Vengeance for O'Banion!

VENGEANCE FOR O’BANION

The Near-Miss Assassination Attempt on John Torrio

On this date, January 24, 1925, an attempted Chicago mob assassination changed the face of Chicago forever. On that evening, North Side gangster attempted to kill John Torrio, the undisputed leader of Chicago gangland. Torrio was a mentor and boss of Al Capone and the man directly responsible for dividing Chicago up into territories for individual gangs at the start of Prohibition. He was a man who believed in settling trouble through words and negotiations, rather than by bullets. But he was willing to order violence when it was needed – and it was often needed during the tumultuous years of the early 1920s.  

Chicago mob boss John Torrio

Unfortunately for Torrio, he made two big mistakes in 1924. First, he allowed the assassination of Dean O’Banion, the leader of the North Side mob, who had been causing problems for other gangs by hijacking liquor shipments and selling whiskey in other gangs’ territories. The North Siders were an eccentric and reckless bunch and their leader was no exception. O’Banion then made the mistake of setting up Torrio himself on liquor charges, which would eventually lead to the mobster spending time in jail. At that point, Torrio lost all patience with O’Banion and allowed Capone to arrange for his murder.

This led to Torrio’s second mistake – he underestimated the pathological need for revenge that would grip the remaining members of the North Side mob. O’Banion had not just need the boss, he was their friend and loyalty was important above everything else to the North Siders. They would do just about anything to avenge the death of Dean O’Banion and their actions began the famous Chicago “Beer Wars.”

On January 24, Torrio’s mistakes came home to roost when he was attacked by North Siders. The severe wounds that he suffered led to not only his abrupt departure from Chicago after his prison sentence, but led directly to the ascendancy of Al Capone.

The assassination of Dean O’Banion in November 1924 turned out to be John Torrio’s last great achievement in Chicago. He left the city soon after the funeral and embarked, with his wife, Ann, on an extensive tour of vacation spots in the South and the Caribbean. They visited Hot Springs, Arkansas (a favorite gangland recreation spot of the era), New Orleans, Havana, the Bahamas, Palm Beach and St. Petersburg – never realizing that they were staying just one step ahead of gunmen that had been dispatched by O’Banion’s right-hand man Hymie Weiss, who were trying to kill Torrio whenever they got the chance. To Weiss’ regret, they never caught up with him, always arriving a day or two late, or perhaps missing them only by a few hours.

Al Capone was Torrio’s second in command and was gravely concerned about the murder attempts by the North Side mob – both for himself and his friend. 

But the North Siders weren’t just after Torrio.On January 12, Capone and two bodyguards were driven by his chauffeur, Sylvester Barton, to a restaurant at State and Fifty-Fifth streets. When they reached the restaurant, Capone got out of the car, leaving the two bodyguards behind. The door had just closed behind him when a long black car cruised slowly by. Inside were North Siders Hymie Weiss, Vincent Drucci and George Moran, all clutching shotguns and automatics. As they rolled up next to Capone’s car, they opened fire, raking it from front to back with their weapons. A policeman later said, “They let it have everything but the kitchen stove.” The bodyguards managed to come out of the hail of bullets unscathed but Sylvester Barton, the driver, was hit once in the back.

The close call prompted Capone to place a special order with General Motors – a $30,000 custom-built limousine that weighed over seven tons. It had a steel, armor-plated body, a steel-hooded gas tank, bulletproof windows, a gun compartment behind the rear seat and a removable back window that allowed occupants to open fire unimpeded on pursuing vehicles. Capone began using the car regularly, even when traveling short distances. He knew that he was an easy target walking down the sidewalk. When he had to cross a street – or even a hotel lobby – a cluster of bodyguards surrounded him, walking two and three deep on every side. In the nightclubs that he patronized, no strangers were allowed to sit at adjacent tables. At the opera, bodyguards took the seats on every side. In his office, as a precaution against an assassin who might somehow slip past his guards, he used a swivel chair with a high, armor-plated back. He rarely kept an appointment at the agreed upon time and place, always sending a messenger ahead to make a last-minute change. Ironically, despite all these precautions, no life insurance company would sell him a policy, as he found out when he applied for one in 1925.

While Barton the chauffeur was recovering from his wound, Capone used Tommy Cuiringione, alias Rossi, as his driver. He proved to be a chauffeur and bodyguard of exceptional loyalty. Not long after he started driving the boss, some of Weiss’ men kidnapped him and tried to force him to tell them where they might ambush Capone. One morning, a month later, two boys were walking a horse through some woods southwest of Chicago and stopped at a cistern to water the animal. The horse backed away and refused to drink. That afternoon, the boys mentioned the odd incident to a police officer they knew. He instructed the boys to take him to the cistern. He looked inside and hauled out what remained of Tommy Cuiringione. He had been beaten and burned with cigarettes and then shot five times in the head. His killers had tried to hide the body by wiring his wrists and ankles to a concrete block and dropping him in the cistern. Capone never forgot the fact that Tommy didn’t talk.

Hymie Weiss was Dean O’Banion’s second in command and took over running the North Side mob after his friend was killed. He was intent on avenging the death of O’Banion. 

Torrio and his wife returned to Chicago in the mid-January. After being free for seven months on bail, Torrio and 11 co-defendants now had to stand trial in the Sieben Brewery case, which O’Banion had set Torrio up in. He was almost happy to be inside a courtroom because he knew that it was a safe place to hide from Weiss’ gunmen. Torrio was shaken by the latest attempt to kill Capone and he was looking for a place to find refuge. Where would be the safest? In federal prison, he realized. On January 23, Torrio appeared before Federal Judge Adam Cliffe and entered a guilty plea in his case. He would be safely behind bars and by the time he got out, Capone would have dealt with Hymie Weiss.

Before passing sentence, Cliffe offered Torrio five days during which time he could settle his affairs. He took his wife shopping on Michigan Avenue on January 24. His car was in the shop for repairs, so he borrowed a Lincoln sedan from Jake Guzik, along with his driver, Robert Barton, Sylvester’s brother. It was almost dusk when the automobile, packed with shopping bags and parcels, turned onto Clyde Avenue on Chicago’s South Side. It stopped in front of 7011, where the Torrios occupied a third-floor apartment. Neither Barton nor the Torrios noticed the black Cadillac with no license plates that was parked at the corner of Clyde and Seventieth streets.

