Kill Dillinger Here

It’s the ultimate Chicago crime scene: The Biograph Theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., where John Dillinger’s fifteen-month crime spree across the Midwest, which turned him into one of the 20th century’s most famous criminals, ended in a nearby alley with two shots to the chest and one in the back of the neck.

Dillinger, an Indiana native of rural extract, had a hard-knock childhood after his mother died when he was only 3. As a teenager in the 1910s, he was a school-boy terror, and by 1924, he landed in jail under lengthy sentence for his part in a mugging. His partner in the crime, Ed Singleton, sold the 21 year-old Dillinger down the river, bargaining for a light sentence while Dillinger, who was not well represented at trial, got a stiff 10 to 20 years. For the next nine years, most of which was spent at the notoriously vile prison in Michigan City, Dillinger stewed in resentment over what he saw as an unfairly harsh punishment. At the same time, he studied hard at “crime school,” building knowledge and contacts among the hardened crooks surrounding him, including future partners in crime “Handsome” Harry Pierpont, Homer VanMeter, and John “Three Fingered Jack” Hamilton. Finally paroled in May, 1933, Dillinger’s next fifteen months would take him from Indiana farm boy to international celebrity.

Four months after winning his freedom, Dillinger helped smuggle a cache of weapons back to his colleagues in the Michigan City prison, who then used them to break out of the hated facility, where new, untrained guards had been recently installed as a part of a change in gubernatorial administration in Indiana. Just days before the breakout, Dillinger, who had spent the summer using his new-found criminal expertise to lead a bank robbing gang on expeditions in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, was captured and sent to jail in Lima, Ohio. His friends Pierpont and Hamilton, newly on the lam from Michigan City, returned the favor by leading a brigade to break Dillinger out, in the process killing the county sheriff, Jess Sarber, who lived in the prison complex (Pierpont would later meet his fate on the electric chair for the murder).

Dillinger and his gang, which included at various times not only the aforementioned Pierpont, VanMeter, and Hamilton, but also other criminal luminaries such as Harry Copeland and Lester “Baby Face Nelson” Gillis, would take a dollar where they could find it, but their primary targets in 1933-34 were banks. Their basic modus operandi was to leave a getaway driver on the street in a fast car, then enter the bank and calmly order everyone to the ground while they loaded up bags with cash. Surrounding themselves with human shields, they would then exit the bank, enter the car, and position their hostages on the sideboards as they drove off, making it extremely difficult for sharpshooting police to take a clear shot. In most of the rural and suburban locales they targeted, the police were armed with pistols, which were no match for the WWI-surplus Thompson submachine guns the Dillinger gang preferred. In addition, the police in these sleepy towns generally drove older model cars that were left in a cloud of dust by Dillinger’s 1933 and 1934 Ford Terraplanes, which could easily hit 80 mph. In those days before in-car radios, the police had little chance to catch up, and could not easily call a roadblock ahead (purportedly, Dillinger avoided banks in Michigan because police there were equipped with radios).

(Pictured: Three poses of John Dillinger. The description accompanying this series in the newspaper read: "The center picture, particularly, is characteristic of the killer's disdain of the law, his sneering, unchanging hate of the public and its institutions.)

Dillinger’s criminal career coincided with the nadir of the Great Depression. During 1933 and 1934, the national unemployment rate soared to over 25%. Real gross domestic product, a measure of the nation’s annual economic output, had fallen for four consecutive years, there of which were by double-digit percentages (by contrast, as of 2008, GDP has only declined in four years out of the last 34). Then, as now, the public recognized the downturn as a monetary phenomenon, and much blame and ire landed at the feet of bankers. Many Americans had suffered the humiliation of losing their homes and businesses to bank repossession, or had been turned down for additional credit, so Dillinger’s focus on banks gave him the aura of a robin hood figure, despite the fact that he spent most of his ill-gotten gains on himself and his girlfriends, not the downtrodden masses queued up at soup kitchens.

But despite his hardscrabble upbringing, his ability to make bankers tremble, and his almost supernatural ability to avoid police capture, it is doubtful Dillinger would have achieved much public acclaim without a particular legislative accomplishment of the New Deal – federal deposit insurance.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, was created as a part of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed by congress in June, 1933, and implemented as of January 1, 1934. Before FDIC, “runs” were a common feature of the banking system in the United States. When a rumor started that the local bank might be in financial trouble, some depositors would exercise caution by withdrawing cash. The sight of people withdrawing their deposits would further fuel the rumors of financial problems at the bank, leading others to take their money out of the bank. This process could quickly create a vicious circle, by which rumors of distress, which might not even be true initially, created a self-fulfilling prophesy as panic spread among depositors racing to the bank to get their deposits out before the bank’s reserves ran out.

By insuring deposits, FDIC broke the circle. Even if a bank truly was in distress, those withdrawing their deposits late would lose nothing; hence, there was no reason for a rush to withdraw first, no panic, and no bank run. For this reason, bank runs have been exceedingly scarce since 1934. But at the same time FDIC solved the problem of runs, it also created a set of perverse incentives for bankers, who no longer faced the disciplining force of possible financial ruin in making risky loans and other investments. Before FDIC, banks typically kept relatively high levels of reserves – currency on hand – and competed with each other for customers by advertising their high reserves and other conservative practices. After FDIC, there was no reason to hold more reserves than required by law, and most banks today hold less then 5% of depositors’ money in cash. The consequently high level of leverage in the banking system creates instability, and many commentators blame the S&L crisis of the 1980s, as well as the panic of 2008, on excessive risk-taking by bankers.

An additional unintended consequence of federally-mandated deposit insurance was to make depositors essentially indifferent towards robbery. Before FDIC, the robbery of a small town bank could create serious losses for depositors and a major contraction in local credit, but with a federal assurance that depositors could lose nothing, the incentive to protect banks waned and the desire to glorify robbers like Dillinger grew. Some historians believe that many Dillinger gang bank hits were, in fact, inside jobs, with bankers using the famous criminal as a cover-up for their own malfeasance.

While Dillinger’s gang was never afraid to use violence to avoid capture, Dillinger himself was a relative pacifist. The only known case in which he killed anyone was during a January, 1934 robbery at the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, where he machine-gunned a police officer who had shot him during his escape. It was this killing, however, that would eventually come to be closely linked with Dillinger’s own death at the hands of the East Chicago police force.

After the First National Bank job, Dillinger and his crew decamped for Tucson, Arizona, where they tried to lay low until the nationwide manhunt that was following them passed. But it was difficult to disguise these high-rolling gangsters and their big-spending girlfriends in dusty Tucson, and eventually the local police rounded up Dillinger, Pierpont, and several other gang members. Pierpont was shipped back to Ohio to stand trial for the murder of Sheriff Surber during the Lima breakout, while Dillinger ended up in jail at Crown Point, Indiana.

It was at Crown Point where Dillinger made his most famous prison escape, one that would rocket him from a prolific, but regional, bank robber, to international superstardom. On March 3, 1934, prison handyman Sam Cahoon accidentally opened the main cell block door before the prisoners were safely locked back in their cells. Within seconds, Dillinger perceived the opportunity and jumped into action. Out of nowhere, he brandished a pistol, which he shoved into Cahoon’s side, forcing the handyman to assist him as he slowly made his way out of the facility, using the gun to take additional hostages as he went. Highlighting the audacious escape was the fact that, as later revealed, Dillinger’s “pistol” was really a wooden washboard slat, painted black and carved into the shape of a gun barrel.

Overnight, Dillinger became “the man no prison could hold.” But was Dillinger’s escape really so miraculous? Conspiracy theorists have always pointed to the utter unlikelihood of so many stars lining up at once, especially for such a high-profile inmate who should have been under especially high scrutiny. Moreover, Cahoon and other hostages at Crown Point that day swore to their graves that Dillinger’s gun was no fake. In these highly speculative, but fascinating, conspiracy tales, Dillinger was slipped a real pistol (and, possibly, the decoy as well) by corrupt members of the East Chicago police force, who may have visited Dillinger during his initial days at Crown Point, since his most recent robbery had been the First National job in East Chicago.

Lending some mild credence to these theories is the fact that the East Chicago police department in those days was notoriously corrupt. Situated just across the state line from the south side of Chicago, the town of East Chicago was an ideal spot for vice operations, and had for years been home to a myriad of gambling, prostitution, and (during Prohibition) booze operations. These resorts operated under protection from the East Chicago city government and police, who received a cut of the profits. In 1929, indictments were handed down against the mayor, police chief, and many other city officials for participation in this graft, and the top figures in the pay-for-play scheme served two years in prison, after a circus-like trial in which one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses, an East Chicago police officer turned state’s witness, was murdered. Among those who served time was East Chicago chief of detectives Martin Zarkovich, who would later play a critical role in the death of John Dillinger.

