I began work on this book while I still was an undergraduate
student in the Criminal Justice Program at the University of New Haven in 1975.
The book grew out of class assignment, given to us by Dr. Henry Lee who later
came to some fame as an expert witness during the sensational O.J. Simpson
murder trial.
Dr. Lee assigned each of us in the class to
investigate and write about a case of a miscarriage of American justice.
I had heard a few, vague facts about the Roger
Touhy case from my father, who had heard about it from his father, who had known
Roger Touhy. After some initial research, I placed a call to Betty Brennan, the
widow of Touhy's ghost writer on his autobiography, The Stolen Years.
Betty was a wealth of insightful, important
information and she encouraged me to follow up on the case, which I did, not
realizing then that the investigation into the true facts behind the Roger
Touhy case would take up almost twenty-six years of my life and propel me
across the United States, from
Washington to Las Vegas and Los Angeles to Miami and back again,
in search of the truth. I interviewed several hundred people and pored over
thousands of pages of documents that relate to the case.
After all of that, I am only certain of one
thing; no one except Roger Touhy and John Factor really knows the full truth
behind this case. However, after tens of thousands of hours of research, there
are some aspects of the story which I am certain are true but can't prove. As a
result, they have not been included in the main text of this book.
I am certain that Touhy and Factor knew each
other before the kidnapping occurred, that Factor probably didn't completely
understand that he would never be freed of the Mafia's iron-clad grasp on his
life and that Sam Giancana was one of the wheelmen for Touhy's assassins on
that frigid December night when the Capone mob killed Touhy.
Which brings us to the title of this book.
Although A1 Capone had been dead for twelve years by the time Touhy was shot to
death, and although the intention of the murder was to silence Touhy forever
and was carried out with chilling business-like efficiency, Roger Touhy's
murder was personal. His killers had been members of the old 42 Gang and had
fought Touhy in Capone's name twenty-six years earlier. The same holds true for
the mob bosses who ordered the killing. They had watched as Touhy's Irish
gunmen shot their way across the Windy City, murdering their childhood friends,
cousins, business partners, and brothers.
I also want to take this opportunity to share my
concerns about the secretive and powerful role of the United States Pardon
Attorney, which, officially anyway, falls under the Office of the Attorney
General of the United States.
In my quest for the truth about President
Kennedy's very suspicious twelfth-hour pardon of John Factor, the Pardons
Attorney's Office went out of its way to derail my research. Pardon records
that I requested as part of this investigation were moved around the country
making access difficult, sometimes impossible. On several occasions, records
were hidden from me. I was lied to several times regarding the existence of
some pardon records and members of my staff were questioned about my personal
life.
Still, even with this interference, I uncovered
a total of 500 pardons granted by Presidents Truman and Kennedy, which, at the
least, can be considered highly questionable. For this reason, I have come to
the conclusion that John Factor's presidential pardon was granted as part of
the federal government's tangled and illegal dealings with the Mafia during the
Kennedy administration.
However, this is the stuff for another
researcher and another writer for another book, but the undis- putable fact
remains that if details of the Factor pardon have not been released, the fault
lies squarely with the U.S. Pardons Attorney's Office.
-John William Tuohy Washington D.C.
March 2001