"THE CLAY PIGEON OF THE UNDERWORLD"

The Murder of Jack “Legs” Diamond

On December 18, 1931, gangster and bootlegger, Jack “Legs” Diamond, was shot to death in a rooming house in Albany, New York. Diamond had already survived five attempts on his life between 1916 and 1931, causing him to be known as the “clay pigeon of the underworld.” In 1930, Dutch Schultz, an enemy of Diamond, remarked to his gang, “Ain’t there nobody that can shoot this guy so that he don’t bounce back?”

This time, Diamond didn’t “bounce back.”

Jack “Legs” Diamond

Diamond, whose real name was John Moran, was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1897. His parents, John and Sara, were Irish immigrants. In 1889, a younger brother, Eddie, was born. The two boys struggled through grade school, while their mother suffered from health problems. She died on December 24, 1913, and their father moved them to Brooklyn soon after. Jack almost immediately fell in with some of the young street gangs of the era, notably the Boiler Gang. His first arrest for burglary occurred when he broke into a jewelry store on February 4, 1914. More than a dozen arrests would eventually follow. After a brief stint in a juvenile reformatory, he was drafted into the military during World War I. Not surprisingly, he deserted after less than a year and was sent to Leavenworth.

When he got out of prison in 1921, he returned to New York, where he began associating with Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who was then a young, but up and coming gangster. Diamond did odd jobs for Luciano, who introduced him to gambler Arnold Rothstein, who was the most powerful mobster in the city at the time. He eventually became Rothstein’s personal bodyguard and was cut in on the new heroin racket, which was making a lot of money.

Diamond, who had taken in his younger brother Eddie, was now making a lot of cash and the brothers decided to start their own bootlegging business. It was a common practice at the time to hijack liquor shipments from other gangsters and then sell it, hurting the competition and making a huge profit. Unfortunately, the brothers decided to hijack truckloads that belonged to Owen “The Killer” Madden and “Big Bill” Dwyer, two of the most ruthless Irish mobsters in the city. They were also connected to a larger syndicate that was run by Dutch Schultz, Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and others. Once word got around that the hijackings had been carried out by the Diamonds, the brothers lost any protection that they might have had and became targets for everyone.

On October 24, 1924, Diamond was driving his Dodge sedan along Fifth Avenue and stopped at the intersection with 110th Street. A large black limousine pulled up next to him. A shotgun appeared from the back window and, according to witnesses, opened fire on Diamond. He ducked down and hit the gas. He drove an entire block without looking over the dashboard. When he did, he saw that the black car was gone. He drove himself to nearby Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors removed shotgun pellets from his head and face. When the police questioned him, he shrugged the whole thing off. They must’ve thought he was someone else, he told them.

It was obvious to Diamond that he needed protection, so he turned to Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, a Jewish gangster who ran several rackets in Lower Manhattan. The main thing that he had going for him, as far as Diamond was concerned, was that he was one of the few people who didn’t want to kill him. Orgen wanted to increase his own power base so that he could compete with Luciano, Lansky, and the rest. Diamond would provide some of the muscle that he needed. Jack and Eddie became Orgen’s bodyguards and, in turn, Orgen cut them in on his liquor and narcotic rackets.

Then, on October 15, 1925, Orgen and Diamond were finishing their daily meetings and collections rounds and were approaching the corner of Delancy and Norfolk Streets in Lower Manhattan. Three men approached them and started shooting. Orgen was fatally wounded in the head and Diamond was hit twice on the right side. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital for emergency surgery and eventually recovered. He refused to tell the police anything and they tried to charge him with murder, but couldn’t make anything stick. Orgen’s murder was never solved, although it was believed to have been arranged by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and his partner, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro. They wanted to take over Orgen’s rackets and it’s believed that Diamond may have been in on the plot. After he was released from the hospital, he took over Orgen’s liquor operation, while Buchalter and Shapiro took over the dead man’s narcotics and other rackets.

With cash now pouring in, Diamond became a regular on the nightclub circuit and his picture started showing up in the newspapers. He was never portrayed as a gangster, though, only as a “wealthy man about town.” The public loved him and so did the ladies. Although married, he was a womanizer and his best-known mistress was showgirl and dancer Marion “Kiki” Roberts. His flamboyant lifestyle kept him out at the clubs at night and this may have been how he obtained the nickname “Legs.” He was a great dancer and was part owner of the Hotsy Totsy Club, a dance spot on Broadway. So, the nickname could have come from this or, as others have suggested, from his uncanny ability to escape death.

On July 14, 1929, violence came to the Hotsy Totsy Club. Two brothers, Pete and William “Red” Cassidy, along with a friend named Simon Walker, started a fight at the club after bartenders and staff members refused to serve the already drunk men. When a waiter told them to quiet down, Red turned on the waiter and began arguing with him. Walker grabbed club manager Hymie Cohen by the arm, demanded service, and threatened to destroy the club if they didn’t get it. He then shoved Cohen to the floor. Diamond and one of his cronies, Charles Entratta, saw the exchanged and stepped in. He told Walker, “I’m Jack Diamond and I run this place. If you don’t calm down, I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Walker turned to Diamond and snarled, “You can’t push me around.” Those turned out to be his final words.

Diamond and Entratta both pulled their guns and shot Walker and the Cassidy brothers. Red was hit three times in the head, once in the stomach, and once in the groin. Walker was hit six times in the stomach. Both men were dead when they hit the floor. When the police arrived, Pete Cassidy was lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs with three gunshot wounds. Guns were found on all three of the men, who had extensive arrest records.

There were more than 50 people in the club when the incident took place – but no one saw a thing. Their backs were turned, they told detectives, or they were in the bathroom. Within six weeks of the shooting, Cohen, the waiter, two bartenders, and the club’s hat-check girl all disappeared. The waiter’s bullet-ridden body was later found in New Jersey. No trace was ever located of the others.

No witnesses ever came forward, so Diamond and Entratta were never charged. With the heat on him, though, Diamond closed down the club and moved to Greene County in upstate New York with his long-suffering wife, Alice. But he was only in Greene County for a short time before he sent word to New York that he was planning to return soon and reclaim what was his. When he had left the city, Schultz and Madden had quickly taken over his rackets. His planned return made him an immediate target and earned him the moniker of “clay pigeon of the underworld.”

Diamond with his wife, Alice.

In 1930, while preparing for his move back to the city, but also while establishing a bootlegging operation in Greene County, Diamond and two others kidnapped Grover Parks, a truck driver, who had been hauling liquor. They wanted to know where he was picking up his alcohol shipments, but Parks refused to tell them. Oddly, they set him loose. A few months later, Diamond tried the same thing with another driver, James Parks, and this time, he was arrested and charged with kidnapping. He was later acquitted at trial.

In late August 1930, Diamond traveled to Europe. He told reporters that he was on his way to Vichy, France, where he would take a mineral water “cure” for his health. The real reason for the trip, though, was to establish a German liquor source. He was planning to smuggle alcohol from Europe to reestablish his New York operation.

But nothing went according to plan. When the ship docked in Belgium, he was taken into custody by the police. After several hours of questioning, he was put on a train to Germany. When he arrived there, he was arrested by the German Secret Service and put him on a freighter that was bound for Philadelphia. It arrived on September 23 and he was immediately arrested by the Philadelphia police. At a court hearing on the same day, Diamond was told that he would be released if he left for New York within the hour. The weary gangster readily agreed.  

In New York, he moved into the Hotel Monticello in Manhattan and began trying to take back his rackets in the city. Hardly anyone was happy to have him back. On the morning of October 10, 1930, Diamond was wounded by three men who forced their way into his hotel suite and shot him five times. Still in his pajamas, he staggered out into the hall, where he collapsed. He was rushed to Polyclinic Hospital, where he slowly recovered enough to be discharged on December 30. When asked how he had managed to make it to the hallway with five bullets in him, Diamond said that he had already had two shots of whiskey for breakfast.   

On April 21, 1931, Diamond was arrested again, this time on assault charges that dated back to the Parks beating in 1930. Two days later, he posted bond and was released.

A week later, however, he was shot and wounded again. He was at a roadhouse called the Aratoga Inn, near Cairo, New York, which was owned by Jimmy Wynne. Wynne had numerous underworld connection and the nightclub was a popular hangout for gangsters. Diamond had just finished eating with three companions and was waiting on a telephone call from his attorney. As he walked to the front door to get some fresh air, three gunmen who were dressed as duck hunters, opened fire on him. Diamond was hit several times. A local man drove him to a hospital in Albany, where he was treated for his injuries.

