In the early hours of February 13, 1924 in St. Louis, Egan's Rats gang member Eddie Linehan, age 22, was found in a ditch wrapped in a car blanket. To say that he had been merely bumped off would be an under statement. There was some anger behind the murder. Nineteen bullet holes were found in him, fired from all directions. He had one bullet between the eyes, another had blown away his right eye. He took one to the adam's apple. Three to the back of his head, a straight line of six between his shoulder blades (perhaps a blast from a Tommy gun?) and various other wounds all over his body,
He was do in court later that day along with a confederate named Ray Renard for a mail robbery. Earlier the previous day, he and Renard were captured by police after a chase that started because the gangsters were speeding. Linehan and Renard told them that they were out rounding up witnesses for their trial and asked to be released so they wouldn't miss their case. The police let them go. After that the police found out that Linehan went to gang leader Dinty Colbeck's cabaret during the evening. After that they don't know what happened. Colbeck couldn't or wouldn't shed any light on the subject during questioning.
At about 2:20 am police found Linehan's body and figured he'd been dead about an hour. It was speculated that Linehan was bumped off because the Rats didn't want him to make it to court. Perhaps Linehan made some threats if Colbeck didn't somehow come to his rescue and so the gang took care of him. Another thought was that a few days before the murder, a St. Louis cop was gunned down in front of a speakeasy. He had been shot in the neck and then, when he was prostrate, the killer fired two more shots through his head. Supposedly, Linehane was known as a "cop hater" ever since he'd been shot by a one a few years earlier. However Egan's Rats had an unwritten law that gangsters weren't to shoot cops. The theory arose that Linehan was the guy who murdered the officer and so met gang justice.
Eddie Linehan
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