    

Barton opened the rear door of the sedan and helped the Torrios gather up their bags. Ann Torrio went ahead along the short sidewalk that led to the front door in the center of the apartment building. The Cadillac slowly moved forward. As she pushed the door open, backing inside since her hands were full, the Cadillac stopped across the street, directly alongside the sedan. Ann could see what appeared to be four men inside the car – and all of them were holding guns! She started to scream as Torrio stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. It was too late. She could only watch helplessly as two men, later determined to be George Moran and Hymie Weiss, jumped from the car with automatics drawn and ran toward her husband. The first man (Moran) fired two shots and Torrio fell to the ground, his jaw broken by one bullet and the other in his chest. As he twisted on the sidewalk, Weiss shot him in the right arm and the groin. At the same time, the two men who were still in the Cadillac, Vincent Drucci and Frank Gusenberg, opened fire with shotguns at the sedan, shattering windows and tearing open holes in the metal. A bullet hit Barton in the right leg below the knee.

George Moran came very close to killing Torrio. If the clip on his automatic had not been empty, he would have had his revenge against the mob leader. 

Moran bent over Torrio and held his automatic to the fallen man’s temple, planning to deliver the final shot, but the clip was empty. Before he could reload, Drucci began honking the horn of the Cadillac, signaling frantically that they needed to leave. Moran and Weiss ran to the car and they sped away.

Somehow, Torrio managed to crawl toward the apartment building and his wife, who was still screaming, dragged him inside. A neighbor, Mrs. James Putnam, witnessed the shooting and called the nearby Woodlawn police station. An ambulance arrived and Torrio was raced to Jackson Park Hospital.

Barton, ignoring his leg wound, got into the sedan and sped off toward Seventy-First Street. He passed a car driven by retired detective sergeant, Thomas Conley, who, spotting the sedan filled with bullet holes, gave chase. He confronted Barton in a drugstore as he was limping out of a telephone booth. The bleeding man refused to tell Conley what was going on. He pushed past him, got back into the car and drove off again. After traveling halfway across the city, he was finally forced to pull over by a patrol car, taken to a local station house, and then the hospital. The person that Barton had telephoned, the police believed, was Al Capone.

Torrio’s automobile after the attack.. it was filled with bullet holes. 

Newspaper reporters managed to get to Torrio at the hospital and began badgering the badly wounded, but still conscious, mobster with questions. He spoke with difficulty because of his shattered jaw but managed to say, “Sure, I know all four men, but I’ll never tell their names.” And he never did.

The police found a neighbor who was willing to talk, though. The 17-year-old son of the apartment building’s janitor, Peter Veesaert, had been standing in the doorway of the building at the time of the attack. He was shown some photographs that were taken by the police during Dion O’Banion’s funeral and he pointed out George Moran as the first man who shot Torrio. Bravely, he insisted that his identification was correct when he was brought face-to-face with Moran after he was arrested. “You’re the man,” Peter said. The police wanted to hold Moran until they could establish some evidence in support of the boy’s identification but Judge William Lindsay released him under $5,000 bail. He was never indicted for the crime.

Capone made it to Jackson Park Hospital soon after the ambulance arrived. He was in tears when he learned that his friend’s condition was critical. He not only refused to leave Torrio’s bedside but he insisted that Torrio be given an inner room on the top floor. Two policemen stood on guard outside of Torrio’s door but Capone also placed four of his own bodyguards in the corridor. It turned out that these precautions were necessary. During the night, hospital staff reported three carloads of armed men circling the building. The police were notified and eventually the cars drove off.

Despite the seriousness of his wounds, Torrio recovered quickly. In less than three weeks, he was discharged from the hospital. He left by way of a hidden fire escape, surrounded by bodyguards. That same day, February 9, with his jaw and face bandaged and hidden behind a scarf, he appeared again before Judge Cliffe. He was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and sentenced to spend nine months at the Lake County Jail in Waukegan, Illinois.

Torrio showed up for court with a scarf around his neck to hide the still-healing bullet wounds from the assassination attempt. 

Aware of the danger that Torrio was in, the warden of the jail fitted the windows of Torrio’s cell with bulletproof, mesh-steel blinds and assigned two deputy wardens to patrol the corridor outside. Other additions to the cell had nothing to do with Torrio’s safety. The little chamber was cozily outfitted with throw rugs, an easy chair, framed pictures and a down mattress for the bunk. This was not unheard-of treatment for rich, well-connected prisoners – especially in Chicago.

The warden also allowed Torrio to hold business conferences at the jail and in March, a month after his incarceration; he met with Capone and his attorneys. The treaties between the gangs that Torrio had created and worked so hard to enforce were now wrecked beyond recovery. There was no hope of peace in the Chicago underworld and Torrio had no stomach for war. So, he announced to Capone and his lawyers that he planned to retire from Chicago and divest himself of all of his interests in the city. With no demands, payments or conditions, he turned everything over to Capone: the brothels, the breweries, the speakeasies and the gambling houses, which together produced annual revenue in the tens of millions of dollars.

Capone was literally the crowned the king of the Chicago underworld and he became the most powerful man in the city – at only 25 years old. But his new empire did not come cheap. With the syndicate crumbling, it was all in danger of coming apart. To secure it again, and continue producing wealth, Capone had to win back, overthrow or destroy every major gang in Chicago.

Read the full story of Capone’s rise to power, the gangster wars of Chicago and even the ghostly tale that haunted Capone to the grave in my book, BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES. Available as an autographed print edition or as a Kindle edition from Amazon.com

The Witness that Testified from Beyond the Grave!

