TOMMY CARROLL'S GUN GETS NOTCHED

12/11/1933 - Considering St. Paul to be too hot for the time being after Tommy Carroll is almost caught be police at his apartment building (he manages to jump out of a window and flee the scene), the Baby Face Nelson Gang consisting of Nelson, Nelson's wife Helen, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, and Chuck Fisher head south for and extended vacation in San Antonio.

         
                                               Tommy Carroll

All goes well until a busybody madam of a local whorehouse, trying to score brownie points that will assuage her own illegal activities, calls a local detective to tell him that she has spotted a machine gun in the car of a recent frequent patron from "up North."  The tip is in turn passed on to the Special Agent in Charge of the San Antonio field office of the FBI, Gus Jones.  An initial check of the apartment where Carroll and Fisher are staying however finds nothing out of the ordinary, but when the madam once more calls with a new tip about a "gangster" coming over to take one of her girls out horseback riding, two detectives, Henry C. Perrow (some accounts also have the officer named as H.C. Perrin) and Al Hartman decide to investigate ... a decision only one of them will live to regret.

                                                  
                                                          Jones

When ex-boxer turned bank robber Carroll arrives in a cab and picks up his "date," the two officers follow in their unmarked car.  The wary outlaw though notices the car following behind and in the middle of downtown San Antonio, only a half a mile or so from the Alamo, he orders the cab driver to stop.  Leaping from the vehicle, Carroll is instantly in flight, running around a corner and up an alley ... a dead end alley.  Behind him, fifty-six-year-old Perrow, carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and Hartman, armed with his service revolver, race into the alley after their quarry and with no out for anyone, a one-sided gun battle takes place.  Before he can react at all, Carroll's first bullet strikes Perrow, a fifteen year veteran of the police department, right between the eyes, killing the detective instantly and accurate firing continuing, the outlaw's next shots shatter the right wrist and elbow of Hartman (Hartman will crawl out of the alley and empty his pistol at Carroll, but the wounds and distance allow the killer to escape without a scratch).  

                            
                                                          Carroll

Enemies down, Carroll then jogs out of the alley and after using his gun to commandeer a ride from the driver of a pickup truck who has the misfortune to be passing by at the wrong moment, is soon on the road north, headed back to St. Paul, vacation over (the rest of the gang also flees town at the news of the shootout ... all but Fisher that is, he is a little too tardy relocating and Jones will arrest the crook, starting the bandit on his way to a term in Leavenworth Prison on already existing robbery charges).

                                       
                                               Perrow

Justice delayed but not negated, the next year, 1934, Carroll will again be confronted on a city's streets by officers of the law with much different results ... last stop Waterloo, Iowa, at the age of only thirty-three.

               

BABY FACE NELSON - CORPSE

11/27/1934 - Baby Face Nelson's reign of a month as America's Public Enemy #1 comes to a violent end in Illinois.  

                                     

The subject of a nationwide manhunt since the October death of Pretty Boy Floyd, Nelson is spotted in Wisconsin at a hideout he has patronized in the past, the Lake Como Inn.  Under surveillance by the FBI, Nelson avoids a gun battle when agents at the inn fail to identify the killer (sunlight on the black Ford's front window and dust from over a week on the road obscure views into the vehicle, also occupied by Nelson's wife, Helen, and the outlaw's partner, John Paul Chase) until after the wary bandit reverses course and heads back towards Chicago ... avoids a gun battle for the moment.  Realizing who they have just encountered, FBI field office in Chicago is quickly telephoned and agents hit the roads north of the city looking for the outlaw ... and around 3:00 in the afternoon, roughly thirty minutes later they find him headed south!  Matching the Illinois license plate they've been given as they head up Highway 12 (a parallel two-lane strip of blacktop separated by a grass median), 639578, Special Agents Bill Ryan and Agent Tom McDade make a U-turn in their Ford coupe and begin following Nelson's vehicle ... a maneuver that insanely causes the outlaw to make two U-turns of his own that quickly put the killer in pursuit of his hunters.

                     
                                        Lake Como

"Pull over!" Nelson yells as he comes abreast of the agent's car ... an order that is ignored.  Instead, as driver McDade crouches to stay out of the line of fire, Ryan empties his pistol at the Ford of the outlaws ... action which is answered by Nelson firing his pistol at the agents as he drives with one hand, while Chase targets the FBI car with bullets from a .351 automatic rifle.  

