by
Allan May
Frank McErlane – the gangster credited with
introducing the Thompson sub-machine gun to
Chicago's bloody Beer War during Prohibition –
was called "the most brutal gunman who ever
pulled a trigger in Chicago" by the Illinois
Crime Survey. He was alleged to have murdered at
least nine men, a woman and two dogs.
McErlane's rap sheet begins in 1911. In June
1913, he was sent to Pontiac Prison after he was
convicted of being part of an automobile theft
ring. Paroled in March 1916, he would be
arrested eight months later for accessory to
murder in the death of an Oak Park police
officer. He served just one year in Joliet for
this. Several newspaper articles refer to
McErlane taking part in an escape from the
county jail in 1918. Other than calling it
"sensational," no details are given except that
McErlane spent another two years in Joliet for
it.
Robert J. Schoenberg, author of Mr. Capone,
gives us this description of the killer:
"Frank
McErlane, despite his habitual glower, looked to
one reporter like a 'butter and egg man,' a
portly five-foot-eight and 190 pounds, with blue
eyes, a rosary ever-present in his pocket. But
his face habitually glowed a choleric red, and
when drunk (also habitual) his eyes would glaze
over, at which sign his closest friends edged
for the door."
The relative calm during the early years of
Prohibition in Chicago would be shattered by the
great Beer War of 1923. Crafty Johnny Torrio had
helped divide Chicago and surrounding towns into
different territories. The Torrio-Capone mob had
control of almost the entire South and
South-West areas of the city, which extended
down to Calumet City and Burnham, near the
Indiana border, and west over to Stickney and
Cicero. Within this area, control was
distributed to eight independent gangs that
operated in a loose confederation with
one-another. The speakeasies controlled by these
gangs were supplied with beer from Torrio's
breweries.
The only territory that Torrio-Capone did not
control was that operated by Joe "Polack" Saltis
and Frank McErlane. Saltis supplied his
speakeasies from his own breweries.
Left out of this division of territories were
four brothers who were dubbed the South Side
O'Donnells – Edward (known as Spike), Steven,
Tommy and Walter – to distinguish them from the
West Side O'Donnells – Klondike and Myles. The
two families were not related. The strength of
the South Side bunch came from their leader,
Spike, who up until 1923 was serving time for a
bank robbery. When released, Spike returned to
Chicago and began to muscle in on the tremendous
profits being made in bootlegging.
O'Donnell's first move was to supply a better
product at a lower price than Torrio's beer.
Torrio responded by dropping the price of his
beer to a level Spike couldn't match. So
O'Donnell gathered his brothers and strong-arm
associates and began to threaten the saloon
owners on the South Side into purchasing his
beer at the higher price. (A good visual to this
practice is portrayed by George Siegel in the
opening minutes of the movie The St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.) The O'Donnells'
first forays were into the speakeasies
controlled by Saltis-McErlane and those of the
Ralph Sheldon gang, whose territories abutted
each other. Although the members of these
neighboring gangs despised each other, they were
soon united in a common cause to repel the
efforts of the South Side O'Donnell brothers.
On Sept. 7, 1923, the Beer War began. Early that
evening Steven, Tommy, and Walter O'Donnell,
along with gang toughs George Bucher, George
Meeghan, and Jerry O'Connor, invaded the saloon
of Jacob Geis, a Saltis-McErlane customer. A few
days before, Geis had refused to purchase beer
from an O'Donnell representative. On this rainy
Friday night, the O'Donnell hoods returned to
the saloon. In front of six customers, they
argued with Geis about purchasing his beer from
them. Geis would not give in. Finally, gang
members pulled him over the bar by his head and
beat him unmercifully with a blackjack, or
revolvers, depending on the story. Whatever they
beat Geis with they fractured his skull,
injuring him to the extent that when he arrived
at German Deaconess Hospital, doctors were quite
sure he would die. The tough saloonkeeper pulled
through. Also beaten and hospitalized that night
was bartender Nicholas Gorysko, who attempted to
come to Geis' aid during the attack.