TESTIMONY FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

The True Story of the Greenbrier Ghost

On this date, January 23, 1897, the body of a young woman named Zona Heaster Shue was discovered in her home in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. It seemed to be a rather ordinary case of perhaps domestic discord gone wrong, but in the end, the case turned out to be anything but ordinary. In fact, it went on to become one of the most unusual stories in the history of crime and the supernatural. It remains a one-of-a-kind event: the only case in which the word of a ghost helped to solve a crime and convict a murderer!

Zona Heaster Shue, who would achieve fame in death as the “Greenbrier Ghost”

Zona Heaster was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, around 1873. Little is known about her life, growing up in the Richlands region of the county but in October 1896, she met a man named Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue. He was a drifter who came to Greenbrier County to work as a blacksmith and to start a new life for himself. He began working in the shop of James Crookshanks, which was located just off of the old Midland Trail. A blacksmith could find plenty of work along this rough, unpaved trail, and throughout the county, and Shue became well-known for his work.

Zona became acquainted with Shue a short time after he arrived in town. The two of them were attracted to each other and soon were married, despite the animosity felt towards Shue by Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Robinson Heaster. She had taken an instant dislike to him and often told her daughter that she felt there was something the otherwise amiable man was hiding.

The Shues lived together as man and wife for several months and then, on January 23, 1897, Zona’s body was discovered inside of their house by a young boy that Shue had sent there on a contrived errand.  He asked him to run to the house from the blacksmith shop and see if there was anything that Zona needed from the store. The boy, Andy Jones, found Zona lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. She was stretched out, with her feet together. One hand was on her abdomen and the other was lying next to her. Her head was turned slightly to one side and her eyes were wide open and staring. Even to this small boy, Zona Shue was obviously dead. Andy, not surprisingly, ran home to tell his mother. The local doctor and coroner, Dr. George W. Knapp, was summoned to the house, although he didn’t arrive for nearly an hour.

The Trout farm, where Zona’s body was discovered by the young boy from the blacksmith’s shop. 

By that time, Shue had carried his wife’s body upstairs and had laid her out on the bed. Contrary to local custom, he dressed the corpse himself. Normally, it was the proper thing for ladies of the community to wash and dress a body in preparation for burial. However, Shue took it upon himself to dress Zona in her best clothing. A high-necked, stiff-collared dress covered her neck and a veil was placed over her face.

While Dr. Knapp examined her and tried to determine a cause of death, Shue stayed by his wife’s side, cradling her head and sobbing. Because of Shue’s obvious grief, Knapp gave the body only a cursory examination, although he did notice some bruising on her neck. When he tried to look closer, Shue reacted so violently that the physician ended the examination and he left. Initially, he listed her cause of death as “everlasting faint” and then as “childbirth.” It is unknown whether Zona was pregnant or not, but for two weeks prior to her death, Knapp had treated her for “female trouble.”

Dr. Knapp sent someone out to notify Zona’s parents but word of the young woman’s death quickly spread through the community. By late afternoon, two young men who were friends of Zona’s, volunteered to ride out an area called Meadow Bluff and tell the Heaster family what had happened. The Heasters lived in an isolated area, about 15 miles away, where a small scattering of homes and farms were nestled against the side of Little Sewell Mountain. When she was informed of the news of her daughter’s death Mary Heaster’s face grew dark. She reportedly said, “The devil has killed her!”

On Saturday, January 24, Zona’s body was taken by carriage to her parents’ home. A handful of neighbors presided over the funeral entourage and they brought Trout Shue along with them to the mountain farm. He showed extraordinary devotion toward the body, keeping a vigil at the head of the open coffin as the wagon traveled over the rutted and bumpy roads. The body was displayed in the Heaster’s house for the wake, an event that lasted all day Sunday. It gave neighbors and friends an opportunity to pay their last respects to the dead, visit with one another, give solace to the bereaved, and bring food for the family. A few local ladies sat up with the body throughout the night and until the time of the burial on Monday.

Those who came to pay their respects during the wake pointed out the bizarre behavior of Trout Shue. His grief swung back and forth between overwhelming sadness and manic energy. He allowed no one to get too close to the coffin, especially while he was placing a pillow on one side of her head and a rolled-up cloth on the other. He explained that these items were to help Zona “rest easier.” In addition, he tied a large scarf around her neck and explained tearfully that it “had been Zona’s favorite.” When it came time to move the corpse to the cemetery, though, several people noticed that there seemed to be a strange looseness to Zona’s head. Needless to say, people started to talk and speculation began about how Zona had really met her untimely demise.

Mary Jane Heaster, Zona’s mother and the first person convinced that the young woman had been murdered.

Mary Jane Heaster did not need to speculate about whether or not Trout Shue had some part in her daughter’s death; she was convinced that he had. She had disliked the man from the start and had never wanted Zona to marry him. She was sure that he had murdered her, but there was no way that she could prove it.

After the wake, Mary Jane took the sheet from inside the coffin and tried to return it to Shue, but he refused it. Folding it back up to put it away, she noticed that it had a peculiar odor, so she washed it out. She came to believe that what happened next was some sort of strange omen. Mary Jane dropped the sheet into the wash basin and when she did, the water inside turned red. Strangely, a few moments later, the sheet turned pink and the color in the water disappeared. Mary Jane then boiled the sheet and hung it outside for several days but the stain could not be removed. She interpreted the eerie “bloodstains” as a sign that Zona had been murdered.

After this strange incident, she began to pray. Every night for the next four weeks, Mary Jane prayed fervently that her daughter would return to her and reveal the truth about how she had died. According to her story, a few weeks later, her prayers were answered.

Over the course of four dark nights, the spirit of Zona Shue appeared at her mother’s bedside. She would come as a bright light at first and then an apparition would take form, chilling the air in the entire room. She woke her mother and explained over and over again how her husband had murdered her. Trout Shue had been abusive and cruel, and had attacked her in a fit of rage because he thought she had not cooked any meat for supper. He had savagely broken her neck and to show this, the ghost turned her head completely around until it was facing backwards.

Mary Jane had been right. Shue had killed her daughter and the word of her spirit proved it!