                                
                                                      John Paul Chase

Miraculously no one is hit in the lead exchange except the cars of both parties ... windows are shattered and the radiator of the Ford Nelson is driving is holed.  Narrowly missing a collision with a milk truck, the FBI agents put finally are able to put distance between themselves and their pursuers, sand pull over to make a stand against the outlaws further down the road ... but the public enemy and his companions never make an appearance for they have become engaged in another shootout, this time with thirty-five-year-old FBI Inspector Samuel Cowley and thirty-one-year-old Special Agent Herman Hollis.

                                   
                            Cowley                              Hollis

Coming upon the moving gun battle, the northbound car driven by Hollis makes its own U-turn and is soon upon the outlaws as their car falters from the radiator hit.  Approaching a roadside park, Nelson suddenly pulls off the highway and skids to a halt on a dirt road.  Hollis responds by slamming on his brakes and cars at rest, in front of a score of witnesses at the Standard Oil and Shell gas stations on the other side of the road, the lawmen and outlaws engage in a firefight that seems scripted by Hollywood.  From a distance of roughly 150 feet, Nelson and Chase blaze away with a Thompson machine gun and .351 automatic rifle, while Cowley and Hollis answer with a machine gun of their own (Cowley) and shotgun pellets and pistol fire.  In the exchange, Nelson is the first to be hit, and whether angered by his wound or realizing the hurt is fatal, he then does the unthinkable ... leaving the protection of the car he steps into the open and stalks forward to better target his adversaries.  Firing the automatic rifle so fast that witnesses believe he is using a machine gun, Nelson somehow manages to stay erect despite being holed seventeen times ... six .45 slugs from Cowley hit the outlaw in the stomach and chest and eleven shotgun pellets perforate both his legs.  Erect long enough to place mortal bullets in Cowley's chest and stomach (Cowley and Nelson have almost identical fatal wounds to their shredded intestines), then as Hollis runs for the slim protection of a nearby telephone pole, put a killing round in the agent's head (along with W. Carter Baum at Little Bohemia, Nelson still holds the dubious honor of killing the most FBI agents in the line of duty ... three).  Hollis is survived by a wife and young son, Cowley leaves behind a wife and two sons.

                       

Firing at an end (almost, as the outlaws leave, off duty Patrolman William Gallagher, hearing the noise of the battle at the Shell station where he is selling tickets for an American Legion benefit, grabs a rifle and as Nelson and company exit the scene, fires on the fleeing vehicle), Nelson then gets into the FBI men's car and backs it up to his own vehicle where Chase transfers their weapons to the new ride and takes over the driving responsibilities from his bleeding partner as they head out again for Chicago (hiding in a ditch during the battle, Helen Gillis is picked up just before the group vacates Barrington).  True to form, Nelson goes out like lived later that evening, the cliche of an outlaw adios, only real through and through ... after telling his wife to say goodbye to his mother, the killer recites the names of his brothers and sisters, begins to cry when he tells his wife to give a farewell to their children and then passes away after whispering, "It's getting dark Helen.  I can't see you anymore."  

                     
                                                          Headline stuff
             
                                                       At the morgue
             
                                                   After the autopsy
            
                                                   Lawmen and their prize
                          
                                                                  Adios

The murdering outlaw is twenty-five-years-old when his violent life comes to its not unexpected conclusion.   
     
    

BABY FACE NELSON - PSYCHOPATH

November, 1930 - Whether it was due to his stature and a resulting Napoleonic complex (he will grow to only five-feet-four-inches in height), the hard area of Chicago where he came of age (a west side location known as The Patch), bad parenting, the suicide death of his father, or just being a bad seed malfunction of nature, no public enemy of the Depression Era took more glee out of causing murder and mayhem (he starts at twelve by "accidentally" shooting a child in the jaw he is teasing with a gun he found in an alley) than Lester Gillis, better known now to crime historians as "Baby Face" Nelson.

