42 Skidoo

 

September 8, 1933 saw the demise of Nicholas "Little Man" Muscato, so called because he stood at five feet tall. Muscato was a small time racketeer for Chicago's 42 gang. He reportedly had a bootlegging route under the tutelage of gangster Joseph Red Bolton, or, as was also reported, Bolton paid Muscato protection money.

In 1930, Muscato, along with fellow hoodlum Peter "the Ape" Nicastro, had murdered fellow 42 gangster Frank Petito, who hijacked a truck belonging to Bolton. After the murder, Nicastro claimed he had done the killing himself. To save face, Muscato in turn took Nicastro for a ride but he survived. Subsequently Nicastro squealed on Muscato who was arrested but beat the rap.

As a taxi driver  sat parked at a local hospital, he saw a sedan pull up and slow down. A door was opened and Muscato was tossed to the sidewalk with a bullet in the back of his head. Being a good sort of fellow, the taxi driver dragged the gangster into the hospital where he was informed that his labors had been in vain as Muscato was already dead.

Nicholas Muscato

Opening Salvo

By 1923, Chicago gang lord John Torrio had the city carved up nice and neat so all the gangs could serve their fiefdoms with beer and alcohol and nobody would war with anyone. All would get rich. Then South Side gang leader Spike O'Donnell came home from prison. 

Basically left out of the fray, the O'Donnells', or Spike really, decided that they had to make their own way so started encroaching on bars in and around their bailiwick and forcing their beer on them. September 7,  O'Donnell gang making "sales calls" on unwilling tavern keepers. The beer that the recalcitrant barkeeps were then purchasing was coming from either John Torrio or his allies, the Saltis-McErlane gang. 

One bar in particular that day had turned the gang down once. This time when they said "No" O'Donnell gangsters attacked the owner and his bartender busting both of their heads. After that, they visited about five other establishments before heading back to a saloon in the safety of their own neighbor hood.

As they sat back drinking beer, eating sandwiches and patting themselves on the back for a hard days work, the door swung open and rival gunmen entered. Not ready for a battle the O'Donnell's headed out the back door. Contemporary newspapers state that O'Donnell gunman Jerry O'Connor was brought down with a rifle shot to the heart. His gang mates then piled him into a car and took him to doctor where he was announced dead. Capone biographies tell a different story. The later accounts stated that O'Connor was trapped inside the bar and made to walk out the front door where gangster Frank McErlane was waiting with a sawed off shotgun and proceeded to blow his head off. Thus began what became known as the Chicago Beer Wars

Jerry O'Connor

Beauty And The Beast

In the late summer of 1933, as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were terrorizing the Southwest, Los Angeles was dealing with their own homegrown gun wielding Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo was Thomas White a twenty-eight-year-old ex-truck driver who did time in both San Quentin and Folsom prison. Juliet was his nineteen-year-old hairdresser girlfriend Burma Adams.

White was arrested for the first time in 1924 for drunkenness, this was followed a few months later for robbery, but he was released. In 1927 he was picked up on a liquor charge but beat the rap. In 1930 he was working as a truck driver when $6000 worth of cigarettes went missing. He was found guilty of grand theft and sentenced from 1 to 10 years at San Quentin where he proved to be a troublesome inmate so was shipped off to Folsom. 

White was paroled in April 1933 and headed to L.A. where he met Burma at a night club. Soon they were a couple and in mid August they started to rob people. Though one of their victims was blinded by a gun shot from White, none were killed. Over the course of the remaining summer, the duo stuck-up a number of people causing a bit of a sensation in the City of Angels.

A stolen car would be their down fall. On one of their jobs, the duo stole a car and brought it to a garage for repairs. On September 6, 1933, police found it and waited for the couple to return to pick it up. When they did, they were followed back to their apartment building, where they had two rooms. Burma had one on the third floor, White on the fourth. 

Four officers entered the building, two in the front, two in the rear. As two of them entered Burma's apartment, two others went to the fourth floor as White was making his way down. The cops identified themselves and told White to halt. The bandit drew his gun and fired two shot before the officers brought him down with three well placed shots. After hearing the shots, Burma, his wife of six days asked, "Did they shoot him?" when told that he probably had been shot she showed no emotion. As they questioned her she kept asking, "Is he dead yet?"

