Eliot Ness (36 page)

The most popular man in Cleveland

“Suppose you were a bandit and told Safety Director Eliot Ness to ‘stick ’em up.’ He might surprise you in any one of 30 different ways.” Ness shows police recruits how to fight for their lives.

Two of the many faces of the sexy, troubled Evaline McAndrew Ness

The torso of a young woman, victim number seven of Kingsbury Run’s “Mad Butcher.” Her head and limbs are never found, making identification impossible.

“He certainly doesn’t leave many, if any, clues,” Ness says in frustration as public pressure builds to stop the torso murders. Over five years, Cleveland police collect hundreds of items from the crime scenes in hope of piecing together the killer’s identity.

Mrs. Hugh Seaver, stylish and headed for divorce

Eliot Ness for mayor. Not even his dutiful new wife believes he has a chance at winning.

The lion in winter

M
y agent, Jim Donovan, helped get me started on this project and provided invaluable insight all along the way. My editor, Brittney Ross, improved this book in many ways both large and small.

Barbara Osteika, the staff historian at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, tirelessly aided my research. She patiently answered questions about the ATF’s history and work; helped me track down key documents, such as government personnel files; and led me through the agency’s archives.

I also must express my thanks to the following for research and other assistance:

James Badal; Mark Bassett; Peter Bhatia; Maria Brandt; Jerry Casey; James Ciesla; the Cleveland Police Historical Society staff; the Cleveland Public Library staff; the Cleveland State University Special Collections staff; Anne Collier; Jonathan Eig; Susan Gage; Abby Gilbert; Marni Greenberg; Daniel M. Huff; Carol Jacobs; Méira King; Joe Kisvardai; the Library of Congress staff; Alessandra Lusardi; the Multnomah County Library interlibrary loan staff; Adrienne Pruitt; Michelle Regan; Steve Resnick; Arnold Sagalyn; Rena Schergen; Ellen Seibert; Cindy Shifflett; and especially Scott Sroka.

And, of course, this book would simply not have been possible without the love and support of my beautiful and talented wife, Deborah King.

AI —Author interview

ATF—Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives historic archives

Berardi—“Prohibition: Tony Berardi: About Eliot Ness and ‘the Untouchables.’” Video interview with Tony Berardi. Produced in 1999: onlinefootage.tv/video/show/id/7684. Accessed February 28, 2011.

CN—
Cleveland News

CP—
Cleveland Press

CPD—Cleveland
Plain Dealer

CPHS—Archives at the Cleveland Police Historical Society

CT—
Chicago Tribune

ENP—Eliot Ness Papers, 1928–1960, MSS 3699; and Eliot Ness Scrapbooks, 1931–1947: Microfilm Collections, Western Reserve Historical Society

ENP/MS—Ness’s original draft summary for his memoir,
The Untouchables
: Eliot Ness Papers, Microfilm Collections, Western Reserve Historical Society

HHB—The Papers of Harold H. Burton, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Johnson—“Prohibition: George E. Q. Johnson: About Eliot Ness and ‘the Untouchables.’” Video interview with George E. Q. Johnson Jr. Produced in 1999. www.onlinefootage.tv/video/show/id/7733. Accessed February 28, 2011.

Lonardo—Statement of Angelo Lonardo before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, 100th Congress, Second Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington: 1988

NPRC—U.S. government civilian personnel records (by name of employee): Official Personnel Folders, The National Personnel Records Center, National Archives at St. Louis

Vollmer—August Vollmer Historical Project, 1983, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Introduction: The Real Eliot Ness

The death scene in the Ness kitchen was recreated using the following sources
:
“End Comes Quickly: Eliot Ness, Resident Here Only Eight Months, Passes Away,”
Potter Leader-Enterprise
, May 23, 1957; “Walter Taylor Reminisces on Eliot Ness’s Last Years,”
Potter Leader-Enterprise
, Mar. 22, 1961; “Film Crews Tracking Eliot Ness: Famous Crime Fighter Died Unheralded—But of Natural Causes—in Potter County,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Dec. 1, 1996; Elisabeth Seaver file, unlabeled news clippings, Cleveland Museum of Art archives; ENP, unlabeled obituary clippings, reel 3.

He walked out of the kitchen
:
Cleveland Public Library photo collection, Eliot and Elisabeth Ness living room.

It got his age wrong
:
“Eliot Ness, 53, Dies; Helped Jail Capone,” CT, May 17, 1957.

