(1898-1959): Bootleg kingpin
It
has been said by some observers of the syndicate
crime
scene in America that FBI chief J. Edgar
Hoover
may have done the wise thing to pretend for
decades
that organized crime and the Mafia did not
exist.
The case of Roger "Terrible" Touhy demon-
strated
that the FBI did not fully comprehend the
nature
of such criminals and that the agency was
used
and abused by organized crime in framing
Touhy.
The
FBI may be said to have never understood
poor
Roger the Terrible. When they went after him
in
lieu of dozens of other more terrifying gangsters,
they
picked on a man whom the Chicago Crime
Commission
never had on its roster of public ene-
mies,
and, as a federal judge would later note in a
major
finding, had never even been associated in any
way
with a capital offense.
Yet
amazingly, just as Touhy proved a thorn to the
FBI,
he was equally regarded as a true terror by Al
Capone,
who regarded Touhy as one of the stum-
bling
blocks to his plans to organize all crime in
Chicago.
Roger
"Terrible" Touhy was pretty much a cre-
ation
of sharp public relations, his own. As far as the
entire
underworld had it figured, the Terrible
Touhys
— Roger, the boss, and his five brothers — con-
trolled
all booze operations in the Chicago suburban
area
of Des Plaines and had their empire backed with
such
firepower that they were impregnable.
Press
coverage indicated the Touhy Gang to be
about
the most vicious in the Midwest. Yet Touhy
was
a middle-class bootlegger, one who employed no
more
muscle than necessary to convince all the
speakeasies
and saloons in his area to handle Touhy
beer
and booze exclusively. Indeed, firepower was
less
a reason for Touhy's success than his ability to
handle
the fix as well as any figure in the under-
world.
Not only was Touhy the master of the fix, but
he
knew how to supplement cash payoffs with fringe
benefits
that meant so much. He rewarded the local
politicians
and police brass with bottled beer brewed
especially
for them and often bearing their own per-
sonal
labels.
Perhaps
Touhy's reputation as a ferocious gangster
was
sealed by his looks — kinky-haired, beady-eyed,
with
a hawklike face, clearly a man to be feared. And
Touhy
knew how to act the part, forcing even Al
Capone
to back down to him. Touhy had once sold
the
Capone boys 800 barrels of his superior beer for
$37.50
a barrel (his cost of production was $5.50 at
most),
and Capone then tried to short Touhy with
$1,900
in the payoff, claiming that some of the bar-
rels
had leaks. (Capone always pressured people that
way.)
Touhy came back with his regular routine. He
assumed
his famed hard stare, and said softly, "Don't
chisel
me, Al." Capone paid the $1,900.
Roger
and his five brothers had not started out as
criminals.
They grew up in respectable circum-
stances,
the sons of a policeman. In the early 1920s,
the
Touhys went into the trucking business, "strictly
legit,"
at least by Touhys word. Business, however,
did
not boom until they started filling the trucks with
beer.
The Terrible Touhys raked in a fortune.
Roger
Touhy took control of the Des Plaines area
in
the northwest section of Cook County. In those
days
a bootlegger was hardly an unpopular figure,
and
Touhy found ways to increase the esteem in
which
he was held. He kept out lowlife criminals and
especially
clamped down on brothels. Whenever a
group
of mobsters tried to open a roadside whore-
house,
Touhy would relieve the local police of the
need
to take action. He sent in his own enforcers to
wreck
the joint. Even when Capone personally noted
that
Des Plaines was, as he charmingly put it, "virgin
territory
for whorehouses," Touhy's response was his
hard-eyed
stare, which convinced Capone to drop his
plans.