He was. White died a few minutes after the shooting.

Thomas White

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Sighs for Cy

Frank "Cy" Cawley was a Chicago hoodlum who made his way by hiring out for killings or robbing other underworld sorts of their ill-gotten booty. Police stated that he was implicated in three shootings, two bombings and at least thirty hold-ups. He was also a member of the "Four Horseman" gang. A gang that had been thinned out over the course of the year by gangster bullets.

On September 5, 1929 the bullet riddled bodies of Cawley and William McElligott (There seemed to be some confusion over the true identity of McElligott. He was also identified as Edward Westcott. Other papers said he was the brother of Thomas McElligott, a Cawley confederate who was killed the previous May.) were found in Jacob Riis park. Sawed off shotguns and pistols seemed to be the tools used by their killers. The $6000 robbery of a dice game was given as the reason for the murders, however another theory given was that one of the gang members had killed a man in a saloon earlier in the year. Though the man wasn't a gangster he had a friend who was, and that friend took it upon himself to eliminate the whole gang.

A note worthy aspect to the crime was that both Cawley and McElligott each had a nickel placed in their hands after death. Chicago gangland lore dictates that this was a custom of Capone killer Machine-gun Jack McGurn. The story goes that if he considered his victims as cheap hoods he would press a nickel into their palms.

         Cy Cawley       William McElligott

Fake Agent Gets Real Bullet

Just before midnight on September 4, 1933 Los Angeles bid farewell to small time gangster Axel "Three Finger Jack" Anderson. His record showed he had been arrested for burglary in San Francisco in 1925 and again in L.A. in '27.

Stepping up his game, Anderson procured fake credentials showing that he was a Prohibition agent. Earlier in the evening Anderson and two others "confiscated" a load of liquor from a garage. Two hours later, witnesses stated that they saw Anderson in the backseat of a sedan with two other men. A shot rang out, and Anderson fled the sedan and ran towards his own car, which was parked nearby, but his rivals over came him and shot him down in the street. Other reports had it that after fleeing the sedan, his rivals started the car, drove after him and a gunman fired at him from the passenger side window. Either way, Anderson was done for.

Police felt that he was killed by his two companions, who assisted him in stealing the liquor, over an argument over profits. Another thought is that the killers were the original owners of the booze and Anderson was trying to sell it back to them.

Axel Three Finger Jack Anderson

Following Friends

Attilio Pecora was an ally of Pittsburgh's Volpe crime family and best friends with John Volpe. With the deaths of three of the Volpes the previous July, Pecora, it was stated, was setting up to run the numbers and booze rackets in East Pittsburgh, Wilmerding and Turtle Creek.

On September 3, 1932 Pecora was standing outside his fruit store when a car pulled up to the curb down the street and somebody called to him. Pecora made his way to the car. In a flash, a shot gun appeared in the front passenger window and out the back window. Both went off and Pecora crumbled to the ground.

Attilio Pecora

The South(side) Pole

Twenty-seven year old Chicago gangster Walter Zwolinksi, nick-named the "Terrible Pole", was a former member of Spike O'Donnell's South Side gang. He started his career as a car thief and entered gangland under the tutelage of Frank McErlane before changing allegiances and joining the O'Donnells. 

By 1932, Zwolinski outgrew the O'Donnells. In spring, Spike's brother Charles was bumped off and there were attempts made on Spike. It was also stated that Zwolinski and two other defectors approached Spike on the the street and told him he was through. In an attempt to save his own skin, Spike headed to Califorinia for his health.

With Spike out of the picture, Zwolinksi allied himself with the McGeoghegan - Bubs Quinlan gang. Since this was his third known change in allegiance, the underworld to refer to him as boss of the switchmans union.

Chicago gang leader was a precarious position back then and Zwolinski's tenure was cut short in the early minutes of September 2, 1932 (or possibly the last minutes of the first.)

Whether or not it was Spike O'Donnell's loyal minions or not isn't known but somebody fired a shot into the back of Zwolinksi's head, trusted up his body and tossed him into the tonneau of an automobile and abandoned him a few blocks from his home.

Walter Zwolinski