Ness had taught Sagalyn how to
:
AI, Arnold Sagalyn, May 22, 2011.

Sagalyn sent her some money
:
Ibid.

But unlike Sagalyn, he didn’t owe
:
Something About the Author: Autobiography Series
, vol. 1, (Independence, KY: Gale, 1985), 227.

“The last time I saw Eliot
 . . . ”:
David Cowles oral history, 1983, CPHS.

The young, irrepressible top cop
:
“What They Are Saying,” CPD, Feb. 7, 1937.

As one of the resident experts
:
Peter Jedick, “Eliot Ness,”
Cleveland
, April 1976.

“He really captured the imagination
 . . . ”:
George E. Condon,
Cleveland: The Best Kept Secret
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 243.

During a lull in the conversation
:
Oscar Fraley, “The Real Eliot Ness,”
Coronet
, July 1961.

“It was dangerous”
:
Ibid.

“I can hardly believe it”
:
Ibid.

Worried about what he considered
:
Roger Borroel,
The
Story of the Untouchables, as Told by Eliot Ness
(East Chicago, IN: La Villita Publications, 2010), 1; Fraley, “The Real Eliot Ness.”

George E. Q. Johnson Jr., son of
:
Johnson.

“Eliot changed
 . . . ”:
Paul W. Heimel,
Eliot Ness: The Real Story
(Nashville, TN: Knox Books, 1997), 81.

Thirty years after Ness’s death
:
“The Death of Eliot Ness Was Exaggerated,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 14, 1987.

Ken Burns, promoting his
:
“‘Prohibition’ Gives Lie to Era’s Chicago Myths,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, Sept. 26, 2011.

“I am going to be out
 . . . ”:
“Ness to Fight in Front Lines,” CP, Dec. 13, 1935, ENP, reel 2.

Marion Kelly, a longtime Cleveland
:
Laurence Bergreen,
Capone: The Man and the Era
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 598.

Louise Jamie, who was related
:
Ibid., 345.

“There is nothing about Ness’ appearance
 . . .”:
“Crime Buster Ness Shares Trial Spotlight,” CN, Oct. 2, 1940, ENP, reel 2.

“Tell me, what kind of guy
 . . .”:
Fraley, “The Real Eliot Ness.”

Chapter 1: Hardboiled

Edna Stahle opened her eyes
:
AI, Maxine Huntington, a longtime friend of Edna’s, Sept. 5, 2011.

The gangsters had figured out that
:
Studs Terkel,
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
(Pantheon Books, 1970), 169–70.

“So [gangsters] took these yachts and decorated them
 . . . ”:
Ibid.

One saloon regular put it succinctly
:
Ibid., 187.

He’d come because he was
:
“Eliot Ness Colleague Marguerite Downes, 90,” CT, Dec. 23, 1986.

On the weekend, she clattered around town
:
AI, Maxine Huntington, Sept. 5, 2011.

“We used to double-date”
:
“The Real Eliot Ness,”
Tucson Citizen
, July 17, 1987, Scott Sroka personal collection.

“Women threw themselves at Eliot”
:
Condon, “The Last American Hero,”
Cleveland
, Aug. 1987.

This dichotomy—between the “very modest man
 . . .”:
“The Real Eliot Ness,”
Tucson
Citizen, July 17, 1987, Scott Sroka personal collection.

The division oversaw
:
“Federal Prohibition Enforcement: A Report to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement,” Justice Department, 1930, 168.

The Chicago Prohibition office had recently
:
Laurence F. Schmeckebier, “The Bureau of Prohibition: Its History, Activities and Organization” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1929), 50.

In 1922,
two years after the arrival
:
Ibid., 45.

He and Chicago’s Prohibition administrator
:
“Bailiff Shot By Dry Squad,” CT, Mar. 30, 1928.

The newspapers dubbed him “Hardboiled Golding”
:
unlabeled
Chicago Tribune
clipping, Oct. 12, 1927, ENP, reel 1.

“The agents swooped down on unsuspecting Chicago
 . . . ”:
Elmer L. Irey, as told to William J. Slocum.
The
Tax Dodgers: The Inside of the T-Men’s War with America’s Political and Underworld Hoodlums
(New York: Greenberg, 1948), 20.

In March 1928, one of Golding’s men shot
:
“Indict Bailiff After Drys Shoot Him,” CT, Mar. 31, 1928; “Get Warrant for Dry Agent,” CT, April 1, 1928; “Seized as Deneen Bomber,” CT, April 3, 1928.

