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