                                       
                                                          Lester Gillis

Already a well seasoned thief with multiple trips to the state reformatory, at twenty-one Nelson is in the midst of a personal crime wave (several homes are broken into and their occupants robbed at gunpoint ... and he even mugs the wife of Chicago's mayor, Mary Walker Thompson, of jewelry estimated to be worth $18,000) when he and a group of associates decide to loot a roadhouse in the suburban town of Summit, Illinois.  Dancers still partying from Saturday night to the vocal stylings of twenty-two-year-old singer Mary Brining, in the early morning of Sunday, 11/23, armed with pistols and shotguns, Nelson and seven of his followers line up the patrons of the club, and in a smoky dark back room, begin robbing them of their possessions.  It is at this point that things go terribly wrong.  Seeking more illumination so that his victims will not be able to hide any of their valuables from theft, Nelson calls on one of his cronies to turn up the lights ... instead, a dolt in his gang flips a switch that turns the lights out, plunging the room into near total darkness, just as the roadhouse owner's Great Dane attacks, biting Nelson in the leg.  Nelson of course responds by opening fire on the dog, a reaction which in turn causes his gang to panic and begin indiscriminately firing at flashes, noises, and shadows ... gunplay that then results in railroad detective James Mikus opening up on the robbers with his gun as he exits the bathroom.  The chaos of flying bullets lasts only seconds, but when the bandits hastily relocate to calmer climes, they leave behind three dead (the young Mary Brining is one of them) and three wounded patrons ... and one very unhappy, but still alive pooch.

                                          
                                                        Desperado dude

Three nights later Nelson and his cohorts burst into another local tavern with robbery again in mind, but find only three men in the establishment ... the bar's owner, Frank Engel, a waiter, and a friend of Engel's, a twenty-seven-year-old stockbroker named Edwin R. Thompson who has stopped in for a late dinner after visiting his sick wife in a nearby hospital.  Shotgun at the ready, Nelson orders the men to raise their hands, but when a fearful Thompson adds a nervous smile to his limbs going skyward, the outlaw takes the expression as a slight.  "Don't smile, you!"  Psycho ... when the command is not responded too quickly enough to suit Nelson, the bandit fires a single blast from his shotgun into Thompson's chest, killing the young man instantly as he yells at the corpse that falls at his feet.  "Guess we ain't tough, eh?"  Murder complete, Nelson then has Engel open his safe, takes its contents and heist over, leaves the bar with the grand total of $125.

                      
                         Wanted poster as part of the Dillinger Gang

Sowing what he will eventually reap, almost to the day four years later, in 1934, Baby Face Nelson will make his bloody exit from the world as America's Public Enemy #1 beside a road in Barrington, Illinois ... but not before taking two FBI agents with him.

              
                                   Baby Face Nelson

BOLEY GETS BLOODY

11/23/1932 - After taking down thirteen banks in twenty-one months with his partner, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, outlaw George Birdwell lets success goes to his head and decides to rob the Farmers and Merchants Bank of the all-black town of Boley, Oklahoma.  

                                 
                                                                Floyd

Ignoring the advice of Floyd that the thirty-eight-year-old white bandit will stick out like a "sore thumb" in the town, Birdwell recruits two local criminals to help him with the crime, Charles "Pete" Glass and C.C. Patterson.  He also foolishly ignores that 11/23 is the first day of the state's bird hunting season and that many of the locals might be wandering around fully armed.  It is a mistake that will cost Birdwell his life.
                                             
                                             The Farmers and Merchants Bank

The robbery goes wrong from the moment the men enter the bank.  Holding a .45 automatic, Birdwell demands the establishment's money from the bank's president, D.J. Turner ... a brave man who instead of complying, calmly presses an alarm button that notifies the town that an attempt to plunder their money is being made.  Seriously upset with the actions of Turner, Birdwell puts four bullets into the man just as assistant cashier H.C. McCormick steps out of the vault with a rifle and in turn shoots the outlaw in the chest.