Another curious fact is that, just a month before Dillinger’s death on May 24, 1934, two other East Chicago police officers, Martin O’Brien and Lloyd Mulvihill, were found dead in their service vehicle. Most historians blame members of the Dillinger gang, and while some members of the gang were certainly capable of such violence, there was never evidence tying any of them to O’Brien and Mulvihill; conspiracists insist that the two policemen knew too much about the relationship between Dillinger and the East Chicago force, and met their fate at the hands of their fellow officers.

While these facts add up to make the theory that East Chicago officers helped Dillinger break out of Crown Point (perhaps in return for some of his loot) at least plausible, the case must be considered suggestive and circumstantial at best.

In any case, after the breakout, Dillinger rejoined VanMeter, Baby Face Nelson, and John Hamilton in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they continued their reign of terror. Later the gang spent time in upper Wisconsin, narrowly avoiding capture at the hands of the newly-formed Division of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) in a botched police raid. By June, 1934, Dillinger was back in Chicago. His face was as recognizable as any movie star’s, and five states plus the federal government had put a total $15,000 bounty on his head. Even Dillinger realized his crime spree couldn’t go on much longer. Biding his time, he disguised himself by dying his hair black, wearing a moustache, and sporting gold-rimmed glasses, and began slowly, tentatively, venturing out onto the streets of Chicago. He also underwent primitive plastic surgery to change his facial features, and took acid treatments on his fingertips to make his prints unidentifiable.

The disguise seemed to work well, but Dillinger nevertheless made plans to escape to Mexico. Here and there, he and his gang would reunite to hit a bank, but generally Dillinger kept a low profile during the summer of 1934, building his cash holdings and preparing for a trip south of the border, which was to depart on July 23. During the meantime, though, he began enjoying the Chicago nightlife, posing as “Jim Lawrence,” a fun-loving Chicago Board of Trade employee.

One night, he found himself at the Barrel of Fun nightclub on Wilson Ave., between Elston and Cicero Aves. Introducing himself as Jim Lawrence, he asked for and received the telephone number of a dark-eyed brunette named Polly Rita Keele (nee Hamilton). At the time, Polly was living with a friend and former employer, Anna Sage, in an apartment building on Halsted, just north of Fullerton.

(Pictured: Polly Keele)

Keele and Sage had become acquainted while both lived in Northwest Indiana, and Sage was operating a brothel where Keele sometimes worked. Polly, who had run away from home in Fargo, North Dakota, at age 13, wound up at Anna Sage’s “People’s Hotel”, a house of ill-repute in Gary. There, she met her husband, Roy Keele, a Gary police officer, and they married in 1929. By the spring of 1933, however, the couple was divorced and Polly sought out her old employer, who had by that time moved into Chicago. It’s possible that Anna Sage knew Dillinger from her Lake County days, and set up the meeting with Polly at the Barrel of Fun, or it may be that the encounter between Polly and Dillinger was by chance, and Polly introduced her new beau to her landlady at some point later. In any case, Dillinger and Polly Keele became lovers and were frequently at Anna Sage’s house, with some reports indicating that Dillinger even lived there himself during some parts of the summer of 1934.

With Sage, however, Dillinger’s luck had finally run out. He did not know that the reason Anna Sage was in Chicago was that, as a convicted proprietor of a house of prostitution and a foreign national, she was facing the threat of deportation back to her native Romania. Thus, she was looking for opportunities to redeem herself in front of immigration authorities at the very moment that Uncle Sam’s most wanted man walked into her life. Dillinger also did not know that one of Anna Sage’s boyfriends during her time in Northwest Indiana was East Chicago chief of detectives, Martin Zarkovich.

Arriving in the U.S. in 1909, Anna Sage and her husband, Mike Chiolak separated in the late 1910s, and by the early 1920s, Anna Sage was one of Northwest Indiana’s top madams. A patrol officer at the time, Zarkovich, who was married with children at the time, became a frequent visitor, and the affair with Sage was cited by his wife in divorce proceedings shortly after. A flashy dresser, fellow officers referred to Zarkovich as the "police sheik", and after his divorce, he was able to quickly advance in the East Chicago police hierarchy. During the 1920s, Zarkovich's power kept the police heat off of Sage’s properties, but after he went to jail in the graft case mentioned earlier, Anna Sage was convicted four times for running disorderly houses. When he was released from prison, Zarkovich managed to get his old job back, and did his best to erase the damage, helping Sage to receive two pardons from Indiana governor Harry Leslie, but immigration authorities pressed their case against her due to the other two convictions, causing her to flee into Chicago.

(Pictured: Anna Sage with her son, Steve Chiolak)

During June and July, John Dillinger and Polly Keele frequently double-dated with Anna Sage’s adult son, Steve Chiolak, and his girlfriend. Chiolak later described the fun times with “Jim Lawrence”, which included many summer evenings at the movies: “If he was the man they said he was, he was an all around fellow. He didn’t act tough and he didn’t talk tough. He didn’t drink hard liquor either; just mild gin fizzes.”

Chiolak did notice scars on his new friend’s face, ones that seemed out of place for a sober securities trader, but felt it wasn’t his place to ask. “I don’t like to ask a guy about his face. I’d get mad if some one asked me about mine,” he told reporters later.

While it’s unclear whether Chiolak was truly unaware that Jim Lawrence was really Public Enemy #1, Anna Sage either was already aware of it, or quickly figured it out after he started hanging around her house. She contacted her old friend from East Chicago, Det. Zarkovich, and the two arranged a meeting with the Division of Investigation’s top G-man in Chicago, Melvin Purvis. Later, when Sage continued to face deportation proceedings after the death of Dillinger, she told reporters:

I was told that I could stay. The men who wanted Dillinger so bad told me it would be a small thing to stop my going away. When it was first suggested that I help in getting Dillinger, I said I was not interested in rewards – all I wanted was permission to stay in this country. Shouldn’t the government keep its promises, when I believed them?

Purvis, Zarkovich, and Sage arranged for a take-down a few days later, on the evening of July 22, 1934, when Dillinger, girlfriend Polly Keele, and Sage were all planning to attend a movie. It hadn’t yet been determined precisely which movie or which theater, but a signal was agreed upon: if the destination was to be the Biograph Theater, just behind Sage’s home, she would wear no hat; if Dillinger decided to take the women to the Marboro Theater on the Westside, Sage’s head would be covered.

(Pictured: Martin Zarkovich of the East Chicago police force)

Just after 8:00 p.m. on the evening of the July 22, John Dillinger and the two women left the house. Dillinger sported a white silk shirt, gray linen trousers, and a straw hat, but as it had been a hot day, he decided against wearing a coat, which would have helped conceal the pistol he always carried with him. Instead, he tucked the gun into his belt, where it was slightly more difficult to retrieve. As they left the house, Anna Sage, who wore a white blouse and an orange skirt, stopped the trio and asked Dillinger if they were going to be traveling far for the movie that night. If so, she needed to take her hat.

No, Dillinger said, we won’t be going far. Sage left her hat at home, and the team of police officers staking out the Sage home on Halsted signaled Purvis with the news: Dillinger’s last stand would be at the Biograph.

The group assembled to take down Public Enemy #1 included ten federal agents, plus four East Chicago officers, including Martin Zarkovich, who had gotten the tip from Sage. The deal worked out was that, after Dillinger was killed or in custody, the East Chicago team would receive the $15,000 reward money, while the feds, who were ineligible for the monetary prizes, would get all of the glory and publicity. They truly needed it, as the fledgling Division of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, had gained a reputation for bumbling during their long and fruitless quest to end Dillinger’s crime spree.

Walking arm-in-arm, Dillinger, Keele, and Sage walked down the alley between Halsted and Lincoln Ave., and headed up the block and into the Biograph Theater, where they sat down to enjoy “Manhattan Melodrama,” a gangster film starring Clark Gable.

The Biograph, which was built in 1914, advertised itself as the “best ventilated theater in Chicago,” a feature the value of which would not have been lost on Chicago audiences, who couldn't forget the Iroquois Theater disaster a decade before, in which poor ventilation led to the deaths of hundreds. When it opened, the Biograph was one of the city’s first film venues, offering an augmented orchestra and large pipe organ to accompany silent pictures. By 1934, of course, “talkies” had arrived, as had air conditioning, and the Biograph’s cool environs were perfect for a hot summer evening. Even before Dillinger’s famous date with death there, the Biograph had been subject to various crooks, including a bookie running a handbook there, which was raided in February, 1933, and a smash-and-grab robber named George Genovese, who specialized in ripping off theater ticket counters; Genovese was finally caught after robbing the Biograph in March, 1933.

