MURDER ON SAXTOWN ROAD

History & Mystery of the Millstadt Ax Murders

The small town of Millstadt is located just a few miles from Belleville, a long-established and prosperous town that is located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Millstadt has always been known as a quiet community. It was settled long ago by German immigrants who came to America to work hard, be industrious, and keep to themselves. It was a place where nothing bad could ever really happen – or at least that’s what the residents there in the latter part of the nineteenth century believed. However, the murders that occurred on Saxtown Road forever shattered that illusion. When a local German family was brutally slaughtered in 1874, it created a dark, unsolved mystery – and a haunting that continues today. 

On March 19, 1874, Carl Stelzenreide, age 70, his son, Frederick, 35, Frederick’s wife, Anna, 28, and their children, Carl, 3, and Anna, 8 months, were found brutally murdered in their home on Saxton Road, located outside of Millstadt. The grisly crime was discovered by a neighbor, Benjamin Schneider, who had arrived at the Stelzenreide home early that morning to collect some potato seeds from Carl Steltzenreide. As he approached the home, he found that the area was eerily still. The horses and cattle that were fenced in the front lot had not been watered or fed and no one was taking care of the morning chores.

Schneider knocked on the front door, but no one answered. He called out and looked in the window, but it was too dark inside the house for him to see anything. Finally, he turned the knob and pushed the door open. As he stepped in, he looked down and saw the body of Frederick Steltzenreide on the floor, lying in a large pool of blood. The young man had been savagely beaten and his throat had been cut. Three of his fingers had been severed. Panicked, Schneider began looking for the other members of the family. He found Anna and her children lying on a bed. All of them had been bludgeoned to death and Anna’s throat had been cut. Her infant daughter, baby Anna, was lying across her chest, her small arms wrapped around her mother’s neck. Her son, Carl, was found next to her. His facial features were unrecognizable because of the brutal blows that he had sustained to his head. All three of them had apparently been murdered as they slept. In a separate bedroom, Schneider found Carl Steltzenreide. He had been struck so many times, apparently with an ax, that he was nearly decapitated. His body was sprawled on the bloodstained floor and it was later surmised that he had been roused from his bed by noises in the house and been struck down as he attempted to come to the aid of his family. 
As Schneider looked frantically around, he realized that blood was on the floor, had sprayed wildly onto the walls, and even stained the ceiling of the house. He saw chips and indentions in the plaster that were later determined to have been made by a “maddox,” a combination tool with the head of an ax and a large blade resembling a garden hoe. 

The only survivor of the carnage was the family dog, Monk. He was found lying on the floor next to Anna’s bed, keeping watch over the bodies of the mother and her children. Monk was known to be very protective of the family, and downright vicious toward strangers. This fact would lead investigators to believe that the killer, or killers, was someone known to the family. They also believed that the killer entered the house through a rear door, killing Anna and the children first. Carl was killed when he heard the struggles in the bedroom and Frederick was killed last. He had been sleeping on a lounge near the front of the house and had been murdered after a hand-to-hand struggle with the murderer.
Schneider quickly left and summoned help. The authorities called to nearby Belleville for assistance and several sheriff’s deputies and detectives answered the call. Soon after arriving, Deputy Sheriff Hughes discovered footsteps leading away from the house. As they were examined, it was noted that the prints had been made by boots that were cobbled with heavy nails, making them very distinctive. Hughes also found indentions in the ground that looked as though they had been made by someone dragging a heavy ax. He followed the tracks for about a mile and at the end of the trail, he found a pouch of partially chewed tobacco that was covered with blood. He deduced that the killer had been wounded during his attack on the family and had attempted to stem the bleeding with chewing tobacco, a popular folk remedy that was believed to draw the infection from a cut. The footprints, and the bloody tobacco pouch, led the police to the home of Frederick Boeltz, the brother-in-law of Frederick Steltzenreide. 

Boeltz was married to Anna Stelzenreide’s sister and there had been a dispute between Boeltz and Frederick Steltzenreide because $200 that Boeltz had borrowed and never repaid. The two had quarreled over the debt several times. Boeltz was friends with an itinerant farm worked named John Afken, who had once worked for the Steltzenreide family and who also harbored a grudge against Frederick. Afken was a large and powerful man who made his living as a “grubber,” a backbreaking occupation that involved clearing trees and rocks from farm lots. He was considered an expert with an ax, as well as other hand tools, and was feared by many because of his quick temper. He also possessed another characteristic that was of interest to the investigators – he had a full head of light red hair.