His troubles continued. On May 1, while he was still in the hospital, New York State Troopers seized beer and liquor worth more than $5,000 from one of Diamond’s hideouts in Cairo. He was charged with bootlegging and sentenced to four years in state prison. He appealed the conviction and remained free on bail while he awaited the outcome of the appeal.

Meanwhile, Diamond still had to face the music in the Parks case and later that year, he went to trial. He was again acquitted on the assault and kidnapping charges. He left court a free man on December 17, 1931.

In the mood for a celebration, he and his family, along with a few friends, celebrated at the Rainbow Room of the Kenmore Hotel, the best hotel in Albany. At about 1:00 a.m. on December 18, he left the party and went to his see his mistress, “Kiki” Roberts, who was staying at another hotel. Roberts had attended the celebration party, but had left before midnight. Diamond stayed in her room until about 4:30 a.m. and then was driven to 67 Dove Street, a private rooming house where he had been staying during his trial. He entered the locked front door with his key, went upstairs to his room, and fell asleep on the bed.

Witness reports say that a large black car, which had been parked down the street for some time, pulled up to the rooming house soon after Diamond arrived. Two men got out and entered the front door, using a key, and quickly went upstairs. When they got to Diamond’s room they either used a key or, as some believe, Diamond drunkenly left his own key in the lock, and entered the room. Diamond was asleep on the bed. While one man held him down, the other shot Diamond three times in the head.

They ran out of the room, but when they were halfway down the stairs, one of the gunman rack back up, went back into Diamond’s room, and shot him a few more times – apparently, just for good measure. The landlady, Laura Woods, awakened by the shots, overheard the second gunman call out, “Oh hell, that’s enough, come on!” The men left the house and drove away in the black car.

A few minutes later, at 5:00 a.m., Mrs. Woods telephoned Alice Diamond, the contact that Jack had given her in case there was any trouble. Within minutes, Alice, one of Diamond’s men, and Diamond’s eight-year-old nephew, Eddie, arrived at the house. Alice entered the room and began to scream. She frantically wiped blood from his face with a towel while the police and an ambulance were called.  

Like most gangland slayings, the murder was never solved. In this case, there were just too many suspects since almost everyone seemed to want Diamond dead, from Dutch Schultz to the New York Syndicate, relatives of the Cassidy brothers who had been shot at the Hotsy Totsy Club, and even local politicians who wanted Diamond out of the Albany area. It didn’t seem to matter to most who had killed him – there weren’t many who were going to miss him.

Diamond was buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Queens on December 23. There was no church service of graveside ceremony. The burial was attended by Alice, her sister and brother-in-law, three nieces, a cousin, about a dozen reporters, and more than 200 curiosity-seekers. There were no known gangsters in attendance and, against the custom of the day, none of them sent flowers either.  

Diamond may have gotten what he deserved, but there was one sad footnote to the story. On July 1, 1933, Alice Diamond was found shot to death in her Brooklyn apartment. It was speculated that she was killed by her husband’s enemies to keep her quiet, but no one knows for sure. Her murder, like the murder of Jack “Legs” Diamond, was never solved. 

"THE KING OF BEERS"

Raise a glass to Adolphus Busch

In 1929, Gerald Holland wrote in the American Mercury magazine, “whatever odium may be attached to beer in other parts of the Republic, its status in St. Louis is as firmly grounded as James Eads’ span across the Mississippi... beer made St. Louis.”

And he was right. There has not been a time in St. Louis’ history as a frontier station, fur-trading outpost, hard-living river town and gateway to the West that there has not been beer in the city. Dating back to 1809, when a man named John Coons set up a primitive brewery on the riverfront, and continuing today, St. Louis is a city where beer is king. Over two hundred breweries have existed in and around St. Louis during the past two centuries. Many were small, long-forgotten operations that lasted only a few years while others grew to be national, and international, companies that are still in existence today. To ghost enthusiasts, the most famous beer in St. Louis history was, of course, made by the Lemp family, but the greatest surviving brewery of the “golden age” is undoubtedly Anheuser-Busch.

The company really got its start under another name entirely – Hammer and Urban. They were a small contender among the city’s 49 breweries in 1860.  The brewery’s production capacity far exceeded the demand for its product and the partners were forced into bankruptcy. During the legal proceedings that followed, two of the brewery’s creditors took over its operations. E. Anheuser and Company, the new operator, was made up of a partnership between Eberhard Anheuser, a successful candle and soap maker, and William D’Oench, a wholesale medicine supplier. They called it the Bavarian Brewery but neither man had much of an idea of what to do with it. D’Oench quickly turned over control to Anheuser and as luck would have it, the Civil War (and the hard drinking soldiers in St. Louis) turned it into a lucrative business, despite the poor quality of the beer they were making.

When the war ended, though, he knew he was in trouble. His partner had sold out in 1864, leaving Anheuser to run the brewery on his own. Anheuser had never claimed to be a master brewer. He knew everything there was to know about making soap, but beer remained a mystery to him. Union troops and thirsty laborers had been willing to drink his beer but the discriminating Germans of St. Louis didn’t want any part of it. They didn’t have to settle for a mediocre brew when there were a dozen other breweries in the city turning out far superior lager for the same price.

While Anheuser may not have known much about beer, he had become rich by knowing how to run a business. He knew that he needed help right away and he knew where to find it – with his talented and charismatic son-in-law, Adolphus Busch.

Adolphus Busch arrived in St. Louis in 1857 and found his first employment among the commission houses on the levee. Born in Germany on July 10, 1839, Busch was the well-educated son of a successful businessman. The second-youngest of twenty-two children, some of them half-siblings, he attended school at the Gymnasium of Mainz, the Academy of Darmstadt and the Collegiate Institute of Brussels. He spoke, in addition to German, fluent French and English and was proficient in Italian and Spanish, as well. Within a couple of years, he began specializing in malts and hops and as a supplier to Eberhard Anheuser, he came to admire Anheuser’s blonde, curly-haired daughter, Elisa, known as “Lilly.” On March 7, 1861, Adolphus and seventeen-year-old Lilly were married in a double-ring ceremony with Adolphus’ brother, Ulrich Busch, Jr., and Lilly’s sister, Anna. Legend has it Adolphus was twenty minutes late for the wedding because he had stopped to close a business deal. Despite the inauspicious start to their union, Adolphus and Lilly went on to have fourteen children, nine of whom survived to adulthood. Shortly after the wedding, Ulrich and Anna moved to Chicago, where Ulrich went into the brewery supply business. Adolphus enlisted in the Union Army, where he joined up with one of the regiments from the south side of the city and was sent to fight in southern and western Missouri. When he returned to St. Louis, he went back into the supply business and in 1864 he began working part-time as a salesman for the Bavarian Brewery.

 

Adolphus Busch and Elisa “Lilly” Anheuser Busch

In 1869, he sold his shares of the supply company and used the funds to buy into the Bavarian Brewery. The company was restructured, with Anheuser continuing as president and Busch becoming secretary. Anheuser turned most of his attention back to soap manufacturing and placed the management of the brewery into the hands of his capable son-in-law. In five years, Busch increased the production of beer from eight thousand barrels per year to eighteen thousand. Busch also seized upon many of the latest scientific and industrial innovations including pasteurization, which allowed the brewery to package, ship and store beer with a much longer shelf life, and artificial refrigeration, which allowed brewers to store beer in warehouses, making the lagering caves obsolete. Under Busch’s guidance, the brewery began bottling its beer in 1872. In 1883, Busch would become a full partner in the company and its name would be changed to the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association.

 In those days, brewing was still a local industry but there was a huge amount of money to be made in St. Louis. Busch was determined to corner the market. Unfortunately, he could not make claim to having the best brew in town; that honor was held by the Lemp family. However, even bad beer, if marketed correctly, could make the brewery a huge amount of money. In those days, the sales strategy for beer revolved around the “beer collector,” who bought beer but did not sell it. All brewers had such spending agents, but Busch gathered together an accomplished group of men and soon his beer was selling as well as the Falstaff brand from the Lemp brewery. Every saloon that sold Busch beer was favored by a visit from the collector once each month. He would travel from saloon to saloon, spending an amount proportionate to the saloon’s monthly beer purchase. This made the collector an important person with high social standing among men from all walks of life; indeed it was the habit of loafers to follow the beer collector’s carriage from saloon to saloon, hoping to be treated to free drinks at each stop. The usual protocol was for the beer collector to buy a man a Busch beer as long as that man turned around and bought two more for himself and his friends.