While Dillinger enjoyed the movie, Purvis wandered up and down the aisles of the theater, looking for the man whose name would forever after be linked with his. Unable to locate Dillinger in the dark, he waited impatiently in the theater lobby for the two hours duration of the film. The theater’s management, unaware that a major police operation was underway, became suspicious of the plain-clothes officers lingering in and around the building, and telephoned the Sheffield Ave. police station. When Chicago police arrived on the scene, the federal agents and East Chicago officers had to inform them of the plan to avoid being hauled back to the stationhouse.

Finally, at 10:40 p.m., John Dillinger walked out of the Biograph, with Polly and Anna on either side, and turned south on Lincoln, likely heading back to Sage’s apartment. The next building to the south of the theater was a tavern called the Goetz Country Club, and Melvin Purvis stood directly in front of it. Dillinger and Purvis’s eyes met, but Dillinger’s showed no sense of recognition that a setup was underway. As Purvis later described it, “It was a good job the surgeon did, but I knew him the minute I saw him. You couldn’t miss if you had studied that face as much as I have.”

Dillinger continued walking passing the Goetz until he was in front of the next building to the south, a National Tea Company retail store. At that moment, Purvis lit his cigarette, a signal to his team of officers that now was the time to strike. Again, Purvis describes the action:

“He saw me give a signal to my men to close in. He became alarmed, reached into a belt and was drawing the .38 caliber pistol he carried concealed when two of the agents let him have it. Dillinger was lying prone before he was able to get the gun out and I took it from him.”

In the mouth of the alley south of the National Tea Store, Dillinger fell to the ground, hit twice in the chest and once in the back of the neck. Of the three bullets, two ricocheted and hit bystanders: Etta Natalsky, mother-in-law of the owner of the Goetz tavern, and Theresa Paulus, a theater-goer. Neither was seriously injured, but Dillinger was fatally shot. Crowds turned and gasped, and word spread quickly that the man lying in the pool of blood on Lincoln Ave. was the world’s most famous criminal.

In statements to reporters, Purvis claimed Dillinger had attended the movie alone, per his agreement with the East Chicago police that all credit for the take-down would go to the feds, but witnesses consistently mentioned two women, including one whose bright orange skirt, under the harsh lights from the theater marquis, appeared red. Hence, the newspapers began searching for the famous “Lady in Red,” Anna Sage.

Returning to the conspiracy theories mentioned earlier, some speculate that if caught alive, Dillinger might have revealed the corruption within the East Chicago department, and hence, Zarkovich and his fellow officers always intended to kill, not capture, him. Confirming this aspect of the theory, a Chicago police officer who was near the scene at the time of the shooting told a reporter:

…[O]ne of the [federal] agents told him after it was over that he was among the luckiest of men. “When we got the signal, you were close to Dillinger,” said the agent. “You looked like Dillinger and I was about to shoot you when the other fellows let loose and killed the right man.”

The crumpled form of John Dillinger was rushed to Alexian Brothers Hospital, but he died on the way. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, it was refused admittance on the grounds that the body was already dead. Four officers accompanying the medics stood on the grass in front of the hospital, surrounding Dillinger’s body, until the deputy coroner arrived and approved its removal to the county morgue. While Dillinger had taken in over $300,000 in cash from his bank robberies during the previous 15 months, at his decease, only $7.70 was found on his person – either because he had spent the rest on the trip to Mexico he was planning to begin the following day, or, as some suspect, because the officers who accompanied Dillinger to the hospital helped themselves to his loot. Dillinger also wore a ruby ring, given to him by Polly Keele, and a pocket watch with an inset photo of her.

(Pictured: Headline and story in the July 23, 1934 Chicago Tribune)

Dillinger’s death led above the fold in newspapers around the globe, and when the coroner’s inquest ended, his body was put on public display at the morgue, where thousands of curiosity-seekers filed past to get a look at the man no prison could hold. As Dillinger biographer Dary Matera put it:

To get an indication of Dillinger’s comparative fame today, imagine Charles Manson – after committing his mass murder, Helter Skelter atrocity in California – getting arrested, escaping prison, killing a second batch of Hollywood celebrities, getting arrested again, escaping again, killing a third and fourth gaggle of celebrities, then being gunned down on the streets of Los Angeles by the FBI. And after all that, having Manson’s bullet-riddled body put on public display for tens of thousands of people to parade by.

Dillinger’s life and death meant changes in the way many police departments operated, with upgrades to faster cars and better equipment, including in-car radios, following his crime spree. It also meant a much stronger role for the federal government in policing – Congress approved the right of federal officers to make arrests during the time Dillinger was on the loose. It is not a stretch to say that the modern FBI owes much of its power to John Dillinger.

After Dillinger’s death, Polly Keele left the city and hid out at her family home in Fargo, later returning to Chicago and working in hotel hospitality until her death in 1969. Dillinger’s fellow gang members John Hamilton, Homer VanMeter, and Baby Face Nelson were soon gunned down in separate incidents by federal agents (Hamilton, in fact, was already dead). Melvin Purvis faced intense jealousy from J. Edgar Hoover for taking so much of the credit for Dillinger’s end, and he quit the Division of Investigation in 1935, intending to write his memoirs. He lived until 1960, when he committed suicide, apparently over poor health.

After the shooting, Anna Sage ran back to her apartment, changed clothes, and returned to the scene of the crime, blending in with the growing crowd. She was able to avoid deportation for two years, and during that time ran a beauty parlor at Fullerton and Orchard. However, when Purvis left his position in 1935, there was no one left to fulfill the promise he had made to Sage, and in 1936, she was deported back to Romania, where she remained until her death in 1947. Her only consolation was $5,000 she received from the reward money, though she would much rather have had a U.S. visa.

Martin Zarkovich, who also received a sizable portion of the reward money, was promoted in the East Chicago police department, eventually making chief in 1947. Just three years later, however, he was again indicted for graft associated with casinos operating openly in Northwest Indiana under his protection. Demoted from the chief position, he retired in the late 1950s and died in 1969.

The Biograph Theater continued operation as a movie theater until 2004, frequently showing “Manhattan Melodrama”, the film Dillinger saw the night of his death, particularly on the anniversary of the incident. For the last five years, the Biograph has offered live theater instead of movies.

The spot in the alley where Dillinger was shot is pictured below. The building that housed the Goetz Country Club still stands (it appears to be abandonded); the National Tea Company building is gone, replaced by a Qdoba restaurant.

Angelo Genna's Violent Life and Death

Angelo Genna was the toughest, meanest, and most violent of the Genna brothers. Hot-headed superstitious, and quick with a trigger, the Chicago police were so afraid of him, they refused to serve warrants for his arrest. But Angelo Genna got his on May 27, 1925, when he was driving south on Ogden Ave., at the intersection of Hudson Ave. and Menomenee St.

Angelo, who was born in Sicily, came to Chicago with six of his brothers about 1910. The family became involved in running "Black Hand" style extortion plots, in which prominent businessmen, especially Italians, were forced to pay ransom or be killed, and Angelo was the muscle that made certain the payments came in. His ability to make others do his bidding through force made him especially fit for politics, and Angelo and the other Gennas became street-level recruiters for Tony D'Andrea in his ongoing political battle with long-time incumbent 19th ward alderman John "Johnny De Pow" Powers. As discussed in greater detail in this post, the 19th was primarily an Irish neighborhood in the 1880s when Powers was elected, but by the 1910s, was occupied primarily by Italians (especially Sicilians).

While Powers was largely successful in maintaining his hold on power, Tony D'Andrea sought to use the demographic shift in the ward to build a winning coalition of Italian voters. In 1921, he very nearly defeated Powers, but lost by the slimmest of margins. The election was a bloody one, with bombs exploded at Powers' home and at a mass meeting of D'Andrea supporters. The Gennas, who supported D'Andrea, were upset by his loss. They blamed Powers for the election violence, but more so, they hated their fellow Italian countrymen who had voted for him.

A few weeks after the election, on May 6, 1921, one of Ald. Powers' precinct captains and a long-time municipal court bailiff, Paul Labriola, who was Sicilian, left his home on W. Congress St., and walked west towards Halsted St. Labriola had been receiving disturbing telephone and mail threats ever since the election, but considered it all part of electoral politics in Chicago. He had dined with the victorious Ald. Powers just a few days before, and looked forward to enjoying further political spoils.

