Patty Cake, Patty Cake Bakers Man

Charles Argento had been out of Leavenworth for about six months when he moved into the Hotel Picadilly on Chicago's South Side early in the summer of 1932. The reason for his incarceration was that he was part of large northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin whiskey ring. When he got out of prison he formed the Italian Master Bakers association, collecting dues from the numerous bakers in the city. 

At about noon on August 31, he called his brother in-law, who happened to be the bookkeeper for the union and told him to come to his room with another associate to discuss some bakers who weren't paying their dues.

As the two men arrived they noticed the door to the neighboring room was open, but thought nothing of it. They knocked on Argento's door and after announcing themselves Argento opened the door. As the men entered, Argento noticed a man coming up from behind them. "You better scram; it looks like you'll be killed," he yelled. Immediately after that the bullets started to fly. His two cohorts hit the deck as four bullets plowed into Argento's body.

The killer escaped through the hotel as Argento's cronies went down the fire escape. After walking around town for about an hour Argento's brother in-law went to the police to give his story.

Charles Argento

Labor Pains

Around 4:45AM on this date back in 1929, a cop noticed a sedan pull into the alley behind the Western Hotel, in Chicago suburb of Cicero. The Western was formally called the Hawthorne and was used as the headquarters for Al Capone and his gang.

As the cop approached the car two guys climbed out and one of them yelled, "Look out for the cop!" and both men started to run. The officer fired a couple shots at them, but they managed to get away. Returning to the car the patrolman looked inside and found two guys crumpled on the floor.

The dead men turned out to be Michael Reilly, 28, and his partner, William Clifford, 24. Together with their partners George "Red" Barker and Thomas Cauley, Reilly and Clifford were known as labor racketeers. The foursome would muscle their way into unions and take over with either threats of violence or in the case of stubborn union heads, murder and terrorism.

The duo, with Barker, had recently beat a the rap after shooting a policeman. In their bid to take over a parking garage union, they killed a man. Supposedly returning to kill a witness, a police officer stopped them and they shot the cop. The trio fled to California where they were subsequently captured. During the trial the wounded cop refused to identify them and they walked. Barker was imprisoned on a different charge but Reilly and Clifford went free.

To help refill their coffers, Reilly and Clifford starting leaning on the unions, and other gangsters in general, to ante up. The result was that the two hoodlums were stood up against a wall and machine gunned. Their corpses were then loaded into Reilly's car and dumped behind the Western Hotel.

Mike Reilly     Bill Clifford