everybody knew Joe Bucco and liked him.”
Read More

“Calum City, thirty miles from Chicago, population, 10,000. A city fighting for its life, divided over an election that could mean honest government, or a return to the jungle law of the underworld. ”
Read More