Carl Steltzenreide had died clutching a handful of hair that was exactly the same color.

 The bodies of the Steltzenreide family were prepared for burial by ladies from the Zion United Church of Christ in Millstadt. This gruesome task was carried out in the Steltzenreide barn, which still stands on the property today. The corpses were in such horrific condition that a number of the women became sick while washing them and had to be relieved. The killer had savaged the bodies so badly with his ax that the adults were nearly decapitated and the children were bloodied and pummeled beyond recognition. It was brutality like nothing these small town folks had ever seen before.

The family was laid to rest on Sunday, March 22, at Frievogel Cemetery, located just a few miles from their home on Saxtown Road. The news of the horror spread across the region in newspaper accounts and even appeared on the front page of the New York Times. The terror and curiosity that gripped the area brought more than 1,000 people to the Stelzenreide’s funeral service.
Immediately after the burial, Deputy Hughes arrested Frederick Boeltz and John Afken on suspicion of murder. Boeltz, initially resisted arrest, but then demanded to be provided with a bible while locked away in the Belleville city jail. Afken, on the other hand, was said to have displayed an uncanny lack of emotion. He accompanied the officers to jail, and remained silent while in custody. During the coroner’s inquest that followed the arrest, Boeltz refused to face the jury and when shown photographs of the victims’ bodies, he refused to look at them. The two men were brought before a grand jury in April 1874, but the jury was unable to indict them. They believed there was insufficient evidence to connect them to the murders. Both suspects were released a week later. 

Although the authorities had been unable to indict their main suspects in the case, the investigation into the two men’s activities and motives did not come to an end. Investigators believed more strongly than ever that Boeltz was somehow involved in the murders and they based this on the fact that the cash and valuables inside of the Steltzenreide house had been undisturbed. They believed there was a motive that was darker than mere robbery for the crime – and that Boeltz was definitely involved.

Just a few days before he was killed, on March 16, Frederick Steltzenreide confided to some friends and neighbors that he had just received a substantial inheritance from relatives in Germany. He was at an auction at the time he broke the news and he was seen carrying a large willow basket that was covered with an oilcloth. Rumor had it that the basket contained the inheritance, which Frederick had collected at the bank just before attending the auction. 
The Steltzenreide estate was reportedly worth several thousand dollars at the time of the murder. Investigators surmised that the wholesale slaughter of the family might have been an attempt to wipe out all of the immediate heirs to the estate. They believed that Frederick Boeltz, motivated by his dislike for Frederick Steltzenreide and his belief that he would inherit the money because of his marriage to Anna’s sister, had hired John Afken to commit the murders. It was a viable theory to explain the massacre, but the police were never able to make it stick.

Boeltz later brought suit against the Steltzenreide estate in an effort to collect whatever money he could. He was eventually awarded $400 and soon after, he and his family moved away from the area and vanished into history.
John Afken remained in the Millstadt area and legend has it that he was often seen carrying a gold pocket watch. When asked where he had gotten such an impressive timepiece, because it seemed much nicer than anything he could afford, Afken would only smile. Some whispered that the pocket watch looked exactly like one that Carl Steltzenreide once owned.

The Steltzenreide home was torn down in August 1954. According to a report that appeared in the Millstadt Enterprise newspaper at the time, the owners of the property, Leslie Jines and his family, were “glad to tuck the tale out of the way with whatever ghosts are there.”  The owners found it easy to get rid of the cursed, old house but the ghosts that lingered there were not so easily dismissed. 

A more recent owner of the property, and a house that stands at the site, was Randy Eckert. In 2004, he told a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he believed the land where the murders took place was haunted. His first experience occurred one morning when he and his wife were awakened by strange noises. They both heard the sounds of doors opening and closing in the house, although nothing was disturbed. They weren’t the only ones to hear something. The family dog, which had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, was also awakened by the mysterious sounds and was terrified and shaking. Eckert added that the sounds were repeated many times over the years, always around the anniversary of the murders.

