MURDER MEN OF CHICAGO

Hokitika Guardian, 25 January 1930, Page 7

MURDER MEN OF CHICAGO

(By EDGAR WALLACE IN “Daily Mail.”) IV. \ I did not see Scarface, because A 1 Capone, following the example of his illustrious chief, Torrio, got himself sent to prison for a year in Philadelphia. The man who sent him there had been a guest of his at his palatial home in Miami, so one supposes the matter was arranged to everybody’s satisfaction. There was very good reason why Capone should go to prison, which I wiil explain later. A year ago in Chicago.

Five cars drive rapidly along the concrete road leading from the suburbs into the city. The first and last two are stiff with men who carry revolvers with the same unconsciousness as you wear braces. The third weights seven tons and is bullet-proof. It carries A 1 Capone, who “doesn’t want trouble,” and makes sure that he doesn’t get any that is avoidable. He is in the thirties, heavily built, and has a broad face; the eyes are good and grin easily; the lips are big and thick. His language is horrific—unlike Johnn Torrio, who. never usea a foul word. For all his crimes, real or ascribed, he can be an amusing fellow and has a mordant sense or humour. He served in France in the war and was discharged creditably. A gambler who will lose half a million dollars a week on racehorses, he is by far the cleverest organiser that gangdom has had.

LEERING HYMIE WEISS. Against him was pitted Hymie Weiss, a dour, leering devil of a man, slim, built, loose lipped, a murderer by inclination, a rang leader by destiny. Hymie knew one thing—that while the Capones and the Gennas lived he was doomed. He, the successor of the murdered O’Banion, had all the reminders lie needed of the quick death which lurked round the corner.

V Hie had takien over Schofield’s flower shop (the mosaic floor has still one piece missing where a bullet struck), and had his office in the upstairs room. Here he organised his hi-jicking and his boot-legging. “Nobody but a fool would live around where other gangs could find him,” was the contemptuous comment of one Lombardo, an enemy of Weiss. “Weiss didn’t know where to get off.” The man who said that was butchered a few days later in the heart of Chicago and in broad daylight. No gangster knows where to get off. Worse still, he does not know .when to get off. And so he is “bumped off.” Weiss himself was without resources other than those represented by his gunmen, his money, and his .business. He had the responsibility of taking care of his followers. One of these was Joe Satis, a pleasant soul, who had deliberately murdered another murderer, and was being tried for his life. Weiss was very busy at this trial—busy with the jury, busy with the witnesses for the .State. There are all sorts, of ways by which you can intimidate witnesses, the easiest method being to bomb their houses.

SEVEN WEEKS’ AMBUSH

So intent was he that he knew nothing of the men who had taken lodgings in a house next to the flower shop. They were patient men, content to wait seven weeks until a front room commanding the street became vacant. And when that was available they fixed their machine gun near the window and'waited.

There was a good reason for their presence in that house on that October day in 1920. On August 3 one Thomas Ross, chauffeur to Al Capone, had been captured, by the Weiss crowd, tortured (probably with the ‘idea of betraying his chief) and brutally murdered. It was about August 22 that the machine gun men took up their position. On the afternoon of October 11th. Hymie came back into the criminal courts accompanied by bis guard, his lawyer and three other slaves. And as he walked across the road, the machine gun rattled hideously. And there was Hymie and his guard, dead in the road, and a wounded chauffeur and lawyer. One man ran across the street to the protecting angle of the Holy Name Cathedral. The machine gun bullets chased him—incidentally pitted the corner-stone of the cathedral with slugs. I saw one left—the rest of the murder marks had been chiselled away by the cathedral authorities.

The murderers carried their machine gun through the back yard, killing on uieir way a dog they thought might give trouble (they had provided themselves in advance with a sledge hammer for the purpetee, and escaped. They left nothing to chance. Another room had heart rented which commanded the back of the Schofield premises, and here, later, Chief John Stege (pronounced Steggy) found a machine gun and a circle of cigarette huts to mark the spot where the patient watchers had sat day after daj. KILLED IN' POLICE OAK. One “Schemer” Drum took the place of Hymie Weiss, hut his reign was a short one. Lie was mysteriously slain in a detective squad car on fils way to the station six months later; nobody knows why. He was succeeded uy p,ugs Morgan, who was alive when I left Chicago, though it was only by

luck that he escaped death last St. Valentine’s Day, when the most terrible of. all the murders shocked Chicago—a city which is not easily shocked.

Sandwiched between the killing of Hymie Weiss and the massacre of February 14, 1929, was a number of minor murders, unimportant of themselves, which were in the nature of reprisals, punishments and murders ot expediency. “Diamond Joe” Esposito, safe, proprietor and most genial of crooks, was killed in the street. He was something of a politician, a friend of bootleggers, thieves and gamblers. Two days before he was killed he gave a party in celebration of his saint’s day, and there were present a chief justice seven judges and four assessors.

Yet another powerful man went out in their period. Big Tim Murphy, friend and adviser of Torrio, racketeer and blackmailer, most powerful of labour bosses, departed to a less troubled atmosphere through the medium of a machine-gun which caught him as he came out of his house. TAKEN FOR A RIDE. Also quite a few, including one John Touhy, were “taken for a- ride.” Suppose you are an unpopular gangster, and it is inconvenient to shoot you down in the street, you are walking along a deserted strip of road when a car sidles up to your side; a man steps out, gun in hand. “Get inside,” jie says, and the victim obeys. Usually he sits by the driver’s side, his captors sitting behind, holding the muzzle of a gun against the back of his head. The car drives into the country and the doomed man steps forth, is promptly despatched and left for a horrified citizen to find in the grey of the morning. Or occasionally lie is shot in the car, his body left on the floor, his legs drawn up on to the seat, and there he is found in the abandoned machine by the first policeman who strolls along and wonders why the car has been left in a lonely country road.