On September 11, 1929 a group of kids were playing in the street when the ball they were using bounced into the open window of a sedan. One of the kids went to fetch it. Climbing on the running board, he opened the door and let out a scream. Instead of the expected ball, he was staring into the eyes of a dead man.
The dead man, who was shot once in the heart and once through the right eye, was James Batto, one of the killers of Eugene Moran whose body, or what was left of it, was found in a burnt Packard the previous month in Newark, New Jersey.
According to his brother, Batto had recently had a fight with Monkey Schubert, his partner in a peanut vending machine company in New Jersey and another one of Moran's murderers. Schubert was picked up by police and questioned but released.
Batto had a record dating back over thirty years and served two sentences when he was a teenager but, even though he had been arrested on seven occasions since 1910, he was discharged every time. At the time of Batto’s death Eugene Moran’s body had not yet been identified so the police were unaware of his participation and had no leads to go.
James Batto
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