Chris Nauman, who rented the house from Eckert in the early 1990s, reported his own chilling occurrences: “It was 6 o’clock in the morning, and there was a loud knock on the door. At the same time, my girlfriend heard someone walking up the steps in our basement.” Nauman, startled by the sounds, quickly checked the front door and the basement stairs, but found no sign of visitors or intruders. The next day, he shared his story with Randy Eckert, asking him about the anniversary of the Steltzenreide murders. Eckert confirmed it for him – the ghostly happenings had taken place on March 19, the anniversary of the murders.

Nauman still remembers the effect this had on him, “A cold shiver ran up my spine.”

To this day, the slaughter of the Steltzenreide family remains unsolved. While many suspects have been suggested over the years, there is no clear answer to the mystery. The area where the house once stood along Saxtown Road has changed very little since 1874, and it’s not hard to imagine the sheer terror of those who lived nearby after news of the murders began to spread. It’s a lonely, isolated area and, if the stories are to be believed, a haunted one. 

But what ghosts still walk in this place? Are they the tragic spirits of the Steltzenreides, still mourning the fact that their deaths have never been avenged? Or do the phantom footsteps and spectral knockings signal the presence of the killer’s wicked wraith, perhaps forced to remain here as a penance for the crime that he never answered to while among the living?
We may never really know, but for now, the haunting continues and the people of Millstadt continue to remember the day when horror visited their little town.

"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. 

DEATH OF THE "ICE CREAM BLONDE"

The Mysterious Tragedy of Thelma Todd

The ghost of Thelma Todd still walks in Hollywood, or at least that’s what the owners of a building on the Pacific Coast Highway have claimed for years. It was in this building where Todd’s "Roadside Rest Cafe" was once located and it’s not far from the house where she met her mysterious end. This is a house where the ghostly elements of her demise are still repeated today. But what strange events have caused this glamorous ghost to linger behind in our world? The official cause of Thelma’s death was said to be an accidental poisoning from carbon monoxide, but the true facts in this sensational case remain unresolved to this day.

Perhaps this is why Thelma still lingers, looking for someone to uncover what really happened on the night of December 16, 1935. 

Thelma Todd

Thelma Todd was born on July 29, 1905 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and was the first of two children of John and Alice Todd. Thelma’s father was a former police officer who had entered politics and had little time for his family. Because of this, her frustrated mother channeled all of her energy into Thelma and her younger brother, William. By the time Thelma was 10, her father had become the director of public health and welfare for the state of Massachusetts, a position that kept him away from home even more. Thelma was an exceptional student and did very well in school. She had also turned into a very pretty young woman. In 1932, she enrolled at the Lowell State Normal School, intent on become a teacher. In 1925, her brother was killed in an accident and engulfed by this family tragedy, Thelma began dreaming of moving away and making a life away from her oppressive home.

Fate intervened when a local boy submitted her high school picture into a statewide beauty contest and she won. This led to a talent scout from Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount) inviting Thelma to screen test for the studio’s first film school. She passed the audition and became one of the 16 attendees, on the condition that she lose 10 pounds before arriving at the facility in Astoria, New York.

During her training, Thelma fell in love with a classmate, Robert Andrews, but the studio nipped the romance in the bud, fearing gossip would somehow taint the new school. This led the always-rebellious Thelma to seek revenge by being extra sexy and flirty around studio executives. It was this aspect of her nature that led to her nickname of “Hot Toddy.” With her classmates from the film school, Thelma made her screen debut in the silent feature “Fascinating Youth” in 1926.

Initially, Thelma’s mother had been thrilled by her daughter’s career opportunities, but she had doubts when she saw a publicity photo of the pretty girl in a flimsy costume. Alice Todd rushed to New York to voice her moral objections to studio executives. Already at wit’s end with Thelma’s rebellious behavior, Paramount gave her an ultimatum – relocate to Paramount’s studio in Hollywood, or go home. Thelma packed up and moved to California.