                                  
                                                            Birdwell

Two dead from mortal wounds, Glass and Patterson immediately flee the bank ... and find themselves in shooting gallery.  Alerted by the alarm and shots fired, the townspeople of Boley have rushed to the bank with their squirrel and scatter guns, ready for larger prey than birds.  Led by the town's marshal, J.L. McCormick, the brother the man who has just killed Birdwell, the citizens open up on their first target and drop Glass.  Swiss cheesed, he does not get back up. Then they turn their bloody full attentions on an already wounded Patterson who attempts to use bank cashier Wesley Riley as a human shield.  It is a tactic that is doomed for failure.  Surrounded by crack shots, someone in the crowd finally tires of the standoff and fires on the outlaw ... a shot that severely wounds Patterson, but only grazes the coat of Riley.  Protection gone, the irate citizens are about to send a murderous volley of slugs into the helpless desperado when the marshal stops them ... the Battle of Boley is over and Patterson will recover from his many hurts to serve a long prison term in the Oklahoma state prison at McAlester.

                        
                               Info booklet on the town of Boley 

And the day will prove to be an early Thanksgiving for the bank's McCormick ... for his heroic actions in finishing the criminal career of Birdwell, the assistant cashier is awarded $1,000 and made an honorary major in the state's militia.  As for Floyd, the Pretty Boy now has to search for a new bank robbing partner, the third in three years due to bullet deaths, finally settling on a heavy drinking twenty-four-year-old gunman named Adam Richetti ... his final outlaw confederate. 

ROBBERY IN RACINE

11/20/1933 - Bank's insides mapped and studied, escape routes practiced, the Dillinger Gang, consisting of Harry Pierpont (the actual leader of the group), Russell Clark, John Dillinger, Charles Makley, and Leslie Homer (a just paroled Michigan City con), visits the American Bank and Trust Company of Racine, Wisconsin.

             
                    The Bank, located at Main & Fifth Street

Driving a black Buick Auburn with jump seats and bright yellow wire wheels, on a mild afternoon of 52 degrees (it is around 2:30) Homer sets the robbery in motion by circling the bank and twice dropping off two of his confederates before parking behind the bank with the motor left running.  All wearing dapper suits, hats, and topcoats (just right for concealing the men's Thompson sub-machine guns), in pairs, Makley and Dillinger, and then Pierpont and Clark, enter the bank.  To obscure the robbery about to take place, Pierpont unveils two large Red Cross posters and pastes them to the plate-glass window that looks out on the street.  Shielded from sight, the bandits then identify themselves with Makley's classic criminal order for everyone to "STICK 'EM UP!"

                      
                                                         Dillinger

Unfortunately, thirty-four-year-old head teller Harold Graham thinks the order is a joke, and when he tells Makley to go to another window because he's busy and fails to raise his hands, the outlaw fires a single shot from his Thompson that wounds the bank employee in the elbow and right hip.  Floored, a bleeding Graham falls right next to the alarm button that rings three blocks away at the police station ... activating it, Makley rewards the teller with a firm kick to go with his wounds but does not shoot him again.  At the same time as Graham is triggering the silent alarm, assistant cashier L.C. Rowan sets off the loud clanging one on the side of the building which immediately draws a crowd.  Employees and customers covered or in hiding (there are more than a dozen inside the bank), the .45 Dillinger places in the ribs of bank president Grover Weyland convinces the executive to open the vault at the back of the establishment and the looting begins in earnest.  Assigned duties as usual, access gained, Pierpont and Dillinger continue gathering money, while Clark and Makley deal with the police who now arrive on the scene.

  
          Makley                                           Pierpont                                         Clark

Officer Cyril Boyard and Sgt. Wilbur Hansen (carrying a recently acquired Thompson to give the American Bank & Trust Company's customers a show) arrive at the bank with sirens blaring, but thinking it is just another false alarm, enter the building casually with weapons not at the ready while Patrol Franklin Worsley stays with their car.  Busy controlling Boyard with his gun placed in the officer's back, Clark yells for Makley to "Get the cop with the machine gun!" when Hansen blithely follows his friend into the bank; instructions the trigger happy gunman instantly complies with, knocking the policeman down with two wounding bullets.  Then, switching to automatic fire, Makley shatters a window firing at two nosy locals peering into the bank, and unleashes another burst of slugs at two detectives lurking across the street that have joined the festivities from a nearby poolroom ... wild shooting that keeps heads down but provides no new hospital cases.  One other act of violence takes place before the bandits vacate the bank, but this time Makley is not involved and the last blood letting is entirely the work of Pierpont.  Tired of listening to a nonstop stream of whining and complaints, when the bank president angrily tells Pierpont that he wouldn't be so brave if he wasn't armed, the outlaw leader finally has heard one comment too many and reacts to the opinion by smashing Weyland in the face with the barrel of his Thompson ... the man offers no further opinions on courage the rest of the day.  Heist now complete with the bank's coffers being lightened by almost $30,000, each bandit takes a hostage as a shield and leave the building as a group, forcing their way through a crowd, now numbering about a hundred people, to the waiting getaway car.