After the Geis shakedown, the O'Donnell gang
made an estimated five more "saloon calls" that
evening before meeting up with Spike for beers
and sandwiches at the gang's regular hangout –
Joseph Klepka's saloon at Fifty-Third and South
Lincoln Street. At about 11 p.m., Ralph Sheldon,
Daniel McFall and two other hoods walked into
Klepkas' with guns drawn and confronted the
group. One of the O'Donnells reportedly pleaded,
"Now give us a square deal. Come outside and
fight it out."
McFall, reported to be a deputy sheriff and at
other times a bailiff, was armed with a .38 and
called out, "Stick up you hands or I'll blow you
to hell." He then sent a warning shot screaming
over Walter's head, which caused the gang to
scatter for the exits at the side and rear. All
but Jerry O'Connor escaped. O'Connor, out on
parole after having been sentenced to life in
Joliet prison, was stopped by McFall who then
ordered him out of the saloon.
Standing outside of Klepka's was Frank McErlane.
Wearing a long gray raincoat under which he
allegedly carried a double-barreled sawed-off
shotgun, the puffy-faced killer waited for
O'Connor to step out. Although the newspapers
reported that O'Connor was shot through the
heart with a rifle, Capone biographers and
historians claim that McErlane pointed his
shotgun at the defenseless man's face and blew
away half of his head. After the shooting,
O'Connor was dragged to the home of a doctor and
deposited on his front steps.
This murderous warning to Spike and his gang to
stop their muscling efforts went unheeded. On
Sept. 17, the tag team of McErlane and McFall
struck again. This time the targets were the two
Georges – Bucher and Meeghan – as the two men
headed home for supper in a Ford roadster. While
stopped near Laflin and Garfield Blvd. a green
touring car driven by Thomas Hoban, and
containing McErlane and McFall, pulled alongside
the Ford roadster. Suddenly guns were extended
from the touring car and they blazed away
killing Bucher and Meeghan on the spot. The
first physician on the scene was Dr. Charles
Gartin, who resided on Garfield Blvd. and was
the Meeghan's family doctor. Ironically, 10 days
earlier, it was at his doorstep that the dead or
dying O'Connor had been left, most likely by
Meeghan.
Two days after the murders an assistant state's
attorney was questioning George Bucher's older
brother Joseph. The brother claimed he was the
actual target of the killers because he had,
"daily for the last three months driven a
covered wagon containing 20 barrels of beer for
Walter O'Donnell." In a confession which clearly
showed the vernacular of the times Joseph Bucher
stated:
"Every bozo in this town wants to guzzle a glass
of real beer without hearing the angels sing,
but it's the poor gink who runs the stuff that
gets the bullet through his noodle. Me? I'm
through. I wouldn't peddle orange pop at a
Sunday school picnic."
This sudden rash of killings caused a momentary
crackdown by the police as well as a newspaper
outburst. The police response caused a lull in
the killings until Dec. 1, 1923. Around 1:30
a.m. two O'Donnell beer trucks were on their way
from a Joliet brewery to Chicago. As the trucks
rolled past the village of Lemont, two
automobiles pulled alongside and forced the
trucks off the road. McErlane and William
Channell, who was once convicted of killing a
woman and was now out on parole, ordered the
occupants of one of the trucks, William "Shorty"
Egan and Thomas "Morrie" Keane out and onto the
road. The two men were then bound and tossed
into the back seat of the car and McErlane and
Channell drove off. From this incident we get an
eyewitness account of the first victim ever
taken for a one-way ride who lived to tell about
it. In Capone by John Kobler, we hear the
gut-wrenching, cold-blooded tale from survivor
"Shorty" Egan:
"Pretty soon the driver asks the guy with the
shotgun, 'Where you gonna get rid of these
guys?' The fat fellow laughs and says, 'I'll
take care of that in a minute.' He was monkeying
with his shotgun all the time. Pretty soon he
turns around and points the gun at Keane. He
didn't say a word but just let go straight at
him. Keane got it square on the left side. It
kind of turned him over and the fat guy give him
the second barrel in the other side. The guy
loads up his gun and gives it to Keane again.
