BATTLE WITH GANGSTERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 858, 30 December 1929, Page 9

BATTLE WITH GANGSTERS

POLICE KILL THREE AT CHICAGO ROGUES’ CONVENTION RAIDED Reed. 10.30 a.m. NEW YORK, Sun. Liquor gangsters in Chicago who attempted to levy blackmail on the Tyremen’s Union were met by the police and routed after a fierce gunfight, losing three dead. A coroner’s jury congratulated the detectives on their clean and efficient execution of three gansters. The week-end lias been celebrated by a police raid upon a racketeers’ convention, when nine men and one woman were arrested. The delegates were gathered in the oflice of the Acme Products Company, which bears a sign: “We raise money for churches, lodges, etc.” Among the captured ten were several who are believed to have participated in the St. Valentine’s Day masacre this year, when seven men were mown down with machine-guns. BUNGALOW-ARSENAL SUPER-CRIMINAL TRACED Fred Burke, described by the police as “the most dangerous man alive,” is being sought throughout the United States. He has successfully evaded capture following IX murders and numerous bank and pay-roll robberies, but the police are on his tracks again. Burke, who has been posing as a retired business man at St. Joseph, Michigan, became involved recently in a minor traffic accident, says au exchange. Charles Skelly, a policeman, insisted that lie come to headquarters and pay £1 for having crumpled another car’s fender. Burke lost his temper and shot tlie policeman dead. The police, on investigating, found Burke’s bungalow to be a veritable arsenal. There were trapdoors, automatic rifles, hand grenades and gasbombs. In a safe were bonds worth £65,000. Much of this was taken in a bank robbery at Jefferson, Wisconsin, in November. In the living room were found 200 well-thumbed detective novels. Passages telling of slips which caused the capture of imaginary “crooks” were heavily underscored, as though Burke had been trying to lead a perfect life of crime. The police arrested at the house a woman who had been posing as the gangster’s wife. She admitted her real name was Mrs. Viola Brenneman, of Kankakee, and told the prosecutor, Mr. Cummings, that Burke was a friend of Willie Heeny, a suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, when seven members of the “Bugs” Moran gang were lined up against a garage wall and shot. She assured the officers that Burke was the ringleader of the murders, and begged to be allowed to share in the great reward offered for his capture. I understand,” the coroner, Mr. Bundesen, said, “that four machiueguns were found in the arsenal in the home of Burke. ‘W e have bullets and shells from machine-guns used in the St. Valentine’s Day masacre.”

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