  

Hostages draped over the vehicle, the gang escapes from town and free of pursuit, eventually tie their last two captives (the others have been freed or have fled when the outlaws attention is elsewhere), the bank president and bookkeeper Ursula Patzke, to a tree with shoelaces (they are loose in twenty minutes).  Unhappy with the experience, Patzke asks why she was selected as a hostage and is told by Pierpont it was because her red dress stood out ... and horrified at the information provided, to her dying day she never wears the color again. 

 

It has been another successful day for the gang and they soon are back in Chicago spending the fruits of their labors on clothes, food, booze, and their girlfriends, but not as fruitful as it might have been, stalking about in a rage with his machine gun, Makley has failed to find a stack of special bills that the teller he shot had just finished counting ... fifty one thousand dollar bills!  

"THAT BIRD SURE CAN DRIVE!"

11/15/1933 - Tipped off by underworld associate Art McGinnis that John Dillinger has a doctor's appointment to treat a skin condition (Barber's itch, an inflammation of the hair follicles of the skin), Chicago Police Lt. John Howe, the head of the Indiana State Police, Captain Matt Leach, and American Surety Company private investigator Forrest Huntington meet at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago to come up with a plan to take down the escaped outlaw.

                                   

Kill or capture, the decision is made to arrest Dillinger by boxing in his car when he leaves his appointment, but if he resists in the least, gunning the bandit down immediately (unbeknownst to Howe and Huntington, Leach will tell his men to kill Dillinger as soon as they have the chance).  Plans made, that evening, the coldest November 15th in the history of the city, a group of Indiana police and three squads of Chicago police, sixteen men in all, take up positions in four cars around the office of Dr. Charles Eye.  Right on time for his appointment, at 7:30 in the evening Dillinger, accompanied by his girlfriend Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, arrives in his Essex Terraplane, parks, and leaving Frechette in the car, enters the building where the dermatologist has his office.  Receiving a simple treatment of a medical lotion massaged into his itching scalp, after a short time Dillinger returns to his vehicle and the cold Chicago night quickly heats up!

                                 
                                                      Frechette

Always aware, as Dillinger saunters to his car as if he hasn't a care in the world he notices three cars parked up the street pointing in the wrong direction ... the tip-off that a trap is about to be sprung on him.  He responds instantly by throwing the car into reverse and backs into bustling Irving Boulevard, just missing several vehicles of oncoming traffic.  Surprised at the wrong way move, only one of the cop cars reacts quickly enough to chase after the outlaw.

                                  
                                   John Dillinger

Manic minutes through the streets of Chicago, at breakneck speeds the police car, a Ford V-8 driven by Chicago Sergeant John Artery, weaves in and out of traffic chasing the outlaw, finally drawing near enough that Indiana Sergeant Art Keller is able to blast away at Dillinger with both a 12-gauge shotgun and his .38 revolver, one bullet hitting the door post only inches from the bandit's head while Frechette crouches down in her seat.  In turn, Artery's car has a window shot out ... by a beat cop who thinks a gangster hit is going down when the cars rocket past.  Crazy driving, Dillinger manages to thread his way between the narrowing space of two approaching trolley cars, but finally appears trapped when he turns down a dead end street.  Almost ... once again the outlaw's reaction time is superior to those of the police and turning down an alley and then immediately reversing and then putting his foot to the floor, he is able to lose his pursuers when the police car overshoots the alley and takes too long to turn around.  Gone ... and as Keller throws down his shotgun in disgust he is quoted as saying, "That bird sure can drive!" 