Then he turns to me and says, 'I guess you might
as well get yours too.' With that he shoots me
in the side. It hurt like hell so when I seen
him loading up again, I twist around so it won't
hurt me in the same place. This time he got me
in the leg. Then he gimme the other barrel right
on the puss. I slide off the seat. But I guess
the fat guy wasn't sure we was through. He let
Morrie have it twice more and then let me have
it again in the other side. The fat guy
scrambled into the rear seat and grabbed Keane.
He opens the door and kicks Morrie out onto the
road. We was doing 50 from the sound. I figure
I'm next so when he drags me over to the door I
set myself to jump. He shoves and I light in the
ditch by the road. I hit the ground on my
shoulders and I thought I would never stop
rolling. I lost consciousness. When my senses
came back, I was lying in a pool of water and
ice had formed around me. The sky was red and it
was breaking day. I staggered along the road
until I saw a light in a farmhouse…"
At the hospital Egan would identify Channell
through a mug shot. Later a garage attendant
identified both Channell and McErlane after the
shot-up vehicle was worked on. Schoenberg writes
that, "The state's attorney arrested McErlane,
held him for a while in the Hotel Sherman, then
released him. When McErlane was Finally
indicted, he walked when State's Attorney Crowe
entered a nolle prosequi for want of witnesses."
This most likely was the result of Egan and the
garage attendant recanting their stories out of
fear for their lives.
After continued pressure from State's Attorney
Robert E. Crowe, a grand jury indicted McFall
for the murder of O'Connor. Since McFall was
carrying a .38 and O'Connor was killed by a
shotgun blast, the case was dismissed. McErlane,
McFall and Hoban were then indicted for the
murders of Meeghan and Bucher. Part of
McErlane's legal work in the case was handled by
famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Charges
would soon be dropped.
Spike and his brothers backed down, for the
moment, and the Beer War of 1923 came to a
close. Hostilities between the allied
Saltis-McErlane / Ralph Sheldon gang and the
South Side O'Donnells, would lay dormant for a
year. This didn't mean that the vicious McErlane
went into hibernation. With things quiet on the
South Side of Chicago, McErlane was next heard
from in Los Angeles on Nov. 28, where he was
involved in a "hi-jacking" foray. In addition,
he was held there for a time for his involvement
in a shooting and an assault.
On May 4, 1924 McErlane would commit a senseless
brutal crime that would highlight his reputation
as a homicidal maniac when drinking. McErlane
was in a bar in Crown Point, Ind., drinking
heavily with two inebriated companions – John
O'Reilly and Alex McCabe. When one of the men
challenged him to prove his shooting prowess,
McErlane pulled out his revolver and took aim at
Thaddeus S. Fancher, a local attorney having a
drink at the end of the bar. McErlane sent a
bullet crashing into the skull of Fancher,
killing him instantly. O'Reilly and McCabe were
quickly apprehended, while McErlane high tailed
it back to Chicago. O'Reilly was convicted for
his role in the shooting and was sentenced to
life in prison. McCabe was also convicted, but
won his release on appeal after a key witness
was murdered.
By the spring of 1925, Spike O'Donnell had added
re-enforcements to his gang and was ready for
another round of mayhem. There would now be a
three-way battle going on as the fragile peace
that existed between Saltis – McErlane and the
Sheldon gang suddenly went sour and turned into
open warfare. Most of the hostilities were
carried out by the Saltis – McErlane forces
against members of the Sheldon gang. In the
summer of 1925, the Saltis-McErlane forces first
murdered George "Big Bates" Karl and then
William Dickman. In September, an attempt was
made to eliminate Spike O'Donnell. Eight days
later, on Oct. 4, the Ragen Colts Club House –
Sheldon's headquarters – was shot up and one
"hanger-on" was killed. This was followed nine
days later by the murder of Sheldon associate Ed
Lattyak. In each of these incidents McErlane was
a prime suspect.