He said the wounded man, under guard
:
“Bailiff Shot by Dry Squad,” CT, Mar. 30, 1928.

When the police showed up
:
“Bailiff Shot by Dry Squad,” CT, Mar. 30, 1928; “‘Ace’ Golding’s Police Clash Not His First,” CT, Mar. 31, 1928; and “Get Warrant for Dry Agent,” CT, April 1, 1928.

Irey recalled that the special agent
:
Irey,
Tax Dodgers
, 20.

On April 5, Caffey surrendered
:
“U.S. May Yield Dry Agent Who Shot Bailiff,” CT, April 5, 1928; “‘Hardboiled’ Facing Pressure,”
Chicago Daily News
, April 5, 1928.

“The situation here is so tense
 . . .”:
“Seized as Deneen Bomber,” CT, April 3, 1928.

In his meeting with Willebrandt
:
Irey,
Tax Dodgers
, 20.

He believed in Golding and his hard-boiled tactics
:
ENP/MS.

From their initial interview, Golding pegged
:
NPRC, George Golding.

He was a college boy
:
University of Chicago Office of the Registrar, Eliot Ness student transcript.

He’d started his career at the consumer-reporting
:
Eliot Ness personnel file, ATF.

And he was among the few agents in the office
:
“Drys Bob Up at Illinois U. and Stop Speakeasies,” CT, May 26, 1927; Ness personnel file, ATF.

Golding put down that Eliot had landed
:
NPRC, George Golding.

He carried the Prohibition Bureau’s rule book
:
ATF. The historic archive at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is not like the Library of Congress. It is a large, long storage room inside a much larger warehouse in industrial Washington, DC. Inside this room are rows and rows of rickety metal shelves, on which sit unmarked or often incorrectly marked cardboard boxes. Inside the boxes are hundreds of pieces of the agency’s history. Nothing is in any discernible order. A box might have Prohibition Bureau ledgers documenting confiscated beer in Pittsburgh in 1928 along with ATU public-information pamphlets from the 1950s and the diaries of an agent from World War II. ATF staff historian Barbara Osteika allowed me to spend hours in the room going through box after box, taking notes as I went. An ATF intern, Daniel M. Huff, assisted in the search and made photocopies of whatever I wanted. Once we were done with a document, the original would go back in the cardboard box and disappear back onto the nondescript shelf, like a reenactment of the last scene of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

A memo from Washington the week before
:
Ness personnel file, ATF.

On June 5, Golding personally gave
:
Ibid.

Chapter 2: Mama’s Boy

“The way of the transgressor is hard
 . . . ”:
“$4,000 Offered to Bribe Dry Agents Seized,” CT, May 3, 1928.

The narrative for the City Hall Square operation and its aftermath comes from
:
“Shot by U.S. Drys in Loop,” CT, Aug. 22, 1928; “Panic as Federal Agents Raid Loop Tower,”
Chicago Daily News
, Aug. 22, 1928; “Dry Raiders Held for Loop Shooting,” CT, Aug. 25, 1928; “Disband U.S. Dry Gunmen,” CT, Aug. 29, 1928; “Golding’s Squad ‘Dry Cleaned’ in Shakeup Order,” CT, Sept. 12, 1928; George Golding’s federal personnel folder, NPRC.

“All previous records for brutality, depravity
 . . .’”:
“3 Killed, Dozens Hurt in 60 Day Drive by Drys,” CT, Oct. 1, 1928.

The Prohibition Bureau dismissed a handful
:
“Dry Advocate of Terrorism Evades Rebuke,” CT, Sept. 8, 1928.

Two weeks later, Yellowley named Jamie
:
NPRC, Alexander Jamie.

At one stop in 1922 a reporter asked
:
“The First Woman Federal Prohibition Agent,”
A.I.U.
, December 1922, ATF.

She loved to quote “the highest authority
 . . .”:
Ibid.

In the second half of the nineteenth century
:
Longview
Daily News
, Nov. 11, 2012.

Yet even decades later, after years of
:
Daniel Okrent,
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
(New York: Scribner, 2010), 36.

“The whole world is skew-jee
 . . . ”:
Ibid., 3.

The notoriously corrupt William “Big Bill”
:
Jonathan Eig,
Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 24–25.

A visit the following year showed
:
Okrent,
Last Call
, 141.

Trying to enforce the law, she said
:
Geoffrey C. Ward,
Prohibition
, Florentine Films, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.