                 
                  The abandoned Terraplane the next day
                   

The next day the Dillinger Terraplane will be found on the north side of town with twenty-two bullet holes in it and the chase will be the headline story of all the Chicago newspapers.  Never a dull moment with the outlaw and his gang on the loose, only a few days later in the month the papers will have a new Dillinger story to run though, when on November 20th he shows up in Racine, Wisconsin and makes a large cash withdrawal from the town's American Bank and Trust Company.

 
 Dillinger

SANTA CLAUS GETS LYNCHED

11/18/1929 - Convicted felon Marshall Ratliff makes a desperate bid for freedom from the Eastland County jail.

                            

                                                            Ratliff

Sentenced to 99 years for the infamous Santa Claus robbery of the First National Bank of Cisco, Texas the previous year (so named because the outlaw wears a Santa outfit, complete with white whiskers, during the job), and death by electrocution for the related murders of Police Chief George Edward "Bit" Bedford and Officer George Carmichael, Ratliff seems to have a complete physical and mental breakdown when one of his partners in the crime, Henry Helms, is fried in "Old Sparky" at the Huntsville State Prison on September, 6, 1929.

                            

                                                    "Old Sparky"

It is an acting job worthy of an Oscar!  Pretending insanity and feigning paralysis with epic bouts of babbling and drooling, the Death Row guards and Ratliff's mother are convinced that Ratliff has gone bonkers and a sanity hearing is scheduled to determine whether the killer will still get the hot seat or be send to a loony bin ... a decision that causes Judge Davenport of Eastland County to become irate, so irate that he issues a bench warrant against Ratliff for stealing an Oldsmobile during the Cisco robbery and has him extradited to the local jail.  It is a move that Davenport will soon come to regret.  At Eastland, Ratliff continues his charade to the extent that jailers Pack Kilbourn and Thomas Alexander "Uncle Tom" Jones are forced to feed, bathe, and place the outlaw on the toilet ... and finally they lower their guards.  Going from cell to cell serving the evening meal, the men forget to lock Ratliff's cell and instantly the outlaw becomes mentally and physically fit once more, running downstairs and grabbing a .38 Colt revolver from a desk in the jail's office.  Realizing Ratliff is attempting an escape, the jailers chase after him and Jones is the unfortunate one to arrive in the downstairs office first, a race won for which he is rewarded with five bullets that hit him in abdomen, chest, and shoulder ... mortal wounds.  Luckier, when Kilbourn arrives the shot Ratliff sends his way misses and the two men then engage in a nasty country brawl that eventually has the outlaw beaten unconscious and returned to his cell.

                                     

                                                            Jones

Now along with the judge really unhappy, the citizens of Eastland are too ... crazy blood lusting unhappy!  The next day a crowd of over 2,000 gathers at the jail and when 20 hot-heads finally storm into the jail, Texas has its last mob necktie party.  Found naked in his cell, Ratliff has his feet and hands bound, is drug to a vacant lot behind the town's Majestic Theater (ironically presenting a play called "The Noose") and then hoisted 15-feet into the air on a guy-wire between two telephone poles.  The mob's first attempt to hang Ratliff is unsuccessful though when a knot in the rope they are using comes untied and the bandit falls to the ground.  No reprieve with the band of upset spiders the mob has become, Ratliff has just enough time to say "Forgive me boys," before rope repaired, he is sent air dancing again ... the second time fatally.  

               

                                      The former jail in recent times

Happy to have killed a killer, despite a town full of witnesses, no legal action is ever taken against any participant in the lynching of the Santa Claus bandit.

THE HANDSHAKE KILLING

11/10/1924 - The bootlegging wars that will plague Chicago for years and cost dozens their lives begin in earnest on this day at the North Side flower shop of Irish Catholic gangster Charles Dean "Dion" O'Banion.

                  
                  O'Banion

Payback by Italian gangsters for double crossing Johnny Torrio in the purchase of the Sieben Brewery right before the bootlegging operation is to be raided by police, and for highjacking too many Genna Brothers liquor shipments (along with being quoted around town as saying, "To Hell with the Sicilians!"), O'Banion is at the flower store he owns, working on floral arrangements for the funeral of mobster Mike Merlo, when a new group of criminals arrive to place an order.

     
     Schofield's

Clipping chrysanthemums, O'Banion steps out of a back room in the flower shop and greets his latest customers, Brooklyn gangster Frankie Yale and the murder duo of Albert Anselmi and John Scalise (notorious, they are called "The Murder Twins" for rubbing garlic on their bullets to cause gangrene to any victims they don't kill outright).