Before Labriola had walked more than fifty feet from his home, he was greeted by two men coming around the corner. Labriola recognized the men and words were exchanged. Suddenly, three more men came up from behind Labriola, and pistol shots rang out as all five began firing heavy-caliber lead at him. As Labriola fell to the ground, one of the men stood above him and fired three more gratuitous bullets into the bailiff's body, then the assailants dropped their weapons and fled down an alley.

Initially, the police believed Sam "Samoots" Amatuna and Frank Gambina, two prominent D'Andrea supporters, were among the shooters. They could find no solid evidence against the two, however. But then they found an eyewitness who fingered Angelo Genna, the wild gunman of Taylor Street.

The police arrested Angelo, and brought him to trial in October of 1921. The prosecution brought their eyewitness, Peter Eliopulas, to the stand:

"He killed him; Genna killed him!," Eliopulas exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I was standing near the corner of Halsted and Congress streets when I heard a shot. Running to Congress street, I saw Labriola lying on the ground. A man, Genna, was standing over him. He shot him three times as he lay on the ground."

Eliopulas, who was neither Sicilian nor involved in 19th ward politics, seemed a believable witness, and whispers went around that Genna would be spending the 1920s behind bars. Until, that is, a teenager named Nick Ginopvolous, took the stand for the defense. Ginopvulos explained to a patient jury that Alderman Powers had offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of Labriola's killer. Eliopulas had approached Ginopvulos, he claimed, and offered him a share of the reward if he could provide a second eyewitness account of Genna's presence at the murder scene.

The court was in an uproar. Was Eliopulas just an opportunist, or were the Gennas behind Ginopvulos' testimony? The prosecution tried to staunch the hemmorage in their case by bringing other witnesses to the stand who could testify that Angelo had been in the neighborhood that day, but the damage was done. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Angelo walked out of court a free man.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna, who stood 5'6" and 195 lbs.)

The death of Labriola, however, set off a blood vendetta between warring Italian political factions in the 19th, which eventually claimed 30 lives over the following three years. One of the earlier victims of this war of attrition was a close friend of the Genna family, Nicola Maggio. Again, Angelo Genna was very upset.

On March, 16, 1922, Paul Notte, a stockyards saloon-keeper who was believed to be close to Maggio's killer, left his home and began walking the half-block to his workplace. In front of his new bride, who was expecting, his wife, and his sister-in-law, Notte was approached by a short, stout man, and a few words were exchanged. Then the stranger drew his revolver and fired five shots and Notte, dropping him to the street before running off.

Notte was rushed to the hospital, where Chicago detective Edward Murphy questioned him.

"You know who shot me," croaked the dying Notte.

"No, I don't, Paul. Who was it?"

"The youngest one of those three brothers who run a poolroom in Taylor street."

"Genna?"

"I don't know the name."

Lieut. Murphy rushed to Angelo Genna's home on Blue Island Ave., and not finding him there, went to the Genna headquarters on Taylor street, where he found his suspect. Murphy arrested Angelo and brought him to Notte's bedside, where, in front of his family, doctors, and police, Notte identified Angelo Genna as his attacker. A few hours later, Notte was dead.

Angelo's brothers, Anthony and James, were also arrested, but only Notte's death-bed testimony was considered strong enough to prosecute, so again, Angelo Genna alone stood for trial on murder charges. This time, Genna's attorney cross-examined the attending physicians at the hospital where Notte had died. Were any drugs given to the patient before he died? Yes, of course. Could any of those drugs have clouded his judgment, or made it difficult for him to remember the facts of his case? I suppose, under the right circumstances.

With the dead man's testimony in question, prosecutors decided to nolle prosse the case. Again, Angelo Genna was a free man. After two murder indictments and no convictions, Angelo's legend grew in the Sicilian community. "Angelo the Immune" replaced "Bloody Angelo" as his street nickname. But Angelo's luck, in court and in life, would run out soon enough.

In August of 1922, two Genna family friends, Henry Penna and Philip Maltese stood accused in the sexual attack of a 15-year old girl, Genevieve Court. When it became clear that Court would testify against the two, they kidnapped her and took her to Milwaukee, where they raped her ("mistreated her," in the language of the newspapers of the day) and left her alone in a boarding house with no way to get home. Eventually, a search party conducted by Court's parents located her, and she returned to Chicago.

Again, she was more than willing to testify against her attackers in open court. In criminal court, she fingered Maltese and Penna as her attackers, and each was sentenced to one year in the state penitentiary, plus a $1,000 fine, a relatively minor punishment for a horrific crime. Maltese and Penna considered themselves lucky.

But then, the two were unexpectedly dragged into federal court to be charged with violations of the Mann Act, the 1910 "white slavery" law inspired by the Chicago case of Mona Marshall, which enforced heavy sentences on those convicted of transporting women across state lines for sexual purposes. If convicted, Maltese and Penna would face serious hard time in federal penitentiary.

Again, young Genevieve Court was willing to testify in court. Having done so already, Maltese and Penna realized she would certainly do so again. Two days before her date in court, Maltese, who was out on bail while awaiting the federal trial, and his close family friend, Angelo Genna, paid a visit to Miss Court, threatening her and her family with death if she should testify in the Mann Act case.

On the day of her hearing, Genevieve Court showed up before U.S. Commissioner Lews F. Mason, and walked to the stand. She opened her mouth, but then she looked out over the audience. In the first row, staring directly at her, was Angelo Genna. One look into his dark, terrifying eyes, and a wave of visible fear ripped through Miss Court. She began to sob. It was all a lie, she said: There was no attack, no rape, no kidnapping; Penna and Maltese were completely innocent.

A dumbstruck prosecutor quickly wised up to what had happened. After the hearing, he grilled Genevieve. Had anyone threatened her if she testified against her attackers in this case? With the redoubtable Genna out of sight, Genevieve's courage slowly returned. She admitted that Genna and Maltese had intimidated her.

When the prosecutor brought this fact to the attention of the judge in this case, he signed a federal arrest warrant for Angelo Genna's capture. First, he tasked the Chicago police with serving the warrant, but they knew how dangerous Angelo was, and they "didn't want to take any foolhardy chances" with a police invasion and manhunt in the 19th. With local police officers unable to serve the warrant, a team of U.S. deputy marshals was tasked with instructions to "go into the Nineteenth ward and bring him in."

Within a few days, they did, and in November of 1922, Angelo Genna suffered his first conviction in court, for intimidating a witness (the Mann Act case against Penna and Maltese was not prosecuted further, however). With the "Terror of the 19th Ward" soon to be behind bars, Chicago police chief Fitzmorris held a celebratory dinner, with the marshals who had served Genna's warrant as the guests of honor.

Angelo Genna, free on bail before sentencing, began an attempt to flee the country and return to Italy to avoid prison, but when word of his plans leaked, each witness in the trial was given a personal bodyguard until the sentencing hearing, and the federal judge in the case issued a writ of attachment for "Angelo Genna or his body." Again, a squad of fearless U.S. marshals, armed to the teeth, invaded the 19th ward and captured Genna. A few days later, "Angelo the Immune" was sentenced to one year plus one day at Leavenworth prison.

Prison appears to have slightly cooled the temper of the young Genna, and when he emerged from the penitentiary, he returned to Chicago in a mood to make money and mostly avoid trouble. Helping his brothers operate the massive dispersed Sicilian distilling network throughout Little Italy, which supplied the Torrio-Capone syndicate with a major share of the booze they retailed, Angelo Genna was able to move out of the poverty-stricken 19th ward and up to a cozy $400/month hotel condo overlooking the Lake at Belmont Ave.

In January, 1924, the young vice entrepreneur married into one of the city's wealthiest and most prominent Italian families when he wed Lucille Spignola, sister to Henry Spignola, a top attorney of the time, who was a long-time Genna family friend. The wedding was one of the largest in Chicago history, with 3,000 guests, and offered the biggest cake anyone could remember, tipping the scales at just over 1 ton.

(Pictured: Lucille Spignola, Mrs. Angelo Genna)

In May, 1925, Angelo Genna and his wife were making plans to move to ritzy new home in suburban Oak Park. Genna left his Belmont harbor home, drove south on Sheridan Rd. in his roadster coupe, and turned southwest on Ogden Ave., which at that time extended all the way to Lincoln Park.

As he approached Hudson Ave., a large black touring car carrying four "characteristically 'unknown' assailants," as the Tribune described them, sped up next to Genna's car. The passengers fired a dozen shotgun bullets into Angelo Genna's car, causing him to lose control and crash into a lamppost. As his attackers gunned the engine and escaped, Angelo began to lose consciousness.