A short time later, Mary Jane went to the local prosecutor, John Alfred Preston, to try and convince him to re-open the investigation into Zona’s death. She offered the visitations from her daughter’s spirit as evidence that a miscarriage of justice was taking place. By all accounts, Preston was both polite and sympathetic to Mrs. Heaster. The two spoke together for “several hours” and at the end of the meeting, Preston agreed to dispatch deputies to speak with Dr. Knapp and a few others involved in the case. While it seems unlikely that he was willing to take another look at the case because of the statement of a ghost, the investigation did get re-opened. Local newspapers reported that Mrs. Heaster was not the only one in the community who was suspicious about Zona’s death. There were also “certain citizens” who had started to ask questions, as well as the growing “rumors in the community.”

Preston himself went to see Dr. Knapp and the physician admitted that his examination of the dead woman had been cursory and incomplete. The two of them agreed that an autopsy was needed to answer the questions about Zona’s death once and for all. If Trout Shue was innocent of any wrongdoing, this would clear his name. 

A few days later, an exhumation was ordered and an inquest jury was assembled. The autopsy was performed in the Nickell School House, which was just a short distance away from the Soule Methodist Church graveyard, where Zona had been buried. The schoolchildren were dismissed on the day of February 22, 1897, and Zona Shue’s grave was opened. It was reported in the local newspaper that Trout Shue “vigorously complained” about the exhumation but it was made clear to him that he would be forced to attend the inquest if did not attend willingly. He replied, “They will not be able to prove I did it.” This was a rather odd and careless statement for a man who claimed to be innocent.

The autopsy lasted for three hours under the uncertain light of kerosene lanterns. The body of the dead woman was “in a near state of perfect preservation,” thanks to the cold temperatures of February, making the work of the doctors much easier to complete. A jury of five men had been assembled to watch the proceedings and they huddled together in the cold building with officers of the court, Trout Shue, Andy Jones (the boy who had found the body) and other witnesses and spectators.

The autopsy was carried out by the standard methods, which meant that an examination of the vital organs came first. After that, the doctors would normally cut an incision along the back of the skull so that the brain could be removed but this step was not taken in the case of Zona Shue because the doctors quickly found what they were looking for. One of the doctors turned to Trout Shue, “We have found your wife’s neck to have been broken.”

Shue’s head dropped and an expression of despair crossed his face. He whispered, “They cannot prove that I did it”

The autopsy findings were quite damning to Shue. A report on March 9 stated, “The discovery was made that the neck was broken and the windpipe mashed. On the throat were the marks of fingers indicating that she had been choken [sic]. The neck was dislocated between the first and second vertebrae. The ligaments were torn and ruptured. The windpipe had been crushed at a point in front of the neck.”

The findings were made public at once, upsetting many in the community. Shue was arrested and charged with murder. He was locked up in the small stone jail on Washington Street in Lewisburg and in spite of the fact that the evidence against him was circumstantial, at best, he was indicted by a grand jury and was formally arraigned for murder. He immediately entered a plea of “not guilty.”

While he awaited trial, information about Shue’s unsavory past began to surface. Zona had been his third wife. His first marriage, to Allie Estelline Cutlip, had produced one child but had ended in divorce in 1889 while Shue was in prison for horse stealing. His wife alleged in the divorce decree that Shue had been violent and had frequently beaten her. In 1894, Shue had married again, this time to Lucy Ann Tritt. Lucy died just eight months later under circumstances that were described as “mysterious.” Shue claimed that Lucy fell and hit her head on a rock, but few believed him. Before any action could be taken against him, he packed up and left the area. In the fall of 1896, he moved to Greenbrier County.

In jail, Shue remained in good spirits, and reported that his grieving for Zona had ended. In fact, he announced that he had a lifelong goal of having seven wives. Since Zona had only been his third, and he was still a young man, he had a good chance of realizing such a worthwhile ambition. He repeatedly told reporters that his guilt in the matter could not be proved.

The trial began on June 22, 1897 and numerous people from the community testified against Shue. The highlight of the trial, of course, came with the appearance of Mary Jane Heaster. Preston put her on the stand as both the mother of the dead woman and also as the first person to notice the unusual circumstances of Zona’s death. He wanted to make sure that she appeared both sane and reliable. For this reason, he skirted the issue of the ghost because it was bound to make her appear irrational and also because it was inadmissible evidence. The teller of the story, in this case Zona Shue, could obviously not be cross-examined by the defense and so her testimony would be hearsay under the law.

Unfortunately for Shue, his attorney decided to ask Mrs. Heaster about her ghostly sighting. It seemed obvious that he was doing it to try and make Mary Jane look ridiculous to the jury. He characterized her “visions” as a mother’s ravings and worked hard to admit that she might have been mistaken about what she allegedly saw. He continued to badger her for quite some time, but Mary Jane never wavered in her descriptions of Zona’s ghost – nor about what the specter had told hr about Shue’s guilt. When the defense counsel realized that the testimony was not going the way that he wanted, he dismissed her.

By that time, though, the damage was done. Because the defense and not the prosecution had introduced the testimony about the spirit, the judge had a hard time telling the jury to exclude it. It was apparent that most of the people in the community believed that Mary Jane had seen her daughter’s ghost. Despite Shue’s eloquent testimony in his own defense, the jury quickly found him guilty. Ten of them even voted that he be hanged, which spoke volumes about Mrs. Heaster’s believability as a witness. Without a unanimous verdict of death, though, Shue was sentenced to life in prison.

The sentence did not satisfy everyone in Greenbrier County. On July 11, 1897, a citizen’s group of anywhere from 15 to 30 men assembled eight miles west of Lewisburg to form a lynching party. They had purchased a new rope and were well armed when they started towards the jail. If not for a man named George M. Harrah, who alerted the sheriff, Shue would have surely been lynched. Harrah contacted Deputy Sheriff Dwyer at the jail. It was said that when Shue was informed of this threat against his life, he became “greatly agitated” and was unable to tie his own shoes. Dwyer hid him in the woods a mile or so from town and until deputies were able to disband the mob and return them to their homes.

Shue was moved to the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville on July 14, where he lived for the next three years. He died on March 13, 1900 from one of the epidemics that swept through the prison that spring. At that time, the prison commonly buried unclaimed remains in the nearby Tom’s Run Cemetery, for which no records were kept until the 1930s. Thanks to this, no trace of Trout Shue can be found today.

