One gangster, or one gangster's death I should say, that has always stuck with me was Chicago's
Eugene "Red" McLaughlin. I first read about him in Fred Pasley's Capone biography probably fifteen or more years ago. It was the way that Red was found. The passage reads, in part: "...in the drainage canal at Summit...a passing tugboat churned up the body of Eugene Red McLaughlin..."
Now, I've read about the demise of probably a thousand gangsters or so but this one has always made me feel squeamish. I don't know why, I suspect it is the two words "drainage" and "churned". Two words that really shouldn't be associated with the human body. Had he simply been found in a canal by a fisherman I doubt it would have had the same impact, but no, he was "churned" out from the bottom of a "drainage" canal like an old boot. I doubt Red is due any sympathy but eeww.
Red received a paragraph or two in the Pasley book and seemed to be a small time guy who met a grisly fate. So what does that have to do with us? You say. Well some authors say that Legs Diamond was the guy who put Red in the canal (Oh, by the way, Red had his hands and legs tied, and a sack tied over his head, which may have contained two bullets) with some iron to keep him on the bottom.
The story goes that Arnold Rothstein got word that Red was coming in from Chicago to snatch him for a kings ransom. A.R. then sicked Legs on him and Legs went to Chi-town and SPLASH!
I was always a little wary of the story and didn't put much creedence in it but just for laughs I googled Red to if there was anything out there. I'm pleased to report that Red was a bigger deal than I knew. Turns out he was involved in Chicago's taxi cab wars Here you will find a fun read on the war and Red's part.
In a nutshell he killed the president of a cab company and then his brother took over the number one spot. It also mentions he was a bandit who robbed a New York jeweler of $85,000 and was also involved in kidnappings, murders and other nefarious activities on a national scale. Just the type of guy who might want to put the snatch on A.R. So could it be that maybe Legs did...nope, Red went canal diving in late May early June of 1930. A good twenty months after A.R. took his final bow. So no Diamond connection but nice to read a little more on the victim of the hit that creeps me out.
"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933
4 comments:
ick indeed, what an unpleasant way to go.
Mathilde- I never thought of that. Maybe you're right.
Did he roll with Al Capone at all?
There is a mention of Red McLaughlin in the 1935 fiction book The Saint in New York, page 64. I'll quote it here. In this scene The Saint a vigilante character is captured by the mob and threatened by something called the 'Hotbox'. 'For he had heard of the hot box, that last and most horrible product of gangland's warped ingenuity. Al Capone himself is credited with the invention of it: it was his answer to the three musketeers who pioneered the kidnapping racket in the days when other racketeers, who had no come-back in the law, were practically the only victims; and Red McLaughlin, who led that historic form into Crook County - who extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransoms from Capone's lieutenant and came within an ace of kidnapping the Scarface himself - died by that terrible death.' Leslie Charteris was the writer of the Saint books and moved to America from England in 1930. He knew George Raft and some other figures of the edge of the criminal underworld so maybe he heard something about Red McLaughlin and his career as a kidnapper targeting Capone's men. This is something I haven't found in any other books but it might be a reason Red was killed. The book doesn't describe what the Hot Box was and I see no references to it anywhere.
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