Rushed to the hospital, the life was draining out of Angelo's eyes. Police Sgt. Roy Hessler came to his deathbed.

"You're going to die, Angelo. Tell us who bumped you off," he pleaded noirishly.

But Angelo just shrugged his shoulders, and closed his eyes. In his last moments, he continued to adhere to the gangsters' code of silence, the same one that had shielded him from prison throughout his life. The Tribune noted,

...the folks who seem to be in the know about Taylor and Halsted streets, reiterate, quite simply, the formula that has worked in so many of the recent murders since the days of bootlegging.

"You'll know who murdered Angelo when the next big guy in the neighborhood is murdered."

But the next "big guys" murdered were all of Angelo's family members. Brother Mike was killed in a shootout with police just three weeks later. A month after that, brother Tony was gunned down on a West side street corner. Brother-in-law Henry Spignoli was killed the following year, and the Genna reign of terror was over as the remaining brothers wisely fled back to Sicily.

Who was killing the Gennas? The most likely theory is that Angelo Genna's death was one of vengeance for the death of Dion O'Banion in November, 1924. Angelo was considered one of the prime suspects in that case, in which the Northside mobster and bootlegger O'Banion, who had famously feuded with the Gennas, was gunned down inside his N. State Street flower shop and headquarters. In this theory, the shooters in the touring car were O'Banion's followers, most likely including Vincent "Schemer" Drucci, Frank Gusenberg, George "Bugs" Moran, and Earl "Hymie" Weiss.

A more speculative theory, but one that has a certain ring of believability to it, was that Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, putatively partners in crime with the Gennas, were afraid of their growing power, and wanted their own man, Tony Lombardo, to hold political control over the city's Sicilian population and their basement stills. Consistent with this theory, Lombardo appears to have taken over the presidency of the main Sicilian political organization, the Unione Siciliana, in 1925 after the death of its previous president, Angelo Genna. Also, the car used in the attack turned out to have been stolen from a resident at 5742 W. 22nd Street in Cicero, just a few blocks from Ralph Capone's Cotton Club, in the town where Al Capone was practically mayor.

Nevertheless, Angelo Genna's funeral, like his wedding, was one of the grandest in Chicago history. Refused a church burial by Roman Catholic Cardinal Mundelein, he was buried at Mt. Carmel cemetary in Hillside in a vault said to cost $10,000, encased in a $6,000 casket which weighed 1,200 lbs and nearly broke through the back porch of the funeral parlor. The flowers for the funeral were believed to have cost upwards of $75,000, including a grand 8-foot tall piece, heavy on lilies, sent by Al Capone, and a huge vase full of pink and white carnations, courtesy of Johnny Torrio, who was incarcerated in Lake County at the time (this proves little regarding the two's potential culpability, since it was common for gangsters to send flowers to the funerals of both their friends and their enemies). At the funeral, which was attended by thosands, a quartet of police officers from the Gennas' local Maxwell Street station frisked everyone for weapons before they could near the gravesite.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna's 1,200 lb. casket at his funeral)

The Tribune, for its part, used the opportunity of Angelo Genna's death to opine on the inferior traditions and weak-mindedness of southern Europeans, in relation to northern Europeans and "native" Americans (probably not a reference to Navajos).

The funeral of Angelo Genna provides an interesting commentary on our city. This crude yet costly glorification of a man of blood is a straight transplantation from Sicily or Sardinia, where to a simple folk the bandit leader is the prince of heroes. The American of native or northern European tradition must observe such a pageant with a new realization of the gulf which lies betwen his mind and moral system and those of Genna's colony.

That is, in fact, what the gathering at Genna's obsequies represents, not America but a foreign colony imported virtually intact and representing a stage of old world history centuries gone save among the mountain peoples of southern and eastern Europe. Considered as a graphic illustration in the argument for our new immigration policy, the Genna funeral is admirable.

For some reason, the Trib editors seemed to have forgotten the equally-if-not-more-ostentatious funeral thrown for mobster Dion O'Banion, an Irishman, just a few months before Angelo Genna's.

Ogden Ave., where Angelo Genna was driving when he was killed, has been completely vacated on the north side. At the corner of Hudson and Menomenee, where Ogden would have cut through, the diagonal sidewalk through the park (pictured below), harkens back to the road that was once there. For more on the history of Ogden Ave., see here.

At the corner where the most violent of the "Terrible" Gennas was shot, today stands a beautiful and peaceful Buddhist temple.

Antonio Lombardo Killed in the Loop

In 1925, Antonio Lombardo became president of the Chicago chapter of the Unione Siciliana, a community and political organization of immigrants. In those days, the presidency of that organization was one of the most profitable -- and dangerous -- jobs in the world, and danger caught up with Lombardo on September 7, 1928 near the corner of Madison and Dearborn Streets in one of the most spectacular mob hits of all time.

Tony Lombardo was born in Sicily in 1891, and came to Chicago as a teenager. He built a successful grocery business as a young man, and in so doing, elevated his political profile in the impoverished neighborhoods of his countrymen, including Little Sicily/Little Hell on the north side and the 19th ward on the west side. Lombardo was an associate of the "Terrible" Genna family, which controlled the dispersed network of home distilleries, mostly operated by Sicilians, which supplied the Johnny Torrio – Al Capone syndicate with product during the Prohibition years. Lombardo's wholesale grocery had the lucrative position of supplying bulk sugar (one of the main ingredients in home “alky-cooking” for the Genna network.

(Pictured: Antonio Lombardo)

Lombardo’s partners in the grocery business included Joseph Ferraro and Joseph Aiello. Aiello, one of a large family of brothers that ran a bakery and a candy shop in Little Sicily, was particularly ambitious in growing the enterprise. Lombardo and Aiello operated a major wholesaling operation on Randolph Street near Aberdeen, of which Lombardo made Aiello president.

In 1926, the two, along with Ferraro, purchased land on Kinzie St., between Halsted and Green streets from an old steel yard, intending to open a fruit market. By that time, Lombardo was known as a major figure in the underground liquor trade, having been recently involved in a high-profile case involving abuse of licenses granted to synagogues for sacramental wine. The Tribune reporter included a wink and a nod in the story noting the real estate transfer:

A wholesale fruit market, with an accent on grapes (what does this mean, Watson?), is to be opened by Giuseppi Aiello, Antonio Lombardo and Joseph Ferrara, on an irregular shaped piece of property fronting seventy-six feet on Halsted street, 125 feet on Green street, 252 feet on Kinzie street and 252 feet on a paved court.

The three bought the property, which is now covered by the Kennedy Expressway, for $176,799, with a down payment of $45,000. It was shortly after this that Aiello and Lombardo fell out over Aiello's ambitions for greater control in the business (later, a lien would be placed on the property when Aiello failed to pay his share of the mortgage). Aiello also coveted the presidency of the Unione Siciliana, a position Lombardo held at that time.

(Pictured: Letterhead for Lombardo grocery concern on Randolph St., with Aiello listed as president)

The death of Unione president Mike Merlo in 1924 led to the assassination of Dion O’Banion, likely at the orders of Capone and Torrio, and in the subsequent bloodshed, the city’s bootlegging business was divied between rival gangs, with Capone and Torrio controlling the south side and Cicero, and O’Banion’s followers “Hymie” Weiss, George “Bugs” Moran, and Vincent “Schemer” Drucci taking hold of the north side. Lombardo and the Gennas worked with the Torrio-Capone syndicate, with Angelo Genna succeeding Merlo to the presidency of the Unione.

When Angelo Genna was killed in 1925, Sam “Samoots” Amatuna became president of the Unione, but only for a brief period before he, too, was assassinated. Then, it was Lombardo who became “Don” to the city’s Sicilian population. The presidency of the Unione Siciliana, which claimed 15,000 members, involved substantial political influence over an important voting bloc, and so it created the opportunity for the one who held that position to become a “fixer” with connections in city hall. Control of the Unione was thus highly important for the Capone bootlegging business, which relied not only on the network of Sicilian amateur distillers which pledged their loyalty to the Unione president, but also on Unione-connected politicians and police officers to look the other way, or even work proactively against competitors. The Unione presidency was also an position of great community esteem, prominent in resolving disputes and feuds among Sicilians, including “Black Hand” extortion plots, which were especially problematic at that time. Thus, Lombardo was a real-life Chicago version of Vito Corleone.