Mary Jane Robinson Heaster lived to tell her tale to all who would listen. She died in September 1916 without ever recanting her story about her daughter’s ghost.

And as for Zona, her ghost was never seen again, but she has left a haunting, historical mark on Greenbrier County. It is one that is still being felt today. In fact, a roadside marker along Route 60 still commemorates the case. It reads:

Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from ghost helped convict a murderer.

The story of the Greenbrier Ghost – along with dozens of other crime and ghost stories – appears in my book, DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES. It’s the first book in a series of titles that are available in autographed print copies from the website, or as Kindle editions from Amazon.com 

Chicago's Last Pioneer

CHICAGO’S LAST PIONEER

The Eccentric Life & Death of Cap Streeter

On this day, January 22, 1921, one of Chicago’s most unusual, eccentric and entertaining characters breathed his last. Captain George Wellington Streeter was considered by many to have been the last Chicago pioneer. Whether he deserves this title or not is another question, but he was certainly a colorful character and one that remains surrounded by lore that is uniquely a part of Chicago. During his years in the city, he defied the laws of Chicago and the state of Illinois, fought the courts and the police to a standstill and managed to keep the residents of the region in alternating states of anger and amusement for more than 30 years.

Streeter's greatest Chicago legacy was created by nature rather than by man. The waves had been beating unchallenged against the shoreline of Lake Michigan for centuries before the settlers came to Chicago. Along the open area north of the river, the lake deposited generation after generation of silt and sand and as it did so, the shore crept ever eastward. On the west side of what was known as Sand Street in those days, the city’s wealthiest residents claimed rights all of the way to the water’s edge, no matter where it might end up. As the beaches grew larger, so did their parcels of property. There was never any dispute about this until one summer day in 1886 when a strange and eccentric character laid claim to the vast Chicago shoreline – and made plans to hold that land with his own personal army!

 Captain George Wellington “Cap” Streeter, one of most colorful characters in Chicago history.

George Wellington Streeter was the great-grandson of an American Revolution veteran and the grandson of a drum major from the War of 1812. He was an avid showman and before he arrived in Chicago, he had roamed the West, had served in the Civil War (seeing action at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain), had watched his first wife run off to become a vaudeville star, had worked as a freight hauler, had been a hotel owner and for a time, was a business associate of two unsavory brothers from Missouri named Frank and Jesse James. Or at least those are the legends he told…

After his service in the war, Streeter brought together a menagerie composed of animals no more exciting than deer, otter, porcupines, and beavers, but he still managed to exhibit them at county fairs with some success. His prize exhibit was a white Normandy hog, which he insisted was 10 feet long and weighed over 1,500 pounds. He usually billed the beast as a "white elephant," to the delight of the crowds who came to see it.

Streeter's dubious business prospered for a while but when ticket sales slumped, he traded in his animals and became a ship navigator on the waters of Lake Michigan and the nearby rivers. He landed in Chicago in the 1870s and became part owner of the Wood's Museum, a famous showplace of the time. He soon sold out and became a salesman at county fairs, then left that business and served as a short-term owner of the Apollo Theater.

Bored in the city, Streeter returned to the lake, lured by the hope of striking it rich in Honduras. His second wife, Maria, was a raging drunk and would often disappear for a week at a time on a bender. Cap Streeter, as he was often called, never worried about her when she went missing. "It don't matter where she is," he would often say. "She's having a good time and will come home when she's ready." During one of her disappearances, Maria made a friend, a Captain Bowen, who convinced her that there was money to be made in Honduras. There was a revolution taking place there at the time and all a seaman had to do was to arrive in the country with a boatload of guns and he would find himself with a steamship concession on the rivers of Honduras.

Cap Streeter at work on the Reutan.

Soon after, Streeter began to borrow money and to build his own steamship, which he called the Reutan. He wanted to test her for seaworthiness and decided the best place to do so was on Lake Michigan. Streeter, Maria, an engineer and four passengers set out on July 10, 1886. A sudden storm blew in off the lake and the steamboat was nearly lost. They managed to make it to a point near the Chicago harbor, missed the breakwater, drifted northward and finally washed up onto a sandbar along the beach. Streeter had lashed himself to the wheel to keep from being washed overboard in the storm. Despite the grounding of his boat, he was not defeated. In fact, he took a look around and decided that the spot where the boat had washed ashore would make a fine place to live.

The boat remained at the site throughout the fall and into the winter. A sandbar began to grow up around it and Streeter offered local contractors the privilege of dumping sand, dirt, garbage or anything else they wanted near his new home. The lake continued to contribute sand as well and soon, the boat was no longer in the water but resting on dry land. In this way, Cap Streeter "created" 186 acres of his very own land. He had managed to find an older map of Chicago that indicated that the shoreline was actually west of his property and now claimed that he was beyond the shore of Chicago and Illinois. He dubbed this new property the "District of Lake Michigan" and while he recognized the laws of America, he declared that he was subject to no other rules or regulations.

The local property owners, the most noted of whom were Potter Palmer and N.K. Fairbanks, made it their common cause to get Streeter removed from the land along the lake. In their eyes, he was nothing more than a crude, obnoxious squatter and a blasphemous, drunken thief who had to be ousted. Streeter was throwing loud parties for other riff-raff in the region and worse, was selling liquor on Sunday. This was against the law in Chicago, but Cap had decided that it was perfectly legal in his district. Palmer and Fairbanks soon learned that threats did not work with Streeter, so they began to pursue legal options. Had they gone to the civil courts at once, things might have turned out differently but they went to the police instead, which started a guerilla struggle that lasted for years. The battle involved the city police, the park police, special constables and dozens of lawyers. The courts were appealed to over and over again and Cap was arrested several times but always managed to go free.