Busch was a consummate salesman who became known for his clever and innovative advertising. He gave away watch fobs, chinaware and other Victorian-era novelties advertising his product. Among the promotional items was a jackknife that doubled as a corkscrew, a useful item since beer at that time was corked rather than capped. On the handle was the E. Anheuser & Co. logo and at one end was a peephole through which could be viewed a portrait of Adolphus Busch. Another popular promotional item was a tray embellished with a picture of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery with flags flying proudly from every cupola and tower. Seated in a prominent spot was a zaftig young lady with a modest wisp of veil covering her lap, her pulchritude winsomely promoting the virtues of Busch beer.

One of the original “Bud” girls – seductive advertising for the late nineteenth century

During the years that the breweries were running at full stream, there was probably more beer consumed in St. Louis than in any other city of its size in the world. With beer sold at a nickel a glass (which also included the customary free lunch), it was a luxury that was within the reach of almost everyone.

  

Despite all his ingenious plans and clever marketing schemes, Busch was still trailing the Lemps in popularity and sales when the great beer revolution began and it became possible to bottle beer for a longer shelf life. Busch immediately installed bottling facilities at its brewery. Soon, though, it would be a brand of beer that would bring even great acclaim to Busch and his thriving brewery.

  

In 1876, Budweiser lager beer came on the market, brewed by the Anheuser brewery and bottled by Carl Conrad, a local wine and liquor merchant. It went largely unnoticed at first. According to the story, Conrad was traveling in Europe in the early 1870s and dined in a small Bohemian monastery, where he was served the most wonderful beer he had ever tasted. He offered to buy the recipe from the monks but they gladly gave it to him for free. After returning to America, he asked his friend Adolphus Busch to make the beer for him. It was dubbed “Budweiser” after the small town of Budweis where Conrad had discovered it. He bottled the beer that Busch made for him and sold it in his shop. Not long after, he ran into financial trouble and borrowed money from Busch to stay afloat. In January 1883, he declared bankruptcy and licensed the Budweiser name, bottling and marketing rights to the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Busch had been his largest creditor and had a $94,000 lien on his property. In January 1891, Busch legally acquired all rights to the Budweiser name and trademark and Conrad, with whom Busch maintained a lifelong friendship, joined Anheuser-Busch as a technician.

Budweiser was different from the other beers being produced because it was brewed with rice rather than corn grits for natural carbonation. It was then subjected to a second fermentation process and aged, as a true lager must be. Despite its higher price, it was soon in such demand that Busch was scarcely able to get enough bottles to its suppliers. So, the brewery invested in glass factories. Busch founded the Adolphus Busch Glass Factory of St. Louis and Belleville, Illinois, and the Streator Glass Company of Streator, Illinois, remaining chief stockholder in both to keep the cost advantage for the brewery.

A Budweiser bottle from the 1870s

Now, Busch not only had bottled beer to sell, but he had the best bottled beer in the country. His innovations were disastrous to the small breweries that were left in St. Louis and by 1900, only nineteen of them remained. Brewing had changed from a neighborhood business to one with the potential to reach markets everywhere, which is just what Busch began to do. While his competitors in St. Louis were struggling, he invested deeply and became a “traveling ambassador of beer.”

The genial mustachioed Busch was impeccably dressed and portly, as befitted a successful man of his day. While he appeared dignified he wasn’t a bit snobbish and had friends from all ranks of society. He loved a good laugh and didn’t mind poking fun at himself. He especially enjoyed pulling pranks on his friend and frequent traveling companion, St. Louis restaurant owner Tony Faust. One time, the two of them were in a restaurant in France. Busch, who spoke French, was teaching his friend how to order a meal. When they finished dining, Faust asked what he should say to ask the waiter for cigars. Bush spoke a phrase in French and Faust repeated it to the waiter, who obligingly brought Faust the check. Busch roared with laughter and his friend realized he’d been had.

Word of Budweiser beer began to spread and Busch began marketing and advertising in every state in the growing nation. The plant in St. Louis began to expand, employing as many as 7,500 men. Each year, Anheuser-Busch produced 1.6 million barrels of beer. Nearly all was consumed in the United States, but even the small amount sent abroad exceeded the entire sales, domestic and foreign, of most of the company’s rivals.

Busch continued to expand and bought railroads, a coal mine and several hotels, all to further the cause of his beer. He had agents in every major city and owned property in every state in the union. With Budweiser now the chief product of the brewery, he reduced his sixteen brands to just four: Budweiser, Michelob, Faust and the standard pale beer. At that time, Michelob was the finest beer being made in America and was also the most expensive at twenty-five cents a glass. Like Budweiser, it originated in Bohemia, and it was Adolphus himself who discovered it. He bought a glass of beer one day for the equivalent of a few cents and it struck him as being even better than Budweiser. He returned home and ordered his staff to duplicate it. Michelob was the result, but it cost so much that sales were always low. This brand would not be bottled for many years. The Faust brand was named in honor of Tony Faust. One of Busch’s daughters, Anna Louise, later married Faust’s son, Edward.

Eberhard Anheuser died in 1880, stunned by the success that his son-in-law had achieved. At the time of his death, only the Lemps could continue to compete with Anheuser-Busch. They had also expanded into national distribution and, like Busch, were using refrigerated railroad cars to ship their acclaimed Falstaff brand across the country. The two companies battled for domination in the market for years but by the middle 1880s, the Lemp Brewing Company had started to fall behind. Anheuser-Busch soon had no true rivals in St. Louis – but the same could not be said on a national level.

In the late 1800s, worldwide competition for medals at expositions and fairs was fierce. At the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, regarded by brewers as the most prestigious competition of the century, the rivalry between Busch and his closest competitor came to a head. At the time, the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee (operated by Frederick Pabst, a close friend and relative by marriage of William Lemp) was the largest in the United States, with Anheuser-Busch a close second. At one point in the competition, Anheuser-Busch had been awarded six medals for its beer and Pabst had received five. The grand prize was still to be awarded and the judges’ scrutiny was intense. A dispute began over the makeup of the panel of judges and the method they were using of awarding points. The brewers, interested only in product quality, were upset that points were to be given for “commercial importance.”

Ultimately, Budweiser was given the highest award over Pabst’s Blue Ribbon beer but the decision was later reversed based on a chemical analysis that showed Budweiser contained impurities. The award was then given to Pabst. Outraged, the hot-tempered Busch appealed the decision, angering the exposition commissioners so much that they decided that no award would be given at all. After Busch threatened legal action, the commission reversed itself again and gave the award to Budweiser. Pabst complained and, after yet another reversal, he was declared the winner.

Adolphus Busch was bitter over what he felt was unfair judging at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After a reversal, he lost out to his closest competitor, Pabst in Milwaukee. His anger over the judging caused him not to enter any beers in the competition at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Enraged, Busch pursued one of the judges across Europe to try and get him to change his mind. In late 1894, the commission announced its refusal to reconsider the decision. Busch sputtered in rage in the newspapers, “Prizes are not given to the goods meriting same but are secured by money and strategy.” This statement offers a hint as to why no Anheuser-Busch products were presented for judging during the World’s Fair held in St. Louis in 1904.

The controversy over the judging at the Columbian Exposition certainly didn’t damage Anheuser-Busch’s business. In fact, it helped it and the brewery continued to expand. As Busch made more and more money, he began to spend it quite freely. He maintained his family in luxury and constructed a mansion known as No. 1 Busch Place. It was located in a park-like section of the 142-acre brewery grounds. The spacious rooms were known for their color schemes -- the Rose Room, the Green Room, the Blue Room, etc. On the gleaming parquet floors were dazzling Oriental rugs. Stained glass windows admitted filtered light, and walls, tables and shelves were jammed with a massive array of art objects, as was the fashion of the time. As was fitting for the home of a merchant prince, expensive imported furniture filled every inch of space and frescoed ceilings, antique tapestries and artwork added to the overall majesty of the decor. Murals of plump, scantily clad women appeared to float across the ceiling of the main salon, where the walls were covered with paintings from some of the prominent artists of the day. Busch was one of the first to recognize the talents of American landscape artist William Keith. He was also an admirer of John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.

Anyone of note who visited St. Louis visited with the Busch family, including Enrico Caruso, Theodore Roosevelt, Edward, Prince of Wales, and many others. They often entertained local friends and held grand parties at the house. The exuberant Busch loved children and holidays. Every year, during the first week of December, a brewery watchman dressed as St. Nicholas visited the Busch children, filling their stockings with fruit and treats to start the holiday season. On Christmas Eve, a huge tree on a revolving stand was the center of activity for everyone. Easter brought even more festivity when Busch decided to have an egg hunt for his and his neighbors’ children. It turned out to be a huge success and each year brought ever-larger numbers of “neighbor” children until the event was eventually moved to Forest Park.