Thelma went to work under a five-year, $75-per-week contract with Paramount and throughout 1927 she was given small parts in a number of feature films like “Rubber Heels” with Ed Wynn and “Nevada,” a western with Gary Cooper. Then, Al Jolson spoke a few words onscreen in “The Jazz Singer” and motion pictures were changed forever. The industry went through a terrifying series of changes as the "Talkies" became the new medium of choice. The old silent films were gone for good and with them went some of the biggest stars of the era. The careers of screen legends like John Gilbert, Clara Bow, Norma Talmadge and many others were suddenly over. They were forced into retirement when the public did not respond to the sound of their voices. For Thelma, the coming of sound motion pictures could not have occurred at a better time. She was now able to develop her wisecracking persona and the demise of many screen veterans made room for newcomers and little-known actors like Thelma. A new generation of screen stars was born. However, Paramount discharged her in 1929.

A short time later, Thelma was approached by Hal Roach, who offered her a new movie deal that would also allow her to freelance for other studios. Roach planned to feature Thelma with comedy actress Zasu Pitts in a series of two-reel comedies. A former director at Essanay, Roach persuaded Pathe to sponsor him in his own studios and he soon emerged as a comedic talent, envisioning hilarious situations and translating them to film. Roach concentrated more on story than slapstick and audiences loved him at the box office. His biggest stars became Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase and Thelma Todd. She proved to be a real asset to Roach, not only appearing in her own films but as a female foil to Stan and Ollie and others.

At first, Thelma was reluctant to take the deal with Roach because the requirement came with conditions. The first was that she had to bleach her hair platinum blonde and the second required her to abide by the “potato clause.” This meant that she was being signed at a certain weight, and if she gained more than five pounds, it was cause for instant dismissal. Thelma’s mother, widowed since 1925, was in Hollywood for one of her frequent visits and she urged Thelma to take the deal. Before reporting to the Roach lot for her first shoot, Alice Todd supervised the bleaching of her daughter’s hair and helped her to arrange a stringent diet.

In addition to Thelma’s comedies for Hal Roach, Thelma also played major roles in films for other studios. They were mostly comedies in which she portrayed the sarcastic and wisecracking blonde role that most suited her. She appeared in two different films with the Marx Brothers, “Monkey Business” and the classic “Horse Feathers.” Stan Laurel always wanted Thelma as the female lead in the Laurel and Hardy films, but her personality didn’t always mesh with the two comedians on screen. She and Laurel became close friends and he often found work for her in other films when she wasn’t working for Roach. He loved her bawdy sense of humor and when she suffered from boyfriend problems, she always confided in Stan.

Thelma was always up for partying when she was not at work and found it difficult to avoid liquor and foods, both of which were fattening. Friends on the Roach lot introduced her to diet pills, and she soon became hooked on the tablets.

By 1930, Zasu Pitts had moved on to other work and Thelma was often joined on screen by Patsy Kelly. They were still going strong in 1935 and her professional career was filled with high spots. Always restless in her personal life, though, Thelma was pleased when director Roland West started showing an interest in her, even though the unattractive older man was already married to silent screen actress Jewel Carmen. West was one of the most respected directors in Hollywood during the 1920s and early 1930s. While his output of films was small, his work was appreciated by studios and audiences alike. His greatest success came in 1926 with “The Bat,” an atmospheric thriller starring Jack Pickford and Jewel Carmen. His visually astounding 1928 film, “The Dove,” won an Academy Award for art direction. In 1931, he created one of the most extraordinary chillers of the time, “The Bat Whispers” with Chester Morris. West and Thelma began a romance, with West promising her the lead in Howard Hughes’ “Hell’s Angels,” but that role went to Jean Harlow instead.

To make amends, West cast Thelma as the lead in “Corsair,” a new film that he was producing and directing for United Artists. When released, the film bombed and Thelma returned to her heavy work schedule. Although she was no longer romantically interested in West, they remained friends. By then, he had lost interest in making movies and suggested that they open a restaurant that catered to the film colony. Thelma promised to consider the idea.

Around this same time, Thelma met Pasquale DiCicco, a handsome New York playboy who associated with gangsters for the thrill of it. The suave Pat, new to Hollywood, promoted himself as a talent agent and began making the rounds of the L.A. restaurant and nightclub circuit. Movie industry people knew that he associated with Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the Syndicate gangster who was based out of New York, which, of course, made him an intriguing character. Thelma was also amused by DiCicco and dating him gave her life a touch of danger – although it would prove to be more danger than she could have ever wanted.

