Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931
- Автор: Энгланд Джордж Аллан, Philips Judson P.
- Год: 1931
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931». Краткое содержание книги:
Four days after the slaying of Skelly, two of Sheriff Bryant’s deputies, Charles H. Andrews and Erwin Kubath, went to Chicago carrying with them two cumbersome suitcases containing the machine guns found in the bungalow. They were taken to Chicago at the request of Major Calvin C. Goddard, New York ballistic expert, who had been called to aid in clearing up the St. Valentine’s Day slaughter.
And on December 23 Major Goddard went before the Cook County coroner’s jury and testified that the bullets which hailed death upon the seven Moran gangsters on that St. Valentine’s Day were fired from the two machine guns found cached in the bungalow in St. Joseph.
Fred Burke, the most vicious journeyman killer, was definitely linked with the slaughter — all because he lost his head in a minor traffic mishap in the little town where he had lived peacefully as a wealthy gentleman farmer!
Major Goddard explained his