However, the connection between the Unione and organized crime had become fixed in the public’s mind, and Lombardo sought to change this impression by renaming the Chicago chapter as the "Italo-American National Union" and allowing non-Sicilian Italians to join. The name change angered some, including the president of the New York branch of the Unione, powerful mobster Frankie Uale.

The Italo-American National Union also contributed prominently to charities, including, for example, hurricane relief in Florida in 1926. It attempted to raise its profile as a leading civic organization by inviting important Italian politicians to Chicago. At the time, Benito Mussolini had recently consolidated control of that country, and so Lombardo brought Mussolini’s U.S. ambassador to Chicago for a prominent series of speeches promoting fascism:

God sent Benito Mussolini to an imperiled Italy and did, thereby, a service to all the world, Baron Giacomo de Martino, Il Duce's ambassador to this country, yesterday declared three times during the first day of his three day visit to Chicago. And three times yesterday groups of the ambassador's countrymen, once at the Italian Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Drake, again at the Italo-American union massmeeting at the Coliseum, and last at the union's dinner at the Palmer house -- jumped to their feet and cheered mightily as they shot out their right arms in the Roman salute of Fascism.

After his falling out with Lombardo, Joseph Aiello allied himself with the Northsiders, Weiss, Moran, and Drucci. Aiello knew that, with control of the Unione, the North side gang could take control over the entire Chicago alcohol business, and reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. He also coveted the social standing that Lombardo held in the Sicilian community, and the jealousy made him murderous.

In one instance, Aiello allegedly offered $35,000 to a chef to poison Lombardo and Capone. In another case, he offered Torrio-Capone ally Ralph Sheldon $50,000 for each of the heads of Capone and Lombardo. Capone offered peace to the north side gang by offering to divide the city along Madison street, which led to a brief ceasefire, but before long, Aiello’s ambitions on the Unione presidency, and Lombardo’s ruthlessness in maintaining it, led to more bloodshed.

Early in 1927, police uncovered a stash of weapons and ammunition in a sniper nest across the street from Lombardo’s home on W. Washington St., near Cicero Ave., and a similar one at the Atlantic hotel, across from Alderman Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna’s post-Volstead headquarters on Clark St., where Capone and Lombardo were frequent visitors. When Lombardo realized the extent of Aiello’s bloodlust, he moved his family out to a more easily guarded single-family home on S. Austin Blvd. in Cicero. But he knew that eventually either he or Aiello would meet an early grave.

After the discovery of Aiello’s weapons caches, the police arrested him on weapons charges and placed him in a cell at detective headquarters. In the adjoining cell they placed three Capone gunmen who had also been caught with illegal weapons while searching for Aiello, and a police officer who spoke Italian hid nearby, listening in on the conversation. The officer’s report refers to Capone’s frequent alias, Al Brown:

"Can't we settle this thing?" Aiello then pleaded with the trio. "Give me fifteen days, just fifteen days, and I will sell my stores and my house, and leave everything in your hands. Think of my wife and my baby, and let me go."

The Brown [Capone] gangsters gazed at their subdued foe scornfully and replied, according to the listening policeman:

"You dirty rat, you started this thing. We'll end it. You're as good as dead now."

Nevertheless, Aiello did manage to escape after the incident, and fled to New York, where he remained for a year, no doubt spending plenty of time commiserating with Frankie Uale about their shared dislike for Lombardo.

With Aiello out of town, Lombardo relaxed his guard, and even helped Capone go on the offensive. When, in November, 1927, the gang discovered north side gambling operations on Monroe St., two blocks south of the Madison Street border, bomb explosions there served as a "final warning." When questioned by a reporter about the bombings, Lombardo replied:

"Me, a bomber? Go to the people who know me best. Ask the Italians of Chicago if I am a bomber. Find one of them who will say I am a criminal. You can't do it."

It’s unclear whether this was supposed to be exculpatory, or simply a statement of Lombardo’s absolute power in the Sicilian community.

(Pictured: Antonio Lombardo)

By 1928, Joseph Aiello was back in Chicago, and again plotting a takeover of the Unione Siciliana. Lombardo still stood in his way, but not for long. On September 7, 1928, at 4:30 p.m., Lombardo, his long-time business partner Joseph Ferrara, and a bodyguard, Joseph Lolordo, stepped out of the offices of the Italo-American National Union in the Hartford Building at 8 S. Dearborn St. They walked north towards the corner of Madison St., where a large crowd had gathered. Across the street at the Boston dry goods store, an airplane was being dragged up the side of the building up to the 11th floor by ropes, and into a window, for a store promotion. Practically everyone on the scene was focused on the unusual sight -- everyone except two mysterious men from out of town, dressed in dark gray suits.

50 feet west of Dearborn, on the south side of Madison st., at the corner of the Hartford building, and just in front of a Greek restaurant, Tony Lombardo turned to his bodyguard.

“Look at the airplane,” he pointed across the street.

At that moment, the two men in gray appeared out of the doorway of the Greek restaurant, ran up behind Lombardo, and unloaded their revolvers into the Unione president’s head, also shooting Ferrara in the back, before dropping their guns at the scene and running east on Madison. Lombardo’s bodyguard, Joe Lolordo, took off running after them, while the panicked crowd of bystanders scattered.

Gunmen and policemen ran here and there with waving guns, men and women in the crowded street jumped first one way and then another, wondering from which direction the next bullet might come. People in stores ran out, then ran back in. Which way safety lay they could only guess.

A police officer tackled Lolordo, thinking he was one of the assassins, while the real assassins ducked into a nearby shoe store, exiting out the back and escaping the chase. Antonio Lombardo, president of the city’s largest Italian group and a major underworld figure, died on the street, shot to death in broad daylight in front of thousands of witnesses at one of the city’s busiest intersections. In the photo at the top of this post, the spot of the shooting is on the sidewalk, roughly at the right-hand end of the wooden scaffolding.

(Pictured: scene on the street at the site of Lombardo's shooting)

A week later, Ferrara also died of his wounds. Following underworld protocol, he refused to cooperate in the police investigation of the shooting before his decease, but based on identification by another eyewitness, Frank Marco, a New York hoodlum and a known acquaintance of Aiello’s, was charged with the crime. Marco wasn’t located, however, until his bullet-riddled body was found on E. 19th street in New York City in February, 1930. No one else was ever charged with the crime, but everyone assumed the hit must have been ordered by Aiello, possibly with the assistance of Frankie Uale’s gunmen from New York.

After Lombardo’s death, his bodyguard's brother, Pasqualino Lolordo, took over the presidency of the Unione, until Lolordo, too, was shot and killed at his home in January, 1929. According to most sources, Aiello finally did become president of the Unione Siciliana for about a year while Capone was in prison in Philadelphia on weapons charges. But when Capone returned to Chicago in 1930, Aiello made plans to flee the country; however, a sniper's bullet found him first.

The Hartford building, where Tony Lombardo’s Unione Siciliana headquarters were on the 11 floor, and in front of which he was killed, was built in 1893. Standing at 14 stories, it was one of the city’s tallest. It was destroyed, along with all other buildings on the same block, in 1965 to make way for the First National Bank Building, now called Chase Tower.

Jeff Fort Founds the Black P. Stone Nation

UPDATE: Rev. Otto Sotnak, previously associate pastor at Woodlawn Immanuel Lutheran Church, and who is mentioned briefly below, wrote to me after reading this post, and his thoughts provide further insight into the relationship between the Blackstone Rangers and Woodlawn community organizations. Rev. Sotnack gave me permission to reprint his letter, and I have done so in a new post.
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Intelligence tests indicated that Jeff Fort had an IQ between 48 and 58, a score indicating moderate mental retardation; however, Fort possessed exceptional leadership skill, organizational genius, and a magnetic personality. He misused these qualities to found and lead what was once Chicago’s largest street gang, the Blackstone Rangers, and to consolidate a gang cartel that endures to the present day. While building that empire during the 1960s, he lived here, at 1504 E. 66th Pl. (townhome on the right in the photo above), near the corner of Blackstone Ave.

The neighborhood of Woodlawn was developed as a middle-class alternative to the higher-rent Kenwood and Hyde Park districts to the north. The World’s Fair of 1893, which took place in nearby Jackson Park, brought the demand to house thousands of workers associated with that event, and many of these remained after the Fair. Up through the 1940s, Woodlawn was a white, though not ethnic, neighborhood, but in the 1950s and 1960s, black residents from the Grand Crossing and Washington Park districts to the west began moving in. White flight to the suburbs, plus continued migration into Chicago by southern Blacks fleeing racial strife added to the flow, including Jeff Fort’s family, which arrived in Woodlawn from Mississippi in 1955. After the rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, most of the remaining white residents moved out, with the exception of a few University of Chicago students and faculty huddled at the north end of Woodlawn between 60th and 62nd streets. The neighborhood remains almost entirely black to this day. (Personal story: in 1995, as a college freshman at the U of C, I attended an orientation session in which University Police presented us with a street map of the south side and told us never to go south of 60th street (or north of 47th); the primary effect of this talk was to generate great curiosity and frequent “forbidden” visits to Woodlawn).