A houseboat that had been turned into a house in the new district of Streeterville 

Eventually, the Chicago gentry, with their now-obstructed view of the lake, thanks to Cap's boat, outhouses and ramshackle buildings, chose less subtle methods of moving Streeter off his land. In the summer of 1894, five men from Chicago Title and Trust served Cap with orders to remove himself from the property. They received shotgun pellets in their backsides for their trouble. When three policemen came to arrest Cap for the shooting, Maria doused them with boiling water, forcing them to retreat. Cap was later arrested but no charges were pressed because there was still a dispute as to whether Streeter owned the property and whether or not the men were trespassing.

Later that fall, Cap's house was attacked by 25 police officers, working on an unofficial payroll from Potter Palmer and his compatriots. Streeter opened fire on the men and Maria managed to nearly sever the arm of one of them. After they were arrested, all charges against them were dismissed after they claimed "self-defense." Around this same time, Cap discovered the old Chicago map that indicated that his district was outside of the city limits. He named William H. Niles as his military governor and set about creating a separate state from Illinois. In 1899, he turned one of the outhouses on his property into a courthouse, raised an American flag and issued his own "declaration of independence." Streeter and a number of his friends were arrested on charges of illegal assembly but were later released.

On May 25, 1899 (just a few weeks after Streeter declared his district independent of Chicago and Illinois), more than 500 handpicked police officers charged into Streeter's district because Cap allegedly shot at a police captain's carriage. Military governor Niles had already entrenched Cap's men around the property and he armed his troops with a cannon that had been stolen from a nearby park. The city soon had Streeter's district surrounded with officers in the front and a tugboat that was armed with a Gatling gun in the rear. The police charged but were repulsed by buckshot and rocks. Around nightfall, the police officers charged again and managed to overwhelm the ragtail "army." Streeter was captured but was soon released and the police officers involved in the fiasco were reprimanded for their roles in the affair. In those days, it was not illegal to shoot at a police captain's carriage.

But no one was willing to let the matter go away quietly. One night while Streeter and his wife were out of the house, several officers broke into their house and confiscated a number of Cap's guns. Enraged, Streeter marched down to the Chicago Avenue police station and took all of the officers and staff hostage. He demanded the return of his guns and when they were given back, he left the station peaceably. Cap was soon arrested and charges were filed against him. His defense turned out to be so eloquent that he was acquitted.

One of the shacks located in the “District of Streeterville”

Another bizarre incident occurred in the spring of 1900. A group of men, posing as land buyers (Cap had been selling off lots of real estate from an office in the Tremont Hotel) took over the district while Streeter was away and burned down his house. Cap quickly responded and after raising an army, marched into the District and took back the property. Police officers were again raised in response. Three-inch guns were mounted onto two of the city's fire tugs, 16 patrol wagons were lined up outside of the district and over 400 officers were called in to serve as troops. The volatile standoff ended when a lone policeman convinced Streeter that he should surrender himself. He did so and was acquitted again of all charges against him.

In 1902, Streeter and several of his cronies were indicted for forging the name of President Grover Cleveland on a land grant that "proved" that his district was outside of the jurisdiction of Chicago. It was later reported that the document Streeter used was actually a paper signed by President Martin Van Buren that gave certain lands to John Kinzie and his heirs. The heirs then immediately sued to have the land returned to them, which meant that the wealthy citizens who were trying to get rid of Cap Streeter for being a squatter were now being accused of being squatters themselves. The case eventually went away and Palmer and the others were able to again focus their attentions on the Streeter problem.

Cap Streeter - holding the dog - and some of his supporters and residents of Streeterville. Note the man to the right of Streeter holding a rifle to his shoulder

And it was in this same year that things took another turn and for the first time, Streeter actually ended up in jail over the matter - only this time for something that he didn't do. Wealthy business owners and their cronies hired a gunman from Missouri named John Kirk to go in and clear Cap out, no matter what it took. Days later, Kirk's body was discovered in a Chicago alleyway, riddled with bullet holes. Streeter was shortly arrested and railroaded through the courts with a guilty charge for murder. He was sent to Joliet prison and while he was there, Maria died from exposure and hunger. Streeter cursed Chicago for her death. He was eventually cleared of the charge, and released with a full and unconditional pardon, but he was never the same again.

In 1906, he re-married, though, this time to Alma Lockwood, who was 33 years his junior. Streeter had managed to hang on to his district, now dubbed Streeterville, for years but his days were numbered. By 1915, the land actually controlled by Cap had dwindled to nothing more than a fenced enclosure that surrounded the remains of his home. Streeter still held parties there, though, and sold liquor, even on Sundays, which was still illegal. The city informed him that he had to obtain a liquor license and sent several police officers to enforce the order. Streeter stabbed the sergeant who carried the papers in the behind with a bayonet as a reply. He was arrested but was quickly bailed out.

Cap married Alma Lockwood in 1906. She was 33 years younger than he was, but she stood by him for the rest of his life.

The following day, eight policemen charged into the district and attempted to arrest Cap again. Two of them grabbed Alma's ax but she managed to disarm six of the officers anyway. Another officer was wounded by birdshot from one of Cap's guns. Alma was arrested after the incident for "assault with intent to kill" but she was acquitted when it came out in court that none of the policemen ever identified themselves as officers.

After years of defending himself against attackers, the city of Chicago and the court system, Cap Streeter was finally defeated on December 11, 1918. On that day, the courts finally decided that Streeter had no real claim to the land that he called Streeterville. He was finally evicted and his home was burned to the ground, marking an end to one of the city's most unusual eras.

Streeter remained an eccentric Chicago character until the day he died. He began selling hot dogs and coffee at Navy Pier and lived comfortably in a new houseboat that he had purchased called the Vamoose. His final days came after he lost an eye while chopping wood. A sliver of kindling flew upward and put out his eye, which led to an infection. He contracted pneumonia in his weakened state and died on January 22, 1921 at the age of 84. The mayor, and half of the city, attended his funeral.

The Vamoose became a menace to navigation and was destroyed by city order in 1928. Alma, who saved only Cap's musket as a memento of their life together, ended her days making and selling aprons and she died in 1936. She never gave up on her husband's claims to the ownership of Streeterville, though, and she and his heirs continued their lawsuits until 1940, when a federal court finally dismissed the claims.