Thelma and DiCicco had a whirlwind romance and, despite his violent temper and a number of beatings, the couple eloped on July 10, 1932 to Prescott, Ariz. The happy marriage did not last long. DiCicco refused to settle into married life and often left his new wife alone at their Brentwood home while he was out on the town. Frustrated, Thelma began drinking heavily, always relying on her faithful diet pills to keep the weight off. One night when Thelma convinced Pat to take her out with him to the clubs, DiCicco introduced her to Lucky Luciano, who was in town for a visit. Thelma was excited to be in the presence of the famous mobster, although DiCicco was unnerved by the gangster’s obvious interest in his wife.

By 1933, DiCicco was frequently away on business in New York and Thelma was continuing to churn out films, including her popular shorts with Patsy Kelly. Reportedly, she was seen out on the town several times with Luciano during this period. By February 1934, Thelma filed for divorce from DiCicco. That August, she began making plans with Roland West to open their restaurant on the beach. With funding from West’s wife, supervision by West himself, and Thelma’s name to lure in the film crowd, Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café opened for business.

Located under the palisades of what is now Pacific Coast Highway (then known as Roosevelt Highway), the restaurant occupied the ground floor along with a drug store. On the second level were a bar, lounge, and West’s business office, as well as two apartments, one of which West and Todd shared “separately.” Nearby, at 17531 Posetano Rd, was the grand house where West’s wife, Jewel, sometimes lived, along with her brother (the café’s business manager), and his wife. Thelma stored her car in one of the garages of the Posetano Road house. To reach the garage from the restaurant required an arduous climb of 270 concrete steps. The café opened to good business. Many of West’s and Thelma’s famous friends began frequenting the place and it became popular with actors and star-struck fans alike.

In mid-1935, Thelma was spending much of her spare time operating the café. She was still working hard, drinking, and keep up her steady run of diet pills. Her hectic life was further complicated by several threatening letters demanding a sizable blackmail fee. They proved to be the work of a deranged stalker in New York and while this bit of strangeness worked itself out, it was not the most frightening thing that Thelma had to deal with that summer.

Her most disconcerting problem was the pressure that she was receiving from Luciano to turn over the café’s third story storage room (used unofficially as a gambling parlor for wealthy customers) to him as a Syndicate operation. At that time, organized crime was starting to appear in California, moving west from places like New York and Chicago. Bootlegging and drug trafficking had long been a part of Hollywood, but in the middle 1930s, Luciano was making an attempt to penetrate California with his illegal gambling enterprise. He already had casinos all over the country and with so much money flowing in and out of Hollywood, he was looking for a way to get a piece of the action. Thelma kept refusing Luciano’s request and he eventually became violent, causing her to break off all contact with him.

Their final confrontation came one night in late November at the Brown Derby in Beverly Hills. According to witnesses, the pair had a brief exchange in the restaurant:

Thelma Todd: “You’ll open a gambling casino in my restaurant over my dead body!”

Luciano: “That can be arranged.”

Thelma threatened to take her problems with Luciano to L.A. District Attorney Buron Fitts and made an appointment at his office for December 17, 1935. To spite Luciano, she began converting the third-floor café space into a steakhouse. Meanwhile, Pat DiCicco showed up one day at the restaurant and asked her about the possibility of managing the place. Thelma didn’t know if he was trying to get back into her life – or if he was on a mission from Luciano.

 Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café

Thelma’s film work continued to thrive.  In 1935, she appeared with Bing Crosby in the Paramount musical “Two for Tonight” and in November, she began working with Laurel and Hardy again in the feature-length musical “The Bohemian Girl.” This film was also based on an operetta and Stan found an unusual part for Thelma to play. She appeared as a gypsy’s daughter, wearing a black wig to cover her blond curls. She continued to work on the film well into December.

On December 14, Thelma received an invitation to a Hollywood party. A few years earlier, she had made a film with Stanley Lupino, the British stage comedian and father of actress Ida Lupino. Stanley and his wife were in town, and Ida was hosting a dinner party for him at the Café Trocadero. When Thelma informed West about the party, he was irritated with her that she would not be at their own restaurant on such a busy night before the holidays. But this was not the worst thing to come that night. A few days earlier, Pat DiCicco had run into Ida Lupino at the Trocadero and she had unknowingly invited him to the party.