Jeff Fort was a troublemaker as a boy, and in the late 1950s, found himself in a juvenile detention camp at suburban St. Charles. There, he befriended a fellow Woodlawn delinquent, Eugene Hairston. Upon returning home, the two dropped out of school and founded the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang named after Blackstone Ave., which runs north-south through the heart of Woodlawn.

Most street gangs are principally businesses -- businesses that offer extra-legal security services not provided by the police and a range of prohibited products, including narcotics, high-interest loans, prostitution services, and so on. These organizations operate in market niches created by unintended consequences of legislation; they are arbitrageurs of government policy. Like all businesses, however, their profitability is a function of competition, and a successful cartel can reap huge rewards.

Cartels, however, are inherently unstable, as each conspiring business has an incentive to overproduce at the higher market prices created by the cartel, and the resultant glut of product causes prices to fall and breaks up the conspiracy. Thus, a cartel can only be maintained if the participants are able to closely monitor each other and punish those who chisel on the agreement. Efforts to do so are complicated by the fact that meetings of business managers for this purpose are prohibited by vigorously enforced federal and state antitrust laws.

But for those businesses already ducking the law to provide illegal products and services, the additional cost of avoiding prosecution under the Sherman Act is low. Low IQ or not, Jeff Fort intuitively understood the tremendous profits to be made by cartelizing Chicago street gangs. Throughout his life, he showed a genius for subverting legitimate community and government institutions to reduce competition on the streets and consolidate power. He was also a master marketer and manipulator, using the noble image of the civil rights movement to deflect criticism and enforce his power in maintaining the cartel.

A 1965 Tribune article, which appears to be the first mention of Fort in print, found him working with Edward Woods, head of the Woodlawn Chicago Boys Club and Rev. Sotnak of the Woodlawn Immanuel Lutheran Church to create a “meeting place for teens” where they could defuse tensions and find help in obtaining work. Fort quickly learned that the image of a reformed gang member who just wanted to help his community was incredibly seductive to credulous do-gooders, and he took full advantage. The police were more suspicious of his motives:

Youth Officer Julius Frazier of the Grand Crossing police district is not as confident of the Rangers’ rehabilitation as Woods and the Rev. Mr. Sotnak. “Wait until nice weather comes again, and then we’ll see how good the boys are,” he said.

(Pictured: Edward Woods, extension director of the Woodlawn Chicago Boys Club, with Jeff Fort at age 19 (center) and Eugene Hairston (right))

The following year, in 1966, Fort convinced Woodlawn police superintendent Orlando W. Wilson to broker a very public “truce” between the Rangers and their longtime rivals, the Gangster Disciples. Wilson trumpeted his supposed achievement in the press, criticizing those who said he should be arresting these hoodlums, not engaging them, and these statements hamstrung Supt. Wilson in responding to the subsequent wave of violence unleashed by the Blackstone Rangers. Within 12 hours of the agreement, five rival gang members were shot. A month later, the president of the East Side Disciples, the local Gangster Disciples chapter, was dead on the street.

Similarly, Fort convinced the Rev. John Fry, pastor of First Presbyterian Church at 64th and Kimbark, to allow the Rangers to use the edifice for their headquarters. First Presbyterian, the oldest congregation in the city, and with a long history of anti-crime organizing, had moved to Woodlawn in 1928 from its previous locations in the Loop and the Prairie Avenue district). The newspapers reported Fry’s disputes with the police, who were shocked to learn that the Reverend had made a pact with the devil:

The Rev. John R. Fry, pastor of the First Presbyterian church, 6400 Kimbark av., said yesterday that he is attempting to hold together the Blackstone Rangers, a teen-age gang, and that he is considering a court injunction to stop police efforts to break up the gang...."The Rangers is the only organization that offers safety from hostile forces at home, in school, and on the streets," he said. The gang has learned that violence solves nothing and is working for the betterment of the Woodlawn community, he said.

In fact, the Blackstone Rangers were becoming increasingly violent. In September, 1966, gang members yelled “almighty Blackstone Rangers” before opening fire on a group of boy scouts leaving a meeting at the Essex Community Church at 74th and Blackstone. The following month, twenty Rangers invaded the lunchroom at South Shore High School during school hours, creating chaos by throwing furniture around and breaking glasses, dishes, and silverware, while assaulting twelve students there.

During this time, Fort used his ability to subvert community organizations to consolidate a cartel of south side street gangs, forming the Black P. Stones in 1967. Obviously a play on the original Ranger name, the separation of “Black” and “Stone” in the name of the new group made the gang less location-specific and added racial and religious overtones. The “P.” variously indicates “People” or “Power,” depending on the context. The Stones were led by a council called the “Main 21,” chaired by Fort and Hairston, with representatives of different gangs working together to organize extortion, narcotics, and other rackets.

In the civil rights movement and the country’s increased awareness of the slum conditions inhabited by many blacks, Fort saw an opportunity to milk government and charitable organizations for funds to support gang activities. Fort was not alone in this endeavor (on the west side, the Conservative Vice Lords were doing the same), but his audacious success brought him national fame.

At the end of 1966, The Woodlawn Organization (“TWO”), a major community group, applied for a federal government grant amounting to over $950,000, in which the Blackstone Rangers would administer job training programs to young gang members in the community. It is difficult to imagine now how anyone could have thought that a known criminal organization would have the ability to run such a program and to avoid corruption, but government officials were as interested as anyone in appearing to be supportive of black community interests (not to mention buying black votes).

The grant was accepted, and Fort personally oversaw the funds. Trainees (selected by the gang) received federal checks for $45 for every week they attended the Rangers’ programs. In fact, the Rangers demanded kickbacks of $10-$20 from each check, or sometimes just cashing the checks directly while forging attendance records. When training sessions did occur, participants learned little of value, but “played cards, rolled dice, or talked about women and sports,” according to one “student”. In one case, Fort held a dogfight during a government-supported job training session.

While collecting a hefty salary from TWO, plus the kickbacks, Jeff Fort continued the violent business of running a street gang. In April, 1968, he used the opportunity presented by the riots after the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination to sell millions of dollars in protection services. Store owners purchased placards to place in their shop windows which read simply

Do NOT Touch – Black P Stones – Jeff

So complete was the Stones’ control over the south side that the simple mention of the first name of their leader inhibited riotous mobs, and stores that purchased the placards survived intact.

Other violence directly involving Jeff Fort includes an October, 1968 case in which Fort was arrested for assisting in the beating of a postal employee who had caught a 13-year old Stone initiate stealing a car and was holding him for the police. In July, 1969, Fort was again arrested for ordering the murder of Jackie Turner, a Navy midshipman returning from Vietnam, and an anti-gang organizer who had refused to join the Black P. Stones. Four Stones, wearing the gang’s trademark red berets, shouted “almighty Blackstone Rangers” before stepping out of a darkened gangway at 71st and Ridgeland and opening fire on Turner with machine guns. Amazingly, Turner survived.

In late 1969, Fort again used the veneer of civil rights as a cause for gang enrichment. Operation Breadbasket, the Jesse Jackson-led wing of the Southern Christian leadership Conference, had waged a public boycott against the Red Rooster Supermarket chain for allegedly overcharging customers and serving low-quality products in black neighborhoods. Fort offered the company the opportunity to “hire” 22 gang members, including 15 of the Main 21, at inflated salaries, as a way to show solidarity and mend ties with the Woodlawn community. Fort personally was hired as an “outside store inspector”. The gang’s deal helped end the boycott, but their increasing demands finally bankrupted Red Rooster; Fort had killed the rooster that laid the golden eggs!

In 1970, the P. Stones even allegedly extorted $160,000 from entertainer Sammy Davis (Sr.), who had an ownership interest in a Dixmoor-based liquor store, which he agreed to let gang members run.