                            
                                                         Frankie Yale
                   
                             Anselmi                                         Scalise

When he shakes Yale's hand though, the hitman from New York keeps a death grip on O'Banion's hand, preventing the gangster from pulling a pistol and defending himself as Scalise and Anselmi each fire two bullets from their .38 revolvers point-blank into the Irishman's chest and throat (leaving powder burns on the corpse).  Down and dead already, Scalise then fires a finishing slug into the back of O'Banion's head.  The killing takes only seconds!

              
              Newspaper depiction
                              
                               Front page

Denied burial in consecrated ground (eventually his family will get the okay to rebury him in Catholic approved sod), O'Banion nonetheless gets a massive sendoff that includes a funeral (the Lord's Prayer and three Hail Marys are said in the by childhood friend Father Patrick Malloy) attended by thousands and a burial at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.  He also gets vows of revenge from the new boss of his gang, Hymie Weiss (receiving the news that he has lost his boss, best friend, and mentor, Weiss collapses on the floor of his bathroom and cries uncontrollably).  A five year long blood bath is about to begin!

                
                Mobbed funeral
                                 
                                  Adios Dion

SAYING NO TO MACHINE GUN JACK

11/9/1927 - Career taking off after a successful run at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, a posh nightclub in Chicago catering to the rich and famous (and the elite of the underworld), singer/comic Joe E. Lewis (real name Joseph Klewan) refuses to renew his contract with the Green Mill, choosing instead to sign on with The New Rendezvous ... a decision that will give the entertainer a raise of $350 a week to a $4000 a month salary (plus a percentage of the club's nightly take during his run).

                    
                                         Lewis

It is a decision however that enrages one of the co-owners of the Green Mill ... head torpedo for Al Capone, Machine Gun Jack McGurn (real name Vincenzo Gibaldi) ... and he tells Lewis that he will not live to open elsewhere when the performer decides to move on anyway.



The charming Machine Gun Jack

Worried, for awhile Lewis is escorted about town by a bodyguard, but when nothing happens and he debuts at the New Rendezvous as planned, the entertainer starts believing that McGurn was just bluffing as a renegotiable tactic and he lets his guard down and relaxes.  It is a mistake that almost costs Lewis his life!

                                   
                                             Lewis in later years

Awakened from his slumbers in his 10th floor room at the Commonwealth Hotel, a groggy Lewis foolish answers the knocking on his door without first checking who is outside his suite.  Door opened, three thugs rush into the room and begin pistol whipping the entertainer, the blows so forceful that they drive pieces of Lewis' skull into his brain.  Brutalized and almost comatose, one of the gangsters then takes out a long bladed hunting knife and carves away at the performer face and throat, cutting him from ear to ear and taking off part of his tongue.  Blood spewing, the trio then drop Lewis on the floor and make their escape believing they've silenced the man forever.  And they aren't far from right ... jugular vein barely missed, Lewis somehow fights through his wounds and is able to crawl out into the hallway where he is discovered by a chambermaid.  Rushed to a nearby hospital, his life will be saved, but it takes months for him to learn how to speak again and he will bear the scars of the attack for the rest of his life.

                                 
                                                      Lewis

In the aftermath of the attack, Capone, who was fond of Lewis and unaware of what his hitman was planning, provides monetary assistance in the form of $10,000 that allows the entertainer to take the time necessary to recover from his wounds.  And recover he does, though he will never sing again, Lewis goes on to a career in comedy and lives long enough (he will die in 1971 at the age of 69) to see Frank Sinatra play him in the story of his life, the 1957 movie The Joker Is Wild based on the book of the same title by Art Cohn.  And living well the sweetest revenge, Lewis stays above ground decades longer than the man who contracted his death!

                              
                                                       Sinatra as Lewis
                                      

No happy ending for McGurn, on the outs with the leadership of The Outfit since Capone's incarceration for income tax evasion, in 1933 the former killer is setup on the anniversary of the crime he helped planned, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and while enjoying an evening of bowling on February 14th, the hitman is himself hit ... dead at the young age of only 33.

                    
                                   Adios Jack