Busch loved animals, especially horses, as is evidenced by the brewery’s enduring reputation for its outstanding Clydesdales. It was in Adolphus’ day that teams of the majestic, high-stepping animals first pulled the red and green Busch delivery wagons. Busch worried so much about the care of horses that he could not stand to think of his guests’ carriage horses standing outside in bad weather. After the passengers had been discharged, Busch gave orders for the carriages to be driven into a large rotunda in the carriage house. There the horses were comfortably stabled and the coachmen could relax in a recreation room, where plenty of food and Budweiser beer were kept on hand.

Busch maintained one of the finest stables of riding and carriage horses in the United States. The stable building, located just across the drive from 1 Busch Place, could house up to thirty horses at a time. He also kept a large collection of wheeled conveyances: carriages, coaches, barouches, landaus, shooting wagons and the like. Sets of gold- and silver-mounted harnesses were displayed in glass cases along the stable walls.

In the early 1900s, Busch also became interested in the “horseless carriage” and developed a fascination for motorcars. He commissioned one of the first automobiles in St. Louis, an ornate Pope-Toledo with a specially built wicker body and brass fittings.

The Busch family lived in sumptuous luxury but unlike some of the tycoons of his day who were notoriously tightfisted, Adolphus was gave freely of his fortune. His gifts included large donations to Washington University in St. Louis and to Harvard. He contributed relief funds to the victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and every Groundhog Day, he gave $5,000 to a convent in St. Louis. He also gave freely to charities in Germany, a habit that would come back to haunt the family with the advent of the First World War.

Employees of Anheuser-Busch lived well. Not only did the brewery pay a good wage, every man was entitled to a generous portion of free beer each day, which he was expected to drink. The trips to the keg were seen as an important part of the day’s routine, an affirmation of the employees’ dedication to their product. It was thought that a man needed a certain amount of beer each day to maintain good work habits and vigorous health. One man was actually thrown out of the brewers’ union for failing to drink his daily quota of beer. He took his case to court and it was decided that it wasn’t necessary to drink beer in order to do a good day’s work. Union members shook their heads in disbelief, but the man was reinstated.

The Anheuser-Busch Brewery

The new century got off to a great start for Anheuser-Busch. In 1901, it finally overtook the annual production levels of Pabst. With preparations being made in St. Louis for the World’s Fair in 1904, Busch accepted the position of fair director. Many of the local brewers, led by Busch, came together to create a gigantic entertainment venue -- a replica of the Tyrolean Alps. Located at the end of the “Pike,” next to the main entrance, the Alps covered more than six acres of Forest Park and proved to be among the fair’s most popular attractions. But behind the scenes there were numerous disputes between the operators of the Alps and the fair’s management, including issues of trash pickup, blocking of the service entrance by railroad cars, squabbles over the width of the walkways and the amount of water and electricity used by the attraction. The problems festered all summer, leading to Busch’s resignation as the fair’s director in November 1904.

After the fair closed down, most of the state and national buildings were sold off or demolished. Busch purchased the Belgium national building and had it moved onto the brewery property, where it was reconstructed for use by the Adolphus Busch Glass Manufacturing Company.

Busch’s hard work and generosity led to him being popular with the people of St. Louis, especially the lower and middle classes. In spite of his vast wealth, he encountered coolness from members of the city’s upper crust, who refused to accept the brash German as one of their own. But Busch couldn’t have cared less. He gathered his own circle of friends around him and managed to stay in the good graces of those who were buying his beer.

By the Buschs’ golden wedding anniversary in 1911, most of the daily operations of the brewery had been turned over their son, August. He had become so skilled in running the company’s business affairs that Adolphus and Lilly had time to indulge their love of travel. They toured Europe and visited many parts of the U.S., spending considerable time in their houses in Pasadena, California, and Cooperstown, New York.

    

Adolphus and Lilly wanted to make sure that each of their eight surviving children had their own home. Their eldest son, Adolphus Busch, Jr., nicknamed “Bulfy,” had died of a perforated appendix in 1898. He had been named a corporate director at twenty-one and if he had lived, he might have taken over the company. August and his wife, Alice, received a grand home that had been built at Grant’s Farm, southwest of St. Louis, the former home of Ulysses S. Grant; Edmee Reisinger and her husband, Hugo, received a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York; Clara von Gotard, who was married to Baron Paul von Gotard, was given a mansion in Berlin, Germany; Mrs. J.W. Loeb received a home near Lincoln Park in Chicago; and Mrs. Edward A. Scharrer was given a house in Stuttgart, Germany.

There was a huge celebration in St. Louis to mark the Buschs’ anniversary, although Adolphus and Lilly were unable to attend. They were in Pasadena at the time, where Busch was seriously ill. Some thirteen thousand employees and friends celebrated in their absence. The brewery was closed for the day and all five thousand employees had been given the day off with pay. The party took place at the Coliseum, where a fifty-piece band played and employees paraded, sang, danced and waved flags. Lights gleamed on a center fountain that fired off a thirty-foot jet of water and the crowd partied into the night. It was reported that more than forty thousand bottles of beer were consumed, along with 100,000 sandwiches. The Buschs’ well-wishers sent them a solid gold card of congratulations. President William Howard Taft sent the couple a $20 gold piece. Former President Theodore Roosevelt one-upped him by giving them a gold loving cup.

By this time, the storm clouds of Prohibition were already starting to gather and Anheuser-Busch, along with other national brewers, began working to separate the various beer-makers from the hard liquor industry in the minds of lawmakers and temperance supporters. They eventually failed at this although they did manage to start producing low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beers. Anheuser-Busch trademarked the Bevo brand, a non-intoxicating malt-based beverage, in 1908.

Unfortunately, Busch’s health did not improve. He had suffered from dropsy, as edema was then called, since 1906. In October 1913, he and Lilly traveled to Langenschwalbach, Germany, for a stay at Villa Lilly, one of their two homes on the Rhine. He hoped that the brisk autumn weather would improve his health but it did no good. On October 10, at the age of 74, Busch suffered a heart attack while sitting at his desk. He died peacefully a few hours later. His body was returned to St. Louis and a viewing was held at No. 1 Busch Place.

A final farewell was said to Busch at the house where he had welcomed dignitaries and common people alike. It took twenty-five trucks to haul all of the funeral flowers to the cemetery. A crowd of nearly 25,000 people gathered around the brewery to pay their last respects.

The funeral procession left No. 1 Busch Place and departed for Bellefontaine Cemetery. St. Louis residents solidly lined the route. Mayor Henry Kiel requested that all business in the city be halted for five minutes during the burial. The Jefferson Hotel and the Planter’s House turned off their lights during that interval and all of the city’s streetcars were stopped. A committee of Busch employees was granted permission to carry the casket through the brewery and along the route that Adolphus had once walked to work each day. Busch was laid to rest in an ornate mausoleum resembling a miniature cathedral, complete with gargoyles and with its own watering system for plants and bushes.

Charles Nagel, one of the leading citizens of St. Louis, gave the eulogy. He was joined by a number of other honored guests, including congressmen, the presidents of Harvard and the University of Missouri and Baron von Lesner, the personal representative of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was a longtime friend of Busch. Nagel called Busch “a giant among men. Like a descendant of one of the great and vigorous ancient gods, he rested among us and with his optimism, his far seeing vision, his undaunted courage and his energy, shaped the affairs of men.”

The elaborate Busch mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis

 After Busch’s death, Lilly divided her time between Europe and California, with only occasional stops in St. Louis. The house was seldom used and after her death in 1928, the Busch children divided the contents and it was closed up for good. It was finally demolished to expand the brewery in 1929.

August A. Busch, Sr., who had been running the company for several years, continued the growth and the expansion of the brewery until the outbreak of World War I. By 1917, the United States had entered the conflict, which brought dark times to the family. The two countries to which the Buschs were devoted were now at war. Lilly Busch was actually in Germany when America entered the war and it took former senator Harry Hawes seven and a half months to get her home. The brewery was handicapped by rumors that the Busch family was pro-German. Despite purchases of large amounts of Liberty Bonds by the company and by the family, the malicious stories refused to go away. The Busch family, as well as the scores of Germans living in St. Louis, were kept under close watch but they managed to weather the storm of the war.

  

And then something worse came along.

