Prohibition ruled America in the 1920s. It produced a lawless
decade and lawless citizens. In Chicago, Al Capone became not only the nation's
leading bootlegger but a pioneer and kingpin in the union extortion racket, a
golden source of easy money and power.
But there was another major crime figure in the
Windy City as well, a gangster who emerged from the poverty-drenched Irish slum
section known as "the Valley." His name was Roger Touhy, the son of an
honest Chicago policeman and the youngest of the six so-called "Terrible
Touhy" brothers. Together the six brothers ruled a small but widely-feared
criminal empire on the city's outskirts. The gang manufactured and distributed
beer, controlled unions and supported their war against the Capones' criminal
syndicate through a series of lucrative robberies of the U.S. mail.
This is the story of Roger Touhy's turbulent
life.
A career criminal whose underworld deeds were as
darkly sensational as Capone's or Luciano's, Touhy evaded both the law and the
many attempts on his life by his rivals. However in 1933 he was sentenced to
ninety-nine years in prison for a crime he never committed: the kidnapping of
international confidence man John "Jake the Barber" Factor.
Factor, the black sheep brother of the cosmetics
king, Max Factor, was an illegal immigrant in America, who had fled England to
avoid a long jail term for engineering one of the largest stock frauds in the
history of the British Empire. In a desperate attempt to save himself from
extradition, Factor, working with the Capone organization, had himself
kidnapped and, with the connivance of some of Touhy's men, accused Roger Touhy
of the crime. After two sensational trials, held in the shadow of the national
outrage over the Lindburgh baby kidnapping, Roger was convicted.
After serving eleven years in prison and being
denied a hearing for parole, Touhy and a band of convicts shot their way out of
Stateville Penitentiary only to be recaptured in a sensational gun battle with
the FBI.
Sentenced to an additional ninety-nine years for
abetting the escape, Touhy began the long and arduous process of re-opening his
case before the federal bench. Finally, seventeen years later, thanks to the
efforts of a rumpled private detective and an eccentric lawyer, Roger Touhy won
his freedom. A federal judge determined that John Factor had engineered his own
kidnapping to avoid extradition.
Freed in 1959, Touhy intended to enter a multi-
million-dollar lawsuit against the state of Illinois. After his release from
jail he was gunned down on the doorstep of his sister's home. He had been free
for twenty-eight days.
John Factor, Touhy's nemesis, was luckier. Over
the years he manipulated the legal system through the use of his vast fortune.
He managed to remain in the United States but continued to be a pawn for the
Chicago mob. In 1955 he ran the incredibly successful Stardust Hotel in Las
Vegas, representing the mob and in 1962, just the day before his extradition
was ordered, he received a full presidential pardon from John F. Kennedy. He
was allowed to remain in the United States, safe from the British courts which
had long pursued him.