In the attack on O'Donnell back on the night of
Sept. 25, 1925, the gang leader and a Chicago
police officer named Reed were conversing in
front of a drug store at Sixty-Third Street and
Western Avenue. Suddenly a car containing four
men appeared and one of the occupants called
out, "Hello, Spike."
Here again we get conflicting stories between
the newspapers and Capone biographers.
Historians claim that McErlane blasted away at
O'Donnell with a Thompson sub-machinegun making
this the first time the deadly weapon was used
in Chicago gang warfare. Incredibly, the
Chicago Tribune's front-page story states,
"Four shotguns were leveled at him (O'Donnell).
He and Reed fell to the sidewalk and the charges
of small shot passed harmlessly over them and
into the windows of the drug store. Witnesses
said each man in the car fired two cartridges."
It's possible the confusion may be with an
incident that happened just five months later on
Feb. 10, 1926. This time newspaper headlines
screamed, "MACHINE GUN GANG SHOOTS 2,"
confirming that a machinegun was used to shoot
up the saloon of Martin "Buff" Costello,
wounding two men inside, including John
"Mitters" Foley. McErlane reputedly led the
attack. After the shooting, Robert J Schoenberg
writes, "The effectiveness of this attack made
Detective Captain John Stege announce next day
that he wanted some of those Thompsons for his
own boys." He then states that Capone was
"equally impressed," and ordered a supply for
himself.
As if the open warfare was not enough action for
McErlane, he and his brother Vincent pulled a
robbery in October at the International
Harvester Company, killing a man in the process.
Before the month was over there was another
attempt to kill Spike (there were 10 failed
attempts on Spike's life; he died at the ripe
old age of 72 in 1962). This time another
O'Donnell man, Pasquale Tolizotte, was murdered.
Before 1925 came to a close, Joe Saltis was
wounded by the O'Donnell gang, and in
retaliation "Dynamite Joe" Brooks and Edward
Harmening were left lifeless in the back seat of
a car.
The year 1926 got off to a slow start. The first
South Side beer war shooting didn't occur until
Feb. 10 when Sheldon associates "Mitters" Foley
and William Wilson were wounded.
The next incident was a double murder that took
place on April 15. John Tuccello, a 36-year old
father of three, and Frank DeLaurentis, a cousin
of "Diamond Joe" Esposito, were alleged to be
ex-employees of the decimated Genna brother's
gang and had recently hooked up with Ralph
Sheldon. Apparently the two attempted to supply
beer to saloons in the Saltis – McErlane
territory and paid the price. On the Saturday
night they were killed, they delivered a barrel
of beer to a saloon on Fifty-first Street. There
they were followed through the back door by four
men who ordered them out at gunpoint.
The two were then taken to a secluded location
where they were beaten and shot execution style
before being loaded into the backseat of a car.
The killers threw a blanket over their bodies,
drew the window curtains, and drove the car to
West Sixty-fifth Street and Rockwell. There they
left the automobile parked outside the home of
Ralph Sheldon as a warning to stay out of the
Saltis – McErlane territory.
Six days after the discovery of the two bodies,
a Chicago police squad led by Captain Stege
raided a saloon on West Fiftieth Street. There
they arrested McErlane, Saltis and, among
others, Walter Stevens, "the dean of all
Chicago's gunmen," according to the newspapers.
The men were arraigned on federal Prohibition
violations because Stege knew there wasn't
enough evidence to connect them to the two
murders. After McErlane's friends produced his
$5,000 bail, Stege had a surprise for him. He
served McErlane with a fugitive warrant for the
murder of the Crown Point lawyer. McErlane was
thrown back into the lockup to await extradition
proceedings to remove him to Indiana, where John
O'Reilly sat in Michigan City Prison ready to
testify against him.
This effectively removed McErlane for the
remainder of the South Side beer war. In July
1926, "Mitters" Foley of the Sheldon gang made
two attempts to kill McErlane's brother Vincent.
In one attack another Saltis gang member, Frank
Conlon, was killed. Sheldon knew Saltis would
strike back and he warned him to leave "Mitters"
alone. Two days later, on Aug. 6, Saltis, Frank
"Lefty Koncil, John "Dingbat" O'Berta, and Earl
Herbert, killed "Mitters" Foley in an attack.