  

By the late 1910s, Anheuser-Busch, like breweries all across America, was confronted by Prohibition. In an effort to combat the growing threat against beer sales and production, Busch filled the newspapers with ads in favor of personal liberty. But all the while, the company prepared for the inevitable. It stepped up production of Bevo, which was being sold all over the world by 1919. One year before, production of real beer had stopped, so there seemed to be little cause for concern about Prohibition. No one realized at the time that the disappearance of real beer would largely destroy the demand for “near-beer” products like Bevo. Just because liquor was illegal, it was certainly not hard to get. The horrible taste of bootleg hard liquor was usually so bad that it had to be disguised, which brought about the creation of sweet mixed drinks. People who became accustomed to the taste of these syrupy new drinks often lost the taste for the tart flavor of beer, or in this case, near-beer. And with real beer being illegally produced by bootleggers, the good stuff was still easy enough to get. So, why drink non-alcoholic beer when you could get the real thing at the local speakeasy? By 1923, sales of Bevo fell off to almost nothing, causing grave concerns at Anheuser-Busch.

The early years of Prohibition were grim across St. Louis. The Lemp Brewery, the neighbor and chief local competitor of Anheuser-Busch, closed down and sold off its huge plant for a fraction of what it had been worth a few years before. August Busch refused to give up, though. He was determined to find a way to keep the company afloat until the Prohibition laws were repealed. A short time later, Anheuser-Busch began to produce truck bodies and refrigerator cabinets and they went into the yeast business. Their superior product soon gained control of the market and money began trickling back into the coffers again. They also began bottling soft drinks, including Busch Extra-Dry Ginger Ale, and canned malt syrup, which was often used illegally to make home brew by eager customers.

But Busch was not happy just holding the company together. He wanted to make beer and he loathed Prohibition. On his own, he began investigating the corruption and hypocrisy of the law and he made his findings public. He discovered that liquor was sold aboard American flagships and discovered the failures of law enforcement and outright graft within the ranks of the Anti-Saloon League. He pressed for a uniform and effective enforcement of the law as long as it was on the books. On the other hand, he used his attorneys to appeal to Presidents Coolidge and Hoover and to Congress to repeal the law. He insisted that law-abiding businessmen were suffering while lawbreakers flourished, as long as Prohibition was the law of the land. Busch supported just about any politician who stood against Prohibition and finally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932. Roosevelt said he “wants repeal, and I am confident that the United States of America wants repeal.” Prohibition finally came to an end on April 7, 1933.

After Prohibition was repealed, Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales delivered a shipment of Budweiser to President Roosevelt at the White House. It was actually a re-enactment of the beer delivery, which had arrived by air to the president a short time earlier.

Under a permit to brew beer in advance of the date for its legal sale, Anheuser-Busch had 250,000 barrels ready and while they planned to resume business quietly, April 7 arrived in St. Louis like a combination of Mardi Gras and New Year’s Eve. A jubilant crowd surrounded the brewery as the gates were thrown open and a fleet of trucks rolled out to deliver the first supply of Budweiser to the city’s packed taverns. It was a great night in south St. Louis as August Busch had brought the old brewery from “doom to boom.”

  

Sadly, August A. Busch would not be around to enjoy the celebration for long. As the company began to enter a new period of growth, Busch’s life came to an end. He had suffered from several heart attacks during the hard years and was pained by gout and dropsy. On the night of February 13, 1934, in tremendous agony, he wrote a letter to his family, signed and sealed it, and then turned up the radio before shooting himself.

He was succeeded by Adolphus Busch III, known around the brewery simply as “The Third.” He was a retiring man who grappled with the problems the company faced during the Depression and World War II. He died after a short illness on August 29, 1946.

August A. Busch, Jr., or “Gussie” became the fourth Busch to become president of Anheuser-Busch and is remembered today as one of the most popular and outgoing members of the family. He carefully protected the company’s reputation and further expanded its image to make it one of the best known (or perhaps the best known) brewery in the world today. In 1953, when it was thought that the St. Louis Cardinals might be sold away from St. Louis, Gussie wrote the check that bought the baseball team and turned Sportsman’s Park into Busch Stadium.

And while the Busch family and the brewery continue to thrive in St. Louis today, the family has not been without its scandals and troubles over the years, from brushes with the law, death and even kidnappings. But through it all, they have managed to prosper and to build a great legacy in St. Louis.

FROM THE BOOK SUICIDE AND SPIRITS BY TROY TAYLOR

BIG JIM GOES TO THE GRAVE

THE FUNERAL OF JIM COLOSIMO

GODFATHER OF THE CHICAGO UNDERWORLD

On May 14, 1920, the first of the great, gaudy, gangland funerals in Chicago history was held when the mob laid “Big Jim” Colosimo to rest in the city’s Oakwood Cemetery. Largely overshadowed today by the mobsters that followed in his wake (namely Al Capone), he was once the most important criminal in Chicago. During the early 1900s, he ruled the city’s underworld and held it tightly in his grip for a longer period of time than any man in the history of the Chicago. The money that he raked in from the many immoral and illegal enterprises that he controlled was conservatively estimated at $50,000 a month for about eight years, an enormous take at that time, although small compared with the haul made by the bootleggers and racketeers of the 1920s.

Colosimo was a great spender. He built a fine home for his father, and an even grander one for himself, filled with an assortment of expensive and gaudy furniture. He supported a horde of relatives, some of whom worked in his various brothels and saloons. He maintained a large staff of servants, including two uniformed chauffeurs to drive his lavish automobiles. He kept his massive girth clad in white linen suits and he had a fixation on diamonds. He wore a diamond ring on every finger, diamond studs on his shirt front, a huge diamond horseshoe pinned to his vest, diamond cufflinks, and belts and suspenders that were fitted with diamonds. He bought the stones from thieves and needy gamblers and hoarded them like other men collect books and paintings. He often carried loose stones in a small bag in his pocket and when bored would pour them from hand to hand or would lay them out on a black cloth to watch them sparkle in the light. Colosimo was a strange character and a man who helped to usher in the era of organized crime in Chicago.

And the end came when he was betrayed by the man he believed was closest to him.

Colosimo with his attorney, Charles E. Erbstein

Colosimo was 10 years old when his father brought him to the United States from Italy. He spent all but two or three of his remaining thirty-nine years in the red-light district of Chicago’s South Side. He began his working life as a newsboy and bootblack but quickly changed careers when he saw the money that could be made in crime. At 18, he was an accomplished pickpocket and pimp with a half-dozen girls working for him. By the late 1890s, after several brushes with the law, Colosimo abandoned his life of crime and became a street-sweeper, the only honest job he ever held. By 1900, he was promoted to foreman of his crew and had organized his fellow workers into a social and athletic club that eventually became a labor union. At this point, Colosimo was befriended by the two most powerful political bosses in Chicago: First Ward Committeeman Michael Kenna and Alderman John Coughlin. Within the First Ward lay the notorious Levee District, a vice-laden area filled with whorehouses, saloons and gambling parlors. Kenna and Coughlin employed Colosimo as their collector in return for the votes of all of the members of his unions.

In 1902, Colosimo married Vittoria Moresco, who ran a brothel on Armour Avenue. By 1912, he and his wife owned 35 brothels, catering to all income levels. He also organized a white slavery ring with another brothel owner named Maurice Van Bever, a fellow dandy who was transported around the Levee in a red carriage driven by a liveried coachman. Perhaps the crowning achievement of Big Jim’s career was the opening of Colosimo’s Café in 1910 at 2126 South Wabash Avenue. The café became the premiere nightspot in the city and no other club could compete with its star entertainers, the beauty of its chorus girls or the skill of its acclaimed orchestra. With musical attractions, good food and a wide array of vintage wines, it attracted the rich and powerful from all over the city – all of whom had to brave the wickedness of the Levee district to get there.

Bounded north and south by Twenty-Second and Eighteenth streets and east and west by Clark and Wabash, the Levee took shape during the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, when thousands of people from all over the world descended on the city. It became one of the best-known concentrations of crime and vice. Visitors to the district could partake of just about every form of sin imaginable and in addition to Colosimo’s, there were two other vice rings that formed the criminal organization that ruled the Levee and which provided the area’s various forms of “entertainment.”

Chicago’s South Side Levee District

Big Jim Colosimo owned two large brothels in the district: the Victoria and the Saratoga. The Victoria was named in honor of Colosimo’s wife, Victoria (Vittoria) Moresco. Colosimo himself spent most of his time at his restaurant on Wabash Avenue, near Twenty-Second Street.

The Levee ran wide open for years, under the protection of its vice lords, well-paid Chicago cops and, of course, corrupt politicians, who made sure that the necessary money made it into the right hands. Reformers, especially religious ones, constantly hampered operations in the Levee and eventually, the crusade (and propaganda) against “white slavery” would get the better of the district.