Whenever
rivals made noise about wanting to
move
in, Touhy would invite them to his headquar-
ters
for a visit, where they were greeted by what
appeared
to be an armed camp, the walls lined with
submachine
guns. What the visiting hoods didn't
know
was that the weapons had been made available
by
cooperative local cops just for a good show. While
the
gangsters were conferring with Touhy, underlings
would
come rushing in for weapons, mumbling
something
about having a great chance to rub out
some
party. Touhy would nod his head slightly in
assent
and return to the dialogue as though the mat-
ter
was of minor importance. When Touhy's visitors
left,
they were fully convinced they would be the
loser
in any war with the Terrible Touhys. At various
times
such Capone gunners as Murray "the Camel"
Humphreys
and Frank Nitti were so shaken that they
reported
back that Capone would be facing a terrible
bloodletting
if he tried to move in.
Still
the Capone gang tried to get Touhy — even
after
Big Al went to prison. Deciding violence was
out,
they resolved to use another method, helping the
law
get something on him. Suddenly Touhy found
himself
in big trouble with the FBI. It is unclear if the
Chicago
Outfit had anything to do with the first inci-
dent,
but it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Touhy
and several of his henchmen were arrested for
the
kidnapping of William Hamm Jr. The FBI
announced
it had a strong case against Touhy, but a
jury
thought differently, finding him not guilty. Later,
the
FBI switched the charge to the real culprits, the
Barker-Karpis
gang. By coincidence Alvin "Creepy"
Karpis
had long been close to the Capone Gang.
Next
the FBI arrested Touhy for the alleged 1933
kidnapping
of Jake "the Barber" Factor, an interna-
tional
confidence man with ties to the Capones. This
was
despite underworld grapevine information that
indicated
the abduction was a fake masterminded by
Factor
and the Capones. Special agent Melvin Purvis
announced
that his arrest of Touhy in the Factor
snatch
was a landmark in the art of detection. "This
case,"
he said, "holds a particular interest for me
because
it represents a triumph of deductive detective
work.
We assumed from the start, with no material
evidence,
that the Touhy gang was responsible for
the
crime."
Touhy's
first trial ended in a hung jury. He was
convicted
the second time around and was sentenced
to
99 years. Touhy went to prison screaming frame-
up
while the Capones swarmed into Des Plaines.
In
1942, Touhy escaped from prison but was
recaptured
soon and saddled with an additional
sentence
of 199 years. Still, there were many per-
sons,
including several journalists, who considered
him
innocent of the Factor kidnapping, and took up
the
fight to clear him. In the 1950s Touhy at last
won
a rehearing on his original conviction. After a
searching
inquiry lasting 36 days, Federal Judge
John
H. Barnes ruled that Factor had not been kid-
napped
at all but had disappeared "of his own con-
nivance."
Judge Barnes had plenty of criticism to
hand
out to several quarters, especially to the FBI,
the
Chicago police, the state's attorney and the
Capone
Gang. It took a few more years of legal
jockeying
before Touhy was released. He collabo-
rated
on a book, The Stolen Years, about his ordeal.
Just
23 days after Touhy won his freedom, he was
gunned
down as he was entering his sister's house in
Chicago.
As he lay dying, the former gangster mut-
tered:
"I've been expecting it. The bastards never
forget."
The
underworld had no doubts about who had
knocked
off Touhy — the word was the price on his
head
was $40,000 — that it was the handiwork of
longtime
Capone mobster Murray "the Camel"
Humphreys.
Six months after the Touhy rubout,
Humphreys
bought 400 shares of First National Life
Insurance
Co. stock at $20 a share from John Factor,
Touhy's
old nemesis, and a man at the time eager to
have
an unsullied slate as he was attempting to oper-
ate
in Las Vegas. Eight months later, Humphreys sold
the
shares back to Factor for $125 a share, turning a
profit
of $42,000 in capital gains. The IRS looked at
the
transaction and related details and declared that
the
$42,000 was clearly payment for services ren-
dered
and that it was subject to full income taxes.
The
Humphreys-Factor financial dealings were
not
the only noteworthy matter occurring after
"Terrible"
Touhy lies dying after being shot. Released
From
prison after doing 25 years on a mob frame-up, he
said,
"I've been expecting it. The bastards never forget."
Touhy's
death. Early in 1960, a few months after the
murder,
retired FBI man Purvis committed suicide.