Oddly, this is not quite the end of the story… The original Streeterville District extended from the Chicago River to Oak Street Beach, east of Michigan Avenue. Cap's claims to this area were little more than a nuisance to the wealthy and privileged in his day but now, the land would be worth billions. Today, old Cap Streeter is barely remembered by most, except for the name Streeterville, which still persists in Chicago. For this reason, it would likely come as a surprise to many to learn that the presence of Streeter still lingers today -- in the form of a curse that allegedly "haunts" this part of the city.

Legend has it that Cap Streeter's final words were a curse on the politicians and on the city of Chicago for the real and imagined wrongs that had plagued the last several decades of his life. This story was often told, but nothing much was thought of it until the 1970s. Just a few years before, Streeterville had been changed forever by the construction of the massive John Hancock building. Erected between 1965 and 1969, the giant structure loomed high over the city around it. Despite the stories, though, no one died during the dangerous work that was done to create the building. However, that quickly changed after the tenants began moving in. A series of strange deaths began to plague the building, including the murder of a man on the sixth floor and a number of unusual fires.

The strangest, and most widely reported death, occurred during the early morning hours of August 12, 1971. The victim was one Lorraine Kowalski, the girlfriend of affluent Marshall Berlin, vice president of I.S. Berlin Press, a Chicago printing company. The two of them spent the evening of August 11 separately, with Berlin out for dinner with another woman and Kowalski visiting nightclubs on the near north side with her friend, Carol Thompson. Kowalski reportedly returned to the Hancock Building at about 3:30 a.m. on the morning of August 12. She was incoherent, alone and exhausted from her night out. According to reports from residents, Kowalski and Berlin became involved in a volatile argument, but Berlin told investigators that Lorraine had simply been despondent over the direction their relationship had taken. Thompson told police that her friend had been intoxicated well before midnight.

In the midst of the argument, Berlin retreated into the bathroom. When he came back out a few minutes later, he stated that the bedroom window had been shattered and that Lorraine's clothing was scattered about the room. It was 4:10 a.m. and Berlin placed a quick call to the Chicago Avenue police station. 

Apparently, while he was in the bathroom, a naked Kowalski plunged out the window of the apartment and fell to the pavement many floors below. As she fell to the street, she took numerous shards of the window glass with her -- which remains one of the most puzzling parts to this mysterious incident. The double pane of glass in the apartment window was capable of withstanding 280 pounds of pressure per square foot and yet somehow, the slight 130-pound woman managed to break through it.

Berlin refused to take a polygraph test and told the investigators that Kowalski had threatened to commit suicide just moments before he went into the bathroom. No charges were ever brought in the case and it remains unsolved to this day.

This death joined numerous others that occurred in the area. Was it merely a coincidence? Or is the area shadowed by Cap Streeter's legendary curse?

Streeterville is just one of the many places visited on the Weird Chicago Tours, the best ghost tour in the Windy City! Check out upcoming tours and events by going to the Weird Chicago website and we’ll see you on a future tour!

Born to Kill

BORN TO KILL

The Wild Ride of Starkweather and Fugate

On this date, January 21, 1958, Charles Starkweather, age 19, claimed his first three victims – relatives of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, at her family’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska. The slayings started a murderous roadtrip through the American badlands of Nebraska and Wyoming that ended with seven more people dead. It was an American horror story that ended in the electric chair for Charlie Starkweather and with a ruined life for his young girlfriend.

Charlie Starkweather – the James Dean wanna-be. 

Charles Raymond Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the third of seven people to Guy and Helen Starkweather. They were an ordinary family from a working-class background, with well-behaved children and nothing to suggest that one of the children would become one of America’s most feared murderers. Guy Starkweather was by all accounts a mild-mannered man; he was a carpenter who was often unemployed due to rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. During Guy's periods of unemployment, Starkweather's mother supplemented the family income by working as a waitress.

Charlie attended Saratoga Elementary School, Everett Junior High School), and Lincoln High School. In contrast to his family life, Starkweather possessed no kind remembrances of his time of going to school and his early childhood. He was born with genu varum, a mild birth defect that caused his legs to be misshapen. He also suffered from a speech impediment, which led to constant teasing by classmates. He was considered a slow learner and was accused of never applying himself, although in his teens, it was discovered that he suffered from severe myopia that had drastically affected his vision for most of his life. The only thing in school that Charlie really excelled in was gym class. It was there that he found a physical outlet for his growing rage against those who bullied him. Starkweather used his newfound physicality to begin bullying those who had once bullied him. That inner rage soon grew to reach anyone he happened to dislike. Charlie went from being considered one of the most well-behaved students in school to one of the most trouble – and most feared.

A high school friend named Bob von Busch later recalled:

“He could be the kindest person you've ever seen. He'd do anything for you if he liked you. He was a hell of a lot of fun to be around, too. Everything was just one big joke to him. But he had this other side. He could be mean as hell, cruel. If he saw some poor guy on the street who was bigger than he was, better looking, or better dressed, he'd try to take the poor bastard down to his size.”

After viewing the film Rebel Without a Cause, Charlie developed a James Dean fixation and began to groom his hairstyle and dress himself to look like Dean. Starkweather related to Dean's rebellious screen persona, believing that he had found a kindred spirit of sorts, someone who had suffered torment similar to his own whom he could admire.

In 1956, Charlie, then 18, met a 13-year-old girl named Caril Ann Fugate. He soon developed a fixation on the girl, who returned the older boy’s attentions. In order to be close to Caril, he dropped out of Lincoln High School in his senior year and started working at the Western Union newspaper warehouse. It was the perfect job for him since it was located near Whittier Junior High, where Caril was a student. Being close by, he was able to visit her every day after school. Starkweather was considered a poor worker, and his employer later recalled that he was terrible at his job, having to be told things two or three times so that he’d get it right. But it wasn’t stupidity that made Charlie bad at his job – it was his obsession with Caril.