During the heyday of the Levee, Colosimo’s Café was the heart and soul of the district. It was a place of gaudy opulence, from its gilded doorknobs to the massive mahogany and glass bar. Green velvet covered the walls and gold and crystal chandeliers hung from a sky-blue ceiling where cherubs cavorted on cotton-white clouds. The restaurant was a dazzling dreamscape of gold mirrors, tapestries and murals of tropical vistas. With the flick of a switch, a hydraulic lift raised or lowered the dance floor. Festivities seldom got underway before midnight and often continued until well past dawn. In a suite of rooms on the second floor, gamblers could find any game they fancied from faro to roulette to high-stakes poker.

Colosimo’s Café enjoyed national renown and it was a place where local dignitaries and businessmen might rub elbows with killers and thieves. It catered to visiting celebrities like Al Jolson, George M. Cohan, John Barrymore and Sophie Tucker, whose “coon-shouter” songs with gestures (like the “Angle Worm Wriggle”) had caused the normally permissive Chicago police to place her under arrest for indecency. Colosimo loved the opera and no matter how packed the place was, he could always find a seat for a member or guest of the Chicago Civic Opera Company. He considered acclaimed tenor Enrico Caruso a close friend.

But as profitable as Colosimo’s was, it produced only a fraction of the fortune that allowed Big Jim to maintain two limousines, each with its own chauffeur, homes for his father and himself, a wife and a mistress. The chief sources of his annual income were white slavery and his chain of brothels.

Colosimo’s restaurant on south Wabash, in the heart of the Levee.

A menu from Colosimo's Restaurant

An interior view of the swanky cafe. 

Colosimo had actually met his wife because of the Levee’s sex trade. In 1902, while working as a bagman for ward bosses Kenna and Coughlin, he made the acquaintance of Victoria Moresco, a fat, unattractive, middle-aged madam who operated a second-rate brothel on Armour Avenue. She offered Jim the position of manager and he accepted. Two weeks later, they were married. Under Colosimo’s management, the brothel prospered and he soon acquired a brothel of his own, then another, until before long, he owned and controlled scores of them. Out of every $2 that his girls made, Colosimo kept $1.20. Like many of his competitors, he also ran a number of saloons near, or connected by passageways, to his bordellos.

Colosimo’s older, and quite unattractive, wife, Vittoria Moresco.

The supply of available prostitutes never really met the demand for the turnover was far too rapid. The average parlor house whore seldom lasted more than five years. As she aged quickly, she would sink to cheaper and cheaper houses until she hit bottom on Bed Bug Row or became a streetwalker. Drink, drugs and disease usually completed her destruction. So, to replenish their stock, the vice controllers of the Levee turned to white slavery.

The origin of the term “white slave” is usually associated with Mary Hastings, a Chicago madam of the 1890s who lured many young Midwestern girls to her brothels in Chicago’s notorious Custom House Place vice district. Seeking out girls between the ages of 13 and 17, she promised them jobs in the big city. To their alarm, the girls were instead taken to one of the brothels, where they were locked up, stripped and “broken in” by professional rapists. The broken girls that Mary did not employ, she sold to other brothel-keepers at prices that varied depending on the girls’ ages and looks, very young girls being the most sought-after. In the midst of all of this, one of her victims managed to scrawl on a piece of paper, “I’m being held as a slave,” and tossed the note out of a window. Found by a passerby and taken to the police, who raided the brothel and rescued the girl, the note supposedly inspired a newspaper reporter to coin the term “white slave.” Incidentally, the raid didn’t do Mary Hastings any serious damage. She continued to operate at the same address for several more years until four of her captives escaped and finally brought about her downfall.

   

Colosimo was deeply involved in Chicago’s white slave traffic. In 1903, he had joined forces with Maurice and Julia Van Bever. They organized a new gang to handle fresh stock, established connections with white slavers in New York, St. Louis and Milwaukee, and over the course of the next six years imported hundreds of girls, either putting them to work in their own establishments or selling them off to other brothels.

Vice made Colosimo a vast fortune, which, in turn, made him one of Chicago’s wealthiest Italians. Thanks to this, he became a natural target for Black Hand extortionists.

The Black Hand first emerged as an organized crime entity around 1900. Because of the isolation caused by their lack of language skills, Italian immigrants were easy prey from criminals within their own ranks. Suspicious of authority, they were at the mercy of groups like “La Mano Nera,” the Black Hand, a shadowy society that terrorized poor and working-class Italians. In fact, the “society” was simply a collection of criminals, and the name was created by journalists, but the notion of it inspired real terror.

The way the Black Hand operated was both simple and direct. First, a victim who showed signs of prosperity would be chosen from among the Italian immigrant population. For instance, if a man purchased any property and that fact became public knowledge, he could almost count on the attention of the Black Hand. A letter, bearing a signature of the Black Hand was sent to the victim demanding money. If the letter was ignored, or the victim refused to pay, his home, office or business would be bombed. If he still refused to pay, he would be murdered. Most of the letters were blunt instructions about sums of money and where they were to be delivered. Others were more clever and worded with deference and Italian courtesy. No matter how they were phrased, each brought the promise of death if the instructions were not carried out to the letter.

Hundreds of threat letters were received and countless murders were carried out between 1900 and 1920. Despite the magnitude of these operations, none of the extensive investigations conducted by the police ever revealed a Black Hand organization that reached national or even citywide proportions. The "Black Hand" was not an actual group, but a method of crime. It was used by individuals, by small groups, and by large, organized gangs. In Italy and Sicily, the tactic was employed by the Mafia and called the Black Hand because as a general rule, extortion letters, which formed the initial phase of the terrorism, bore the imprint of a hand in black ink. The letters were also sometimes marked with crude drawings of a skull and crossbones or, for variety, crosses and daggers. Between 1900 and 1920, there were an alleged 400 murders in Chicago ascribed to the Black Hand. The gangs that made up the Black Hand preyed on the Italian and Sicilian immigrants and many murders occurred.

In 1909, Colosimo received his first Black Hand extortion letter. He knew what to expect and at first, he went along with it. He met demands for as much as $5,000 but as the extortionists continued to plague him, demanding more and more money each time, he decided to fight back. He commanded plenty of tough gunmen and at the next attempt, Colosimo wrapped up a bundle of plain paper, armed himself with a revolver and, accompanied by an assortment of muscle concealing sawed-off shotguns, set out for a rendezvous under a South Side bridge in advance of the appointed time. After dropping off the bundle as directed, Colosimo and his men hid in the shadows across the street. At midnight, three men approached the bundle. Before they could examine it, they were blasted to death amidst the roar of the shotguns.

After that, Colosimo enjoyed a moment of peace, but it did not last long. He soon received a demand for money from yet another Black Hand gang. He decided that he needed someone to work with him in Chicago who was smarter and more ruthless than he was. Vittoria convinced her husband to call John Torrio, her nephew in New York.

John Torrio was 31 years old when he came to Chicago in 1909. Soon after he arrived, three more Black Hand extortionists were slaughtered under the Rock Island Railroad overpass on Archer Avenue. Torrio, with his personal aversion to bloodshed, had arranged the massacre. Other killings followed until finally, Colosimo was free of his tormentors.

John Torrio around the time he arrived in Chicago to help Colosimo with his Black Hand extortion threats.

But Torrio’s service to Colosimo went far beyond planning the murders of Black Handers. He was an organizational genius. Years later, Elmer L. Irey, chief of the Enforcement Branch of the U.S. Treasury Department, called him “the father of modern American gangsterdom.” This was no exaggeration for within months, the cool, soft-spoken New Yorker had consolidated Colosimo’s holdings in such a way that he became the foremost Chicago racketeer of his era. Starting with the Saratoga brothel, of which his grateful uncle made him the manager, Torrio was soon supervising all of Colosimo’s brothels and getting them on a sound financial footing. He next organized the saloons and the gambling dens. He guided the Colosimo-Van Bever white slave ring into the dominant force in the Levee and personally saw to the bribing of police and public officials. When Colosimo branched out into the protection racket, Torrio collected the payments, using no other persuasion than a quiet word of warning, a thin smile and an ice cold stare. He suffered a slight setback when he was arrested, along with other members of the white slave ring, after the transporting of a dozen girls from St. Louis to Chicago. Maurice and Julia Van Bever paid a $1,000 fine and went to jail for a year. Five others received lesser sentences, among them the prosecution’s main witness, a pimp named Joe Bovo, who had delivered the St. Louis merchandise. Torrio, however, was freed because Bovo would not testify against him. Colosimo, shielded by his political connections, was not even questioned in the case.

In the same year that Torrio came to Chicago, reform movements began gathering strength. Crusaders eventually succeeded in closing down most of the brothels in the Levee and in other vice districts in Chicago. A reform mayor came into office and managed to move many of the police officials who had been protecting Colosimo to other parts of the city and in one of his last acts in office, even managed to get Colosimo’s liquor license suspended. But the mayoral election of 1915 brought a new Republican mayor into office, William “Big Bill” Thompson, who was destined to become the hero of every pimp, whore, gambler, gangster and bootlegger in Chicago.

