Pain In The Leg

Jimmy Cox had already lost an arm to gangster bullets. On November 8, he almost lost a leg as well. The gangster had just left a funeral home where he paid his final respects to fellow hoodlum James Darmondy who himself had survived a machine-gun attack that took the lives of two of his comrades back in 1928.

Darmondy was rubbed out on November 5, after a run in with a cop. Cox visited the funeral parlor and left at...well, I'll just let him tell the story: "I left the undertakers about midnight...and started to drive east. I had just started when a large car with three fellows in it came up the street, and one of them started firing with a machine-gun."

Three of the bullets ripped into Cox's leg but he managed to get to a hospital with the help of a friend. Though he survived this attempt, he had a date with destiny a few years later.

James Wingy Cox

In The Still Of The Night

On the morning of October 2, 1930, Sam Therina, a bootlegger in the employ of the Cuckoo gang, climbed out of a sedan in front of a St. Louis hospital and collapsed. He had been hit in both hips by blasts from a Thompson machine-gun.

Inside the hospital he told authorities that the bodies of Cuckoo gang members Peter McTigue and William Boody could be found at a still that the gang had set up approximately twenty-eight miles south and across the Mississippi river in Illinois. The rival Shelton gang had previously stated that that was their territory and anyone operating there would face the consequences.

Therina along with a few other guys;  Cuckoo member James Darmondy and Joe Moceri were cooking the mash that would be turned into whiskey. The night before McTigue and Boody showed up. Inside a slapped together shack, McTigue, Boody and Therina slept on cots. Moceri slept out side and Darmondy worked the still. 

At just about sun up rival gangsters crept up to the shack. Sticking the muzzle of a Thompson through a crack, the gunman opened fire. Therina was hit in the hip and, not knowing what was happening, got up from his cot and was hit again. Falling to the floor, he realized what was happening and stayed down. 

When the gunmen stepped away, Therina crawled over to McTigue's cot and felt him. Drawing back a bloody hand, he decided he was dead then crawled over to Boody's cot. 

"You hurt, Bill?"

Boody leaned up with a bloody face.

"Yeah. You better get out of here. I'm finished." The gangster said before falling back on his cot and letting out a gasp.

Therina, crawled to the door but stopped when he heard the machine-gun firing again. These shots were aimed at Moceri who was hit, but managed to escape into the woods. Darmondy also managed to get away.

Once the killers drove away, Therina crawled to Boody's sedan and managed to drive himself back to St. Louis.

Peter McTigue                     William Boody