Police captured and jailed the four killers
within days; a trial date was scheduled for
October.
Saltis, who had a working relationship with
Capone, was secretly dealing with North Side
gang leader Earl "Hymie" Weiss. Capone uncovered
this new relationship as early as Sept. 15, 1926
when Vincent McErlane was arrested in connection
with a train robbery with North Sider Peter
Gusenberg, a future victim of the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
When the October trial of Saltis and Koncil got
underway, Weiss, who had recently turned down a
peace overture from Capone, sat in attendance.
On Oct. 11, the 12th juror was selected and the
trial was set to begin the following day. Weiss
was returning to his headquarters when he was
gunned down in spectacular fashion in front of
the Holy Name Cathedral on North State Street.
There had been rumors that Weiss was trying to
fix the jury for $100,000. When police searched
his body they found a listing of all the
potential jurors in his pocket.
Weiss's death put Saltis in a precarious
position, as he knew that Capone had discovered
his treachery. He moved quickly to safeguard
himself. It was through this effort that the
Hotel Sherman meeting was arranged on Oct. 20.
Here key gang leaders, or their representatives,
met to hear a peace plan to stop the senseless
slaughter that was going on throughout Cook
County. Saltis and McErlane, who were still in
jail, were represented by Maxie Eisen, a
respected labor racketeer.
Ironically, Saltis, the man who sought the peace
that the Hotel Sherman Treaty provided, was the
first to break it. On Dec. 30, 1926 Saltis
gunmen killed Hilary Clements, a member of Ralph
Sheldon's gang. Sheldon took the matter to
Capone for arbitration. The decision was made
that two members of the Saltis gang were to be
sacrificed to teach Saltis a lesson. On March
11, 1927, Frank "Lefty" Koncil, who along with
Saltis had been found not guilty in the
"Mitters" Foley murder the previous November,
and Charles "Big Hayes" Hubacek were murdered.
McErlane was acquitted on Nov. 3, 1927 of the
murder of Thaddeus Fancher. The key witness
against him, Frank Cochran, had been murdered
with an axe and the state's case fell apart. For
the next two and a half years McErlane seemed to
have disappeared from view. Some Chicago
historians claim he attended the Atlantic City
Conference in 1929. Also, during this time some
sources state that he broke with Saltis and
joined with the South Side O'Donnells for a
while. (If this is true old "Polack Joe" Saltis
must have forgiven him as Saltis would serve as
a pallbearer at McErlane's funeral a few years
later.)
On Jan. 28, 1930, McErlane was shot in the leg
and rushed to German Deaconess Hospital. The
slug entered his right leg above the knee and
shattered the bone. Police officers who
questioned McErlane didn't recognize him as the
bootleg war killing machine. Using the name
Charles Miller, he told police it was an
accident that occurred while he was cleaning a
gun, a tale backed up by his common-law wife,
Marion Miller.
On the night of Feb. 24, McErlane was still in
the hospital recovering. His leg, in a plaster
cast, hung in the air supported by weights and
pulleys to let the bone heal. Around 10:30,
while his private nurse was out of the room, two
gunmen, believed to be O'Berta and Sam Malaga,
appeared at the door and began firing at the
immobilized McErlane. The ever-ready gunman,
with two handguns under his pillow, pulled one
and fired back. McErlane suffered wounds in the
chest, left groin, and left wrist – all non-life
threatening. His assailants escaped injury, but
a .45 automatic dropped at the scene was later
traced to Malaga.
Two detectives from the Stockyard's district
came out to the hospital to investigate. They
hadn't recognized that the wounded man, Charles
Miller, was McErlane. It was not until an alert
detective lieutenant arrived and had him
fingerprinted that the true identity of Charles
Miller was revealed. The two detectives who
earlier failed to identify McErlane were
transferred the following day to "outlying
sections" and ordered back into uniforms.