John Torrio watched the emergence of Big Bill Thompson’s regime with great interest. He knew that the time was coming for even bigger money to be made in the Chicago underworld. Interestingly, he catered to the vices of others while he himself seemed to have none. He never smoked, drank or gambled and took no interest in any woman but his wife, Ann. He kept a daily routine like any banker or professional man, leaving home in the morning and either walking to his office on South Wabash or driving to Burnham. He spent nine or ten hours attending to the details of the brothel business, which mean moving whores from house to house to make sure that customers saw fresh faces. His workday also involved purchasing food, drink and linens for the whorehouses, and calculating the profits from the night before. If he didn’t encountered any problems that needed to be dealt with, he returned home each night by 6:00 p.m. and had dinner with his wife.

Johnny Torrio was a family man, a devoted husband, a quiet and contented businessman – and one of the most cold and calculating gangsters in Chicago history. He routinely ordered the deaths of rivals, thought nothing of directing beatings, bombings and shootings, and ascribed no humanity to the prostitutes he handled. He regarded them simply as a commodity, to be bought, sold and replaced when they ran out. Crime was just business to Torrio and in his case, crime definitely paid.

Torrio was an exemplary business manager. Because of his hard work and the leniency of the Thompson administration, Colosimo had become the top Chicago vice lord. His political value extended far beyond the Levee and with his City Hall connections. He no longer depended on the ward politicians for protection; in fact, they came to him for favors. The café was Colosimo’s pride and joy, perhaps even his obsession. He dealt with all of the minutiae of running the restaurant and was happiest there, fussing over customers and celebrities and being flattered and admired by them in return. He gave virtual autonomy to Torrio when it came to all of his other business dealings – his first serious mistake.

His second mistake was a romantic one.

One evening in 1913, Jack Lait, a reporter from the Chicago Daily News, came into Colosimo’s and began telling him about a girl that he had heard singing in the choir at the South Park Avenue Methodist Church. Lait told him that the girl was talented and a knockout and he thought she deserved a better place to showcase her talents. Why not Colosimo’s? Big Jim agreed to give her an audition and the next evening, Lait introduced him to Dale Winter, described as a “slender, demure brunette with blue eyes and skin like rose petals.”

Dale was only 19 years old. She had been born in Ohio and dreamed of a career in opera. Her father had died when she was only five and after high school, her mother took her to New York. She auditioned for producer George Lederer, who was casting a road company version of the operetta Madame Sherry, which had been a smash hit. Dale won the ingénue role, which was essentially the part of an innocent young girl. Chaperoned by her mother, she traveled across the country to San Francisco, where the tour ended. Hoping to stay on the road, she put together a vaudeville sketch with another actress, sold it to a company that was about to depart for Australia, and went along to play the main part. In Australia, the venture collapsed, stranding Dale and her mother 6,000 miles from home. Luckily, they were able to borrow money from a sympathetic actor and managed to get back to San Francisco. A booking agent sent them on to Chicago, where, he assured them, Dale could find work with a newly organized light opera company. Unfortunately, they arrived to find that the company had disbanded without ever staging a single performance. The two women were penniless, but the South Park Avenue Methodist Church kept them from starving when they hired Dale as a soloist.

Colosimo and his new love, singer Dale Winter. Ironically, the only decent girl he ever knew would lead him to his death.

Colosimo found that Dale Winter was everything that Lait had promised. He needed no convincing to hire her for his stage show and she soon became his star attraction, enchanting the customers every night with a repertoire of operatic arias. She did not want to leave the church choir, though, and she continued to sing hymns by day until the congregation discovered that she moonlighted at Colosimo’s. They were scandalized and demanded her immediate dismissal. The church pastor was more tolerant and chose as a theme for his next sermon the Bible passage of John 8:7 – “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” But the congregation was not moved by his defense and he had no choice but to let Dale go.

Dale was upset by this turn of events. She was not happy with the atmosphere of the Levee, but felt she had no choice but to work there. She promised herself that she would quit as soon as she had enough money saved up to get herself and her mother back to New York. Grand opera was still her dream, not singing in a café. As the star of Colosimo’s floor show, many better job opportunities came her way. The Broadway impresario Morris Gest offered her a contract, as did Florenz Ziegfeld, whose dazzling shows featured stunning girls. Dale had been looking for a way back to New York and any of these opportunities would have gotten her there. However, by the time they came along, it was too late. She no longer planned to leave Chicago because she had fallen in love with Big Jim Colosimo and he had fallen in love with her. Big Jim left his wife, confiding in Torrio that his love for Dale was “the real thing.”

“It’s your funeral,” Torrio replied, which would turn out to be prophetic words.

   

With Dale’s gentle guidance, Colosimo began to acquire a little polish. He learned to moderate his loud, overbearing voice and to clean up his language. He hired a tutor to help him perfect his English. He began to dress more conservatively, leaving his diamonds at home. He began spending more time with artists and his wealthy customers, neglecting the politicians and underworld characters with whom he normally fraternized.  Dale liked to ride horses in the city parks and Colosimo, attired in equestrian gear, would trot along beside her. He badgered his friend Caruso for an opinion about Dale’s voice and when the great tenor found it pleasing, he asked for an audition with the opera company. The conductor also liked her voice but found it needed training, so Colosimo enrolled her at the Chicago Musical College.

It was ironic that Dale Winter, the only decent girl that Colosimo ever knew, would be the reason for his death. Emotional vulnerability was seen as a weakness in the underworld and word began to spread that Colosimo was getting soft. The Black Hand extortionists resumed their demands and now Colosimo paid them off out of fear that something might happen to Dale. They plagued him constantly until the day he died.

Meanwhile, John Torrio, while continuing to take care of Colosimo’s affairs, slowly and quietly began to build his own organization. He began making plans for other vice spots besides Burnham and found that officials in Stickney, a small village about eight miles outside of the city, were open to his ideas. At the edge of the Levee itself, a block from Colosimo’s Café, he took over a four-story red brick building located at 2222 South Wabash Avenue. It would be known thereafter as the Four Deuces. On the first floor, he opened a bar and office. The second and third floors were used as gambling rooms and the fourth floor was a brothel. The cellar of the Four Deuces was a torture chamber. According to Judge John H. Lyle in his book The Dry and Lawless Years, hapless individuals from whom the mobsters wanted information were taken down to the cellar and tortured until they talked. Afterward, they were killed and their bodies hauled out through a trap door at the back of the building, to be dumped along a country road or sunk into the deep waters of a rock quarry.

The Four Deuces at 2222 South Wabash Avenue

Around the time that Torrio opened the Four Deuces, in late 1919, he sent for his friend from Brooklyn, Al Capone. The young man’s initial duties were humble ones, working as a bodyguard, chauffeur, bartender and as a capper for the brothel, working out on the street to lure men inside.

Shortly after Capone came to Chicago, a momentous event occurred. It was an event that Torrio had long been planning for and he had been trying, without much success, to get Colosimo to exploit. The profits, Torrio was convinced, would be many times more than anything they had ever made with their vice operations. But Colosimo was not convinced – gambling and whores had made him a fortune, why risk the unknown? Torrio finally had to accept the fact that Colosimo’s days were over. It was a new era for American crime.

Prohibition had come to pass and American had just gone dry.

John Torrio studied the new law and surveyed Chicago and the rest of the country with impatience. He had seen this coming. He had predicted it to his friends and business associates and knew that this was going to be the way that organized crime could amass untold amounts of wealth. To take something that had always been legal, and make it illegal - especially something as pervasive as alcohol - and then expect Americans to adhere to the letter of the law was incredibly naïve. Torrio knew that by taking advantage of Prohibition, and providing the people with what they wanted, the mob could reach new levels of power. This was a way for men like himself to become millionaires – and yet, his hands were tied. He was unable to rouse Colosimo into action. Big Jim was too entranced with Dale Winter and had lost all interest in business.

Torrio was fuming. He was desperate to get organized and start filling the need that had been created. Most of the saloons and roadhouses in and around the city had stayed open with expectations of obtaining liquor somehow. Torrio (and many others) believed that the risk of supplying alcohol was very small compared to the rewards. With Big Bill Thompson in office, Chicago was likely to be a “wide-open town.” The way had been paved for the underworld to reap huge benefits from Prohibition and Torrio wanted to take advantage of the situation. Colosimo, though, was interested in nothing but his pretty, young girlfriend.

Torrio knew that Colosimo’s time was coming to an end.

