Willie Sharkey was a career
criminal and enforcer who had known the Touhys from their days in the Valley.
Sharky worked directly for "Chicken" McFadden. Nearly fifty-nine
years old, Sharkey was short and pot-bellied like Roger, standing in at only
five-feet, four-inches; he sported a four-inch horizontal scar on his left
cheek and a two-inch scar on the corner of his right eyelid. Balding, he wore
glasses and had a tattoo of a girl's head on his right elbow which winked when
he moved his arm in a certain way.
The Touhys liked Sharkey's easygoing manner
and good nature when he was sober, but otherwise they considered him dangerous,
slightly insane and not very bright. (Law enforcement said he had the IQ of a
child)
"Willie had two talents," Touhy
said, "getting into jail and buying clothes that didn't fit him. He drank
too much and he wasn't too smart, but he had a good heart and I liked
him."
Sharkey's third talent was murder. At the
time of the trip into the northwoods, Sharkey was wanted for questioning in
Chicago in relation to at least five gangland slayings. In 1929 Willie and his
brother John Sharkey, who played a role in several of the
Touhys' mail robberies, had
opened a saloon just inside the Chicago line with an unknown partner. In 1931,
the Capones kicked in the front door to the saloon and gunned down Sharkey's
partner. "And since that time," John Sharkey told FBI agent Melvin
Purvis, "I moved out of Chicago because of my relationship to my brother,
and persons in the syndicate might endeavor to cause me trouble, such as
killing me."
Willie Sharkey was a shy man who never
married. However, he was proud of his brother and his family and supplemented
their income with his own. Willie lived with them in Park Ridge for a while,
giving his brother a Lincoln and a Ford.