Charlie taught Caril how to drive and one day she crashed his 1949 Ford into another car. Mr. Starkweather paid the damages, since he was the legal owner of the car, but this caused a fight between Charlie and his father (just like the fight between James Dean’s movie father in Charlie’s favorite movie) and he kicked Charlie out of the house.

Charlie quit his job at the warehouse and began working as a garbage collector. Unhappy, angry and belligerent, he used the garbage route to begin plotting bank robberies and finally conceived his own personal philosophy by which he lived the remainder of his life: "Dead people are all on the same level".

On November 30, 1957, Charlie committed his first murder. He became angry at a local gas station attendant named Robert Colvert for refusing to sell him a stuffed animal on credit. Starkweather returned several times during the night to purchase small items, then finally – brandishing a shotgun – forced Colvert to hand over $100. He forced the man into his car and drove him out to a remote location. When Colvert realized that Charlie planned to kill him, he fought back, but was injured by the younger, stronger man. Starkweather shot him in the head and left him to die in an empty field. He later claimed that by killing Colvert he believed he had transcended his former self, reaching a new plane of existence in which he was above and outside the law.

On January 21, 1958, Charlie went to Caril’s home. She wasn’t there but her mother and step-father, Velda and Marion Bartlett, were. Out of the young girl’s earshot, they took the opportunity to Charlie that he needed to stay away from the young girl. Charlie responded by shooting both of them to death. He then killed their two-year-old daughter Betty Jean by strangling and stabbing her.

The area behind the Bartletts’ home, where Charlie and Caril hid the bodies of the family

When Caril came home, they hid the bodies behind the house. For the next six days, they lived there together until shortly before the police arrived on January 27. They had been alerted by Caril’s suspicious grandmother, who had been unable to reach Velda and Marion for days.

Charlie and Caril went on the run. They drove first to the Bennet, Nebraska farm house of 76-year-old August Meyer, a family friend. Looking for money, food and a place to hide out, they broke into the house and Charlie killed Meyer with a shotgun blast to the head. After ransacking the house, they ran again.

Investigators guard and examine the car Charlie was driving on January 27, 1958, the day he and Caril killed three people and got stuck in the mud near Bennet, Nebraska.

Fleeing the area, Starkweather and Fugate drove their car into mud, and abandoned the vehicle. When Robert Jensen and Carol King, two local teenagers, stopped to give them a ride, Starkweather forced them to drive back to an abandoned storm shelter in Bennet, where he shot Jensen in the back of the head, then attempted to rape King, but not being able to perform, became angry with her, so shot her to death. According to reports, Caril mutilated Carol King’s genitalia in an apparent jealous rage. Starkweather later admitted shooting Jensen, claiming that Fugate shot King. The two fled Bennet in Jensen's car.

The Ward house in Lincoln

Starkweather and Fugate drove to a wealthy section of Lincoln, where they entered the home of industrialist C. Lauer Ward and his wife, Clara. Both Clara and maid Lillian Fencl were fatally stabbed, and Starkweather snapped the neck of the family dog. Starkweather later admitted throwing a knife at Clara; however, he accused Caril of inflicting the multiple stab wounds that were found on her body. He also accused Caril of fatally stabbing Fencl, whose body also had multiple stab wounds. When Lauer Ward returned home that evening, Starkweather shot him. Charlie and Caril filled Ward's black 1956 Packard with stolen jewelry from the house and fled Nebraska.

It was the murder of the wealthy industrialist that caused an uproar in Lincoln. Every law enforcement agency in the region began a house-by-house search for the killers. Governor Victor E. Anderson contacted the Nebraska National Guard, and the Lincoln chief of police called for a block-by-block search of the city. Frequent sightings of the two were often reported but the teenage killers stayed one step ahead of the law.

In need of a new car –thanks to the high profile of Ward’s stolen Packard – Charlie and Caril found traveling salesman Merle Collison sleeping in his Buick along the highway outside Douglas, Wyoming. After they woke Collison, they shot him. Starkweather later accused Caril of finishing the salesman off after his shotgun jammed. He claimed that she was the "most trigger happy person" he had ever met.

Merle Collison’s body – a man that Charlie claimed was murdered by Caril after his own shotgun jammed.

The salesman's car had a push-pedal emergency brake, which was something new to Starkweather. While attempting to drive away, the car stalled. He tried to restart the engine, and a passing motorist stopped to help. Starkweather threatened him with the rifle, and an altercation ensued. At that moment, a deputy sheriff arrived on the scene. Caril ran to him, yelling something to the effect of: "It's Starkweather! He's going to kill me!" Had she suddenly grown a conscience? Or did she believe that Charlie was inevitably going to be caught and saw this as a way to escape the legal ramifications of their string of crimes?

Caril waits for medical treatment for her shock at the Converse County Sheriff's Office after her "surrender" to the police.

Charlie sped away, pursued by the police. In a chase that exceeded speeds of 100 miles per hour, a stray bullet managed to shatter his windshield, slicing him with flying glass. Covered in blood, he finally stopped the car and surrendered to the police. Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin said, "He thought he was bleeding to death. That's why he stopped. That's the kind of yellow son of a bitch he is."

Under questioning, Charlie first claimed Caril had been kidnapped by him and had nothing to do with the murders. However, he changed his story several times, finally testifying at Caril's trial that she was a willing participant. Caril Fugate has always maintained he was holding her hostage by threatening to kill her family, claiming she was unaware they were already dead. Judge Harry A. Spencer didn’t believe her story. She had many chances to escape, he said and she was given a life sentence on November 21, 1958. Her sentence was eventually commuted, allowing her to be paroled in June 1976.

Charlie Starkweather, on the other hand, received the death penalty for the murder of Robert Jensen (the only murder for which he was tried), and was executed by electric chair at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, Nebraska, at 12:01 a.m. on June 25, 1959. Starkweather is buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln along with five of his victims: the Bartlett family and the Wards.

Caril was paroled in June 1976 after serving 17 ½ years at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska. She moved to Lansing, Michigan after her release, where she changed her name and worked as a janitor at a Lansing hospital. Fugate married in 2007 but (aside from a brief appearance on a radio talk show in 1996) has refused to speak about what happened during the murderous crime spree.