On the afternoon of December 14, Thelma and her mother went out Christmas shopping, driven by her chauffeur, Ernest Peters. Later, she returned home to change clothes while her mother continued with her errands. At 7:30 p.m., Peters, along with Mrs. Todd, picked up Thelma. The actress was wearing a blue satin evening gown with lace and sequins, expensive jewelry, and a luxurious mink coat. Before leaving, she and West argued again about the café, but the still-rebellious Thelma slammed the door in his face and walked out. After dropping Thelma off at the Trocadero, Peters took Mrs. Todd home and then made himself available to drive Thelma home after the party.

The party was a great success and Pat DiCicco showed up later in the evening with actress Margaret Lindsay, a subtle way of snubbing his ex-wife. During the dinner, Thelma left the group to make a telephone call and use the restroom. When she returned, she seemed moody, but did not say why. Around midnight, DiCicco also made a mysterious phone call, which left him jittery. He refused to comment on it and left with Lindsay at about 1:15 a.m. without saying good night to anyone.

While Thelma waited for her driver to arrive, she asked her friend, theater owner Sid Grauman, to call Roland West and tell him that she was on her way home. Sid made the call, telling West that Thelma should be back at the apartment by 2:30 a.m., although a half-hour after that, she was still waiting at the restaurant. The car reached its destination about 3:30 a.m. As usual, Peters offered to escort Thelma to the door, but she told him that it wasn’t necessary. She gathered her coat around her and walked off into the dark – and this was the last time that Thelma Todd was ever seen alive.

At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, December 16, Thelma’s maid, Mae Whitehead, entered the garage of the Posetano House and found the body of Thelma Todd. She was lying face down on the front seat of her Packard convertible. Her blond hair was matted and her skin was pale. She was still wearing her clothes from Saturday night. A porcelain replacement tooth had been knocked out of her mouth and blood was spattered on her skin, her evening gown, and on the mink coat. The police were summoned at once and the shoddy investigation – or cover-up, depending on what you believe – began.

  

Police crime scene photograph of Thelma slumped over behind the wheel of her car. Suicide could not explain the beating that she had taken before her death.

Thelma died from carbon monoxide asphyxiation, but how she managed to get locked into her garage, by her own hands or by someone else’s, was a matter of conjecture. The investigation into her death revealed more questions than answers.  Some suggested that Thelma might have committed suicide. It was not an uncommon method for such an act, but then murders had been committed in a similar fashion. In addition, if she had killed herself, where had the blood on her face and clothing come from? To make matters more suspicious, an autopsy had revealed that Thelma had suffered a broken nose, several broken ribs, and enough bruises to suggest that she had been roughed up. This seemed to rule out suicide.

As the investigation continued, some nervous witnesses claimed to receive ominous threats and, in turn, recanted part, or all, of their original statements. In another weird twist, when Thelma’s mother first arrived at the scene, she insisted that someone had murdered her daughter. Later, she said that she believed Thelma’s death had been accidental. Then, still later in life, she changed her story again and once more said that Thelma had been murdered. Did someone lean on Thelma’s mother during the investigation and convince her that voicing suspicions of murder was a bad idea?

But if Thelma had been murdered, who had killed her? Roland West seemed to be the likely suspect and witnesses from the party, including Ida Lupino, said that she had been uneasy after making a telephone call. All agreed that she had been drunker than usual when she went home and Sid Grauman told the police about his telephone call to West. Also, witnesses from the neighborhood told the court how they had seen Thelma, still in her evening gown and mink coat, screaming obscenities and kicking at the door of the apartment. Apparently, she may have made it to the top of the concrete stairs, but could not get into the apartment.

Throughout the investigation, West contradicted himself several times, changing his story about his activities over the weekend several times. West admitted that instead of helping Thelma into bed on Sunday morning, he had locked the door to the apartment. After their fight earlier on Saturday, West had warned her that if she was not home by 2 a.m., he was going to lock her out. Some have surmised that Thelma’s telephone call during the party had been to West, hoping for a reprieve. When it didn’t come, she had asked mutual friend Sid Grauman to call for her later. But West remained adamant and said that after Thelma got home, they had another fight through the door. However, he added a strange contradiction to his story. He stated that he had later been awakened by his dog barking and was sure that he heard water running in the apartment. He assumed that Thelma had somehow gotten into the house.

An examination of the door did reveal marks where it was apparently kicked. Police were baffled though as to how Thelma could have gotten inside when it was bolted shut on the other side. This made them even more suspicious of West. Someone raised the incredible theory that West had hired an actress to pretend to be Thelma beating on the door while he was actually beating the real woman to death inside. The idea of the look-alike aside, West had a strong alibi against murder. Although his statement was contradictory, there was no evidence to tie him to the murder scene. He was, by his own admission, the last person to speak with Thelma on Sunday morning, just a short time before she died.

Another strange twist came from West’s wife, Jewel Carmen. She claimed that she had seen Thelma on Sunday morning, after the sun was up, driving her Packard past the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. At her side was a handsome stranger. This testimony was very bizarre because the coroner and the police believed that Thelma was already dead by then. They were sure that she had died during the early morning hours of Sunday and was not discovered until the following day.

But how reliable was Jewel Carmen? She was West’s wife and he was the prime suspect in the case. If she were lying, why would an estranged wife protect her unfaithful husband? Some suggested that perhaps if West did kill Thelma, perhaps Carmen hoped to get back into his good graces by providing an alternate killer in the form of the “handsome stranger.” She could also put Thelma in another place far from the early morning argument with West. All of the confusing stories, combined with no hard evidence, eventually cleared West of Thelma’s murder.

Years later, sources who have studied the case have pointed out West’s close ties to industry mogul Joseph M. Schenk and believe that it’s possible that Schenk may have used his major clout to help his friend get away with murder. Regardless, West never directed another film in Hollywood. He and Jewel Carmen divorced shortly after Thelma’s death and later, he sold the café. In 1950, he suffered a debilitating stroke and endured an emotional breakdown. On his deathbed in March 1952, he confessed to Chester Morris that he had always been haunted by Thelma’s death and felt that he was in some way responsible for it.

At the inquest that was held into Thelma’s death, the jury ruled that she had died accidentally from carbon monoxide poisoning. They had been confused by all of the complicated testimony and, lacking any real evidence of murder, had no choice but to conclude that it had been an accident.

But Thelma’s attorney, who attended the inquest, was sure that the police had been on the wrong track all along. He requested a second inquest, in which he would be able to prove his theory. He believed that he could pin her murder, not accidental death, on Lucky Luciano. He was sure that when Thelma had turned down the gangster’s offer to take over the gambling at her café, she had unknowingly signed her own death warrant. The attorney was convinced that Luciano, or someone who worked for him, had beaten Thelma, put her in the car unconscious, and then started the engine. With the garage door closed, she had been poisoned by the fumes.

The district attorney agreed to the idea and a second inquest was scheduled. However, when Hal Roach learned of the plans for the second inquest, he begged the D.A. to drop the matter. Terrified at the thought of crossing Luciano, he urged the District Attorney to reconsider. Reluctantly, he agreed and the case was closed for good. As a result, the murder of Thelma Todd was never solved.

Although the case was wrapped up as far as the law was concerned, there were just too many unanswered questions and, as usual, involvement in the affair was enough to bring on the Hollywood style of retribution. In the past, Hollywood circles had ruined the careers of many popular stars and the death of Thelma Todd brought on the destruction of Roland West, who never worked again. No one else wanted to join him in his descent into obscurity.

The mystery over the unsolved death of Thelma Todd has lingered for decades. Some believe this may be why her spirit is so restless. Her ghost is still frequently seen and encountered at the building where the Roadside Rest Cafe was once located. Staff members at the production company that took over the space a few years ago stated that they often saw a filmy apparition that resembled Thelma. It was often seen near the concrete steps leading to the garage and also outside, in a small courtyard area. Was she replaying the events that occurred on the night of her death?

But the café is not the only spot connected to Thelma Todd’s death where ghostly events have occurred. In the garage of the house on Posetano Road, people have complained about the sound of a spectral engine running when the space is actually empty. Others say they have smelled, and have been nearly overwhelmed, by noxious exhaust fumes in the garage, even when no car was present. Apparently, the terrible events of that long-ago night in December have left an indelible impression on the place.

Will Thelma Todd ever rest in peace? It’s not likely. Unless new evidence could somehow come to light, her murder will always remain unsolved --- perhaps resulting in a tragic spirit that will continue to walk for many years to come. 

From Troy Taylor’s book, BLOODY HOLLYWOOD. 

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.