Colosimo, meanwhile, was dealing with his domestic drama. He had been living apart from Victoria Moresco for three months by this time and had offered her $50,000 if she would not contest his divorce action. She agreed and the decree became final on March 20, 1920. Within three weeks, Victoria had married a Sicilian hoodlum twenty years her junior named Antonio Villani. Big Jim married Dale. They honeymooned at a fashionable spa in French Lick, Indiana, and then returned to Chicago, where they settled into Colosimo’s ornate mansion at 3156 Vernon Avenue. He had no idea that his domestic bliss was to be short-lived.

A week after Colosimo’s return, on Tuesday, May 11, Torrio telephoned to announce the delivery of two truckloads of whiskey at the café. The trucks would be there, he stressed, at 4:00 p.m. and Colosimo needed to be on hand for the delivery. Colosimo left his house a few minutes before the hour and climbed into a car, driven by his chauffer, a man named Woolfson, which was waiting at the curb. Dale asked him to send the car back so that she and her mother could go shopping. He promised to do so, kissed her goodbye and drove away. Woolfson later reported that Big Jim muttered to himself in Italian, a language that the chauffeur didn’t understand, for the entire drive.

There were two entrances to the café on South Wabash Avenue, about fifty feet apart. Woolfson dropped Colosimo off at the arched north entrance and then drove back to Vernon Avenue to pick up Dale and her mother. Colosimo pushed open the glass-paneled door and walked across a small, tiled vestibule, passing a coatroom, a telephone booth and a cashier’s cage. He then walked through the main dining room, went through an archway into the second dining room, which was often used for overflow crowds, and entered his office in the back. A few moments later, a porter, who was coming up from the basement, noticed a stranger enter the vestibule near the doors, as if he had followed the boss in off the street. The man seemed to know where he was going so the porter returned to his duties downstairs, where four other staff members were also working.

In Colosimo’s office, his secretary, Frank Camilla, and Chef Caesarino were discussing the night’s menu. Colosimo asked them if anyone had called. No one had, which seemed to trouble him. He tried unsuccessfully to reach his attorney, Rocco De Stefano, on the telephone and then sat at his desk and listened to the dinner plans. The three men chatted for a few minutes and then Colosimo walked back toward the vestibule through the two dining rooms. Camilla and Caesarino both later stated that they had the impression Colosimo intended to wait for the man with the whiskey delivery either in the vestibule or on the sidewalk outside. Camilla recalled glancing at the clock – it was 4:25 p.m. – and then he continued his discussion with the chef. A moment later, the men heard two sharp cracks. Caesarino dismissed them as a backfiring automobile, but Camilla decided to investigate. When he did, he found Big Jim lying face down on the cold tiles of the little vestibule. Blood was streaming from a bullet hole behind his right ear. The second bullet had cracked the glass of the cashier’s window and had buried itself in the plaster wall. Colosimo was dead.

The end of Jim Colosimo, right in the entryway to his own restaurant -- “Beauty killed the “beast”, so to speak.

Camilla immediately called the police. Thanks to Colosimo’s political clout, Chief of Police John J. Garrity personally rushed to the scene. The chief of detectives was also called in, as were several detectives from the state’s attorney’s office. Camilla called Dale to tell her the news and she fainted.

The police questioned more than thirty suspects, including Torrio and Capone, both of whom were occupied elsewhere at the time of the shooting – in view of a large number of witnesses. Torrio’s eyes filled with tears when he was notified of his uncle’s death. “Big Jim and me were like brothers,” he said in an uncharacteristic display of emotion.

The investigation into Colosimo’s murder was hastily conducted and uncovered no real leads, except for one. During the dragnet that followed the murder, the police stumbled onto veteran Five Points gang member Frankie Yale at Union Station. Yale had been in town for a week and was just about to board an eastbound train when the police stopped him. There was nothing to connect him to the murder, so he was allowed to leave for New York. Soon after, the porter came forward with his description of the stranger that he saw in the vestibule of the café, a description that eerily resembled Frankie Yale. Rumors were already swirling in the underworld that Torrio had paid Yale to bump off his uncle, so detectives from Chicago contacted New York and asked them to pick up Yale and hold onto him until they could get there with the porter to see if he would identify Yale as the mystery man. The porter was brought to New York but when he was face-to-face with the Yale, he froze and swore that he could not identify him as the man he had seen. Later, this condition of not being able to remember the faces of killers would be dubbed “Chicago amnesia.” The investigation foundered after that but the police never doubted the guilt of Torrio and Yale. Officially, Colosimo’s murder still remains unsolved.

Colosimo’s funeral was held on May 14 and became the first of the gaudy gangland affairs that would be held throughout the 1920s. The lavishness of the floral tributes (with wreaths from Johnny and Al among the largest), the costly bronze casket, the size of the cortege and the sordid mix of politicians and mobsters set the standard for gangster funerals to come. No rites were held in a Catholic church or cemetery because Archbishop George Mundelein forbade them, not because Colosimo was a murderer, a whoremonger or white slave trafficker, but because he divorced his wife to marry Dale Winter.

In the end, a Presbyterian minister, Reverend Pasquale De Carol, performed the funeral rites in Colosimo’s Vernon Street mansion. Dale was in attendance, barely able to stand. Hymns were sung, Hail Marys were recited and the Catholic Prayer for the Dead was intoned. Ike Bloom, who managed one of the Levee’s most disreputable dancehalls, offered a heartfelt eulogy. “There wasn’t a piker’s hair on Big Jim’s head,” he said. “Whatever game he played, he shot straight. He wasn’t greedy. There could be dozens of others getting theirs. The more the merrier as far as he was concerned. He had what a lot of us haven’t got – class. He brought the society swells and the millionaires into the red light district. It helped everybody, and a lot of places were kept alive on Colosimo’s overflow. Big Jim never bilked a pal or turned down a good guy and he always kept his mouth shut.”

More than 1,000 people preceded the cortege as it wound its way through the Levee to Oakwood Cemetery. They paused for a moment before the crepe-draped entrance to Colosimo’s Café while two brass bands played a dirge. Dale rode behind the hearse in a car with drawn curtains. More than 5,000 mourners followed behind her. The 53 pallbearers and honorary pallbearers included, in addition to criminals, nine aldermen, three judges, two congressmen, a state senator, an assistant state’s attorney and the state Republican leader.

Colosimo was laid to rest in the family mausoleum at Oakwood Cemetery and Dale lay grief-stricken for the next 10 days. She learned that her marriage to Colosimo had not been legal under Illinois law, which at that time required a one-year interval between divorce and re-marriage. Colosimo had no will and Dale had no claim to his estate. His family nevertheless gave her $6,000 in bonds and diamonds. Victoria Moresco was given $12,000 and the remainder of his money went to his father, Luigi.

Dale tried briefly to manage Colosimo’s Café but she had no experience in running a business and it was eventually taken over by Mike “The Greek” Potson, a professional gambler who had long been a minority partner with Big Jim. Dale and her mother returned to New York. She took back her maiden name and stepped into the leading role in a popular musical called Irene at the Vanderbilt Theater.  She continued in the role for several years in New York and then took it on the road. She was in San Francisco in 1924 when she married actor Henry Duffy. They ran a large and successful string of theaters on the West Coast and appeared in numerous shows together until the 1930s, when Dale finally left the theater and turned her energies to raising their two children. The Depression and the popularity of movies closed many of the couple’s theaters in the late 1930s. They were forced to file for bankruptcy in 1941. In 1945, they divorced. Dale appeared in a few forgettable film roles and went on to marry and survive two wealthy men, Herschel McGraw and Edward S. Perot, before her own death in 1985.

Mike Potson purchased the remaining shares of Colosimo’s Café in late 1920 when Luigi Colosimo returned to Italy. He kept the restaurant going but the wet bar and the gambling at the café attracted the attention of federal enforcement agents during Prohibition. In 1926 and again in 1928, a federal judge padlocked the place for violations of the Volstead Act. It was raided several more times before Prohibition finally came to an end. After that, Potson kept the club popular with musical reviews and performances and it continued into the middle 1940s, although by then, Potson’s reputation as a gambler had started to get in the way of good business. Hollywood comedians Abbott and Costello sued Potson over gambling losses they sustained on the second floor, adding to the place’s bad publicity. In 1948, Potson was indicted on a broad range of gambling charges and ended up going to prison. He died in 1955.

After several failed attempts by outside interests to purchase Colosimo’s and get it going again, a fire swept through the property in January 1953. The Church of Divine Science then purchased the building, tried to clean it up a little and started holding services there. However, the rundown condition of the building forced the city to take action and a suit was filed to raze the property. The wrecking ball came for Colosimo’s on February 7, 1958, marking an end of an era in South Side Chicago history.