As some of the previous examples indicate, Jeff Fort was increasingly becoming a political figure, especially after he took complete control of the Black P. Stones when Eugene Hairston went to prison in 1968. Later revelations indicated that the Rangers had even weighed the possibility of high-profile assassinations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, including those of incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

But Jeff Fort’s most famous political statement came about not in Chicago, but in Washington that year. A January, 1968, investigation by the Tribune had revealed the extent to which the TWO grant was being misused by the Rangers. Fort was asked to testify before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on investigations to explain the apparent fraud. When asked his name, he replied, but after that refused to answer further queries. His attorney, sitting next to him at the hearing, demanded that Fort be allowed to cross-examine previous testifiers, who had claimed they witnessed fraud. Upon being reminded that a Senate subcommittee was not a trial court, Fort stood up and walked out on Congress, leaving his questioners shouting threats of contempt charges after him. In fact, Fort was later tried and convicted for contempt. The scene of the young black militant showing evident disrespect to the Senate made the front pages and headed the evening news.

(Pictured: Jeff Fort in Almighty Black P. Stone jacket)

With his heightened political profile, Fort began to flex political muscle back in Chicago. In December, 1968, he led a march down the Midway Plaisance to State Street, demanding that the city rename State Street in honor of a slain fellow gang member, Jerome "Pony Soldier" Cogwell. After the march reached State, Fort led the crowd in smashing windows, jumping on cars, and generally rioting, until the police arrested him and scores of others. In fact, the scene was manufactured by Fort expressly for the intent of challenging Illinois laws against disorderly conduct. After his arrest, Fort sued Mayor Richard J. Daley claiming the statutes were vague and that city police used them to harass residents. The Illinois Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the validity of the laws.

The police did keep close tabs on the Stones, and vice-versa. Fort once personally offered a Woodlawn officer $200 for pictures of members of the city’s Gang Intelligence Unit. In another case, he stopped a police car on the street and, as the officer later described it,

Fort laid a $100 bill on the seat of our car, and I said, “What’s that for?” He said: “Nothing right now. You do whatever you want with it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

The Chicago police weren’t the only ones tracking Jeff Fort. In January, 1969, J. Edgar Hoover approved an FBI plot to stir up disputes (and possibly violence) between the Blackstone Rangers and the nascent Black Panther Party. FBI agents forged an anonymous letter, which they sent to Fort. The letter read:

Brother Jeff:

I've spent some time with some Panther friends on the West Side lately and I know what's been going on. The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there's supposed to be a hit out for you. I'm not a Panther, or a Ranger, just black. From what I see those Panthers are out for themselves, not black people. I think you ought to know what their [sic] up to, I know what I'd do if I was you. You might hear from me again.

[signed] A black brother you don't know

An internal FBI memo released later indicated the agency was aware of the fact that their letter might lead to violence. The memo noted,

It is believed that the above may intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups and occasion Fort to take retaliatory actions which could disrupt the BPP [Black Panther Party] or lead to reprisals against its leadership.

All of this power and fame certainly inflated Fort’s ego. Fort had always been a smart dresser, but now he began incorporating wild colors and exaggerated hats. In fact, Fort’s first adult arrest, back in 1965, indulged his sartorial tastes:

Early in March Calvin Williams, 21, purchased a pair of gray slacks. They were belt-less, cuffless, and tailor-made, and his friends often remarked to him that he stepped in them with noticeable aplomb. He had worn them only a few times when on March 19 his apartment at 6134 Kimbark av. was looted of a television set, radio, phonograph, record albums, silverware -- and his treasured pants. ....

While enjoying a walk yesterday afternoon along 67th street near Blackstone avenue, Williams spotted a crisp looking pair of slacks worn by another stroller....He telephoned detectives who had investigated the burglary of his home. Police arrived and took Williams and the youth in his pants, Jeff Ford [sic], 19, of 1504 E. 66th pl., to the south side detective headquarters....Ford surrendered the pants to Detectives James McDonough and William McHugh, who found Williams' name on the label....

Williams, however, will have to wait for return of the trousers. Police said the slacks are evidence and will be needed during the court hearing. As a result, Ford was left pantsless. He telephoned his home and his mother brought another pair to the station.

By August, 1970, Jeff Fort could afford his own pants. In that month, he was involved in a high-profile dispute with another community organization, the Kenwood-Oaklawn Community Organization (KOCO), the leader of which had recently testified before Congress about gang problems in Chicago. The Stones had unsuccessfully attempted to worm their way into a $3.5 government grant being dispensed by KOCO. One afternoon, Fort decided to call a press conference about the issue, to be held at his headquarters in First Presbyterian. Most of the city’s radio and print outlets sent a reporter within an hour of the announcement, but only one of the television stations did so.

“I have important things to say,” Fort announced, casting a disappointed eye at the single television camera from CBS. “Maybe I ought to put off this press conference until tomorrow when the press can come.”

Luckily for Fort, NBC finally showed up, and the press conference went forward, as he complained about the leader of KOCO, who was black, "going to white men for help."

While he had committed countless crimes over the past decade, September, 1970, saw the beginning of the end for Jeff Fort’s freedom. In that month, he ordered an all-out war on the police. In the instance that led to his arrest, Fort told a group of gang members to break out all of the lights along a certain elevated train platform, then to take up sniper positions against police there. That evening, an officer was wounded by a bullet shot from the position.

When he found out the heat was on, Fort fled Chicago, moving between Detroit, New York City, and Barbados for over two months on the run. While at Barbados, the increasingly erratic Fort, who by that time insisted on being called "Black Prince," sent a oddly messianic letter back to a meeting of P. Stones in which he referred to himself in the third person:

He is in contact spiritually with each and every Stone. As a matter of fact, if you look around you from time to time you will get a glimpse of him. When the time is right each Stone who is truly Stone to the bone -- Stone to the spirit -- will be able to see "The Chief".

During Fort’s time on the lam, detectives began trailing his girlfriend, Janis Connors. On October 30th, they saw her purchase a plane ticket for New York City. The detectives followed her onto the flight and, in New York, traced her to an east Manhattan hotel, where they arrested Jeff Fort and extradited him to Illinois. With him at the time of his arrest were papers indicating Fort was soon planning to flee with Connors to Algeria, where he would have joined Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary.

Fort had been arrested countless times before without being jailed. At the time of his extradition on the police sniping charge, he was under indictment or conviction for: two charges of attempted murder, three charges of aggravated battery, one charge of aggravated kidnapping, one of conspiracy, and one of concealing a fugitive.

How had he managed to remain a free man during this time? Fort had excellent legal counsel, paid for at the expense of Charles Kettering II, grandson of the famed General Motors engineer and philanthropist. Kettering funded the Stones in the amount of $11,000 per month, which he openly admitted was intended for bail bonds and attorneys’ fees. Kettering, too, was entranced by Fort and the prospect of appearing sympathetic to minority interests. He also appears to have relished in the propinquity to dangerous criminals his money bought. He frequently referred to the Stones in public as “cats,” employing the slang of the era to signal just how hip he was.

After his imprisonment, Kettering’s lawyers incredibly managed to eliminate most of Fort’s criminal charges. In the case of the attempted murder of anti-gang activist Jackie Turner, Fort was tried three times, and in each case, the judge declared a mistrial. In other cases, the state dropped the charges or found their evidence or their victim mysteriously missing. Between 1970 and 1972, Fort continued to actively lead the Black P. Stones, and it was common for 30-40 gang members to visit Fort daily at Cook County Jail.

Finally, however, in May, 1972, Jeff Fort finally began serving a prison term for fraud in misdirecting funds at the TWO training center. He served four years, plus an additional year for contempt of congress, divided between state and federal prison.

Jeff Fort was released from prison in the spring of 1976. During his imprisonment, he hatched an even grander scheme, to rebuild the Stones as a religious organization, which could hold cartel meetings in secret, protected by the First Amendment. The continuing story of that organization, the El Rukns, which Fort led into the 1980s, their consolidation of the drug trade in Chicago, and their audacious attempts at international terrorism, are detailed in this post and this one.

The Black P. Stone Nation still exists as a major coordinating organization for Chicago-based street gangs, though it is better known today as the "People" (they are opposed by the “Folk”, those gangs associated with the Rangers’ primordial enemies, the Gangster Disciples). Local Stones chapters, while no longer held together in a rigid organizational hierarchy as they did when Fort was leading the gang, inhabit many south side neighborhoods, as well as many suburbs. Affiliate gangs are notable in several other states, as far away as Florida.

The home at 1504 E. 66th Place, where Jeff Fort lived while building the Blackstone Rangers and the Black P. Stones, up until his arrest in 1970, suffered a major fire, suspicious for its timing, in November, 1970, within a few days of his arrest in New York. The building is still standing, and appears to be inhabited (though two of the neighboring townhomes show evidence of abandonment). It wouldn’t be surprising if the property were still controlled by the gang.