Meanwhile, McErlane refused to identify the
gunmen, but in a bit of bravado he told police,
"Look for 'em in a ditch. That's where you'll
find 'em. They were a bunch of cheap rats, using
pistols. I'll use something better. McErlane
takes care of McErlane."
Captain John Stege ordered McErlane transported
to Bridewell Hospital where police could guard
him and because he was an "inconvenience" to the
other patients at German Deaconess. McErlane
complained, "They'll kill me if you take me out
to the Bridewell."
Over the protests of Stege, who wanted to hold
McErlane for possession of a concealed weapon,
the state's attorney allowed the wounded man to
be removed to the home of relatives less than 48
hours after the hospital attack.
On March 5, just nine days after the hospital
shootout, "Dingbat" O'Berta and his 28-year old
bodyguard/chauffeur, Sam Malaga, were found
murdered. Author Kenneth Allsop in The
Bootleggers, stated that O'Berta was an
Italian who had inserted an apostrophe into his
name to make it sound Irish. He described him
as, "a ferocious little man built like a
fighting-cock who was Saltis's chief torpedo."
He apparently achieved this position after
McErlane left the gang to work for his former
rivals the South Side O'Donnells.
At the death scene, just outside the city
limits, O'Berta was found on the front seat of
his car on the passenger side, leaning against
the door, the top of his head blasted away.
Malaga's body was found lying face up in macabre
fashion in a water filled ditch with ice forming
around it. Police believe O'Berta's killer fired
away from the back seat of the automobile.
A side note to this killing was that O'Berta's
wife was the widow of pioneer labor racketeer,
"Big Tim" Murphy who was murdered in gangland
style in June 1928. O'Berta would be buried
beside Murphy in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, each
reputedly with a rosary in his gun hand.
McErlane's heavy drinking was taking a toll on
his mental state. One night in September 1931,
he staggered drunkenly around the South Side at
78th and Crandon Avenue, sweeping the
street with machinegun fire, shooting at some
imaginary assassin.
On Oct. 8, McErlane had a final row with Marion
Miller. Police determined that both were in a
drunken state and arguing in McErlane's car when
Miller pulled a gun, the same one she had
wounded him with before, and fired a wild shot
at him. McErlane, who had "made peace" with her
after the first shooting, was not as forgiving
in this second round. He not only shot Miller to
death, but he also killed her two dogs, which
were riding in the back seat.
Police initially theorized that McErlane had
come under attack by his enemies, of which he
had many. They quickly discounted this
concluding that only McErlane was savage enough
to kill a woman and two dogs. Police searched
McErlane's home and found an arsenal that
included rifles, shotguns, machineguns, and
revolvers. They then went to his brother
Vincent's house. They arrested Vincent for
questioning. Police charged McErlane with the
murder. He eventually turned himself in only to
be released for lack of evidence.
This latest ordeal made his remaining South Side
associates realize that he was out of control.
It was rumored that they "raised a pension fund"
of several hundred dollars per week for McErlane
to retire from Chicago. He relocated to a
lavishly furnished houseboat on the Illinois
River in Beardstown, Ill., some 200 miles
southwest of Chicago.
In the fall of 1932, McErlane became ill. On
Tuesday, Oct. 4, he was admitted to Schmitt
Memorial Hospital in Beardstown. On Thursday he
lapsed into delirium and erupted in a violent
fit fearing enemies were on their way to take
his life. It took four hospital attendants to
subdue him. During his last hours he lashed out
at a nurse knocking her unconscious with a
punch. Hospital employees discovered four loaded
guns under his pillow.
On Saturday, Oct. 8, 1932, one year to the day
after he murdered his common-law wife, Frank
McErlane succumbed to pneumonia.
The newspapers described McErlane's funeral as
"hurried and furtive." After McErlane's father
tried to chase photographers away, a nine-car
procession, measly by gangland standards, made
its way to the cemetery. Like his victim
"Dingbat" O'Berta, McErlane was laid to rest in
Holy Sepulcher Cemetery.
When interviewed about McErlane's death, a
former associate remarked, "I don't remember
that he ever did anything good in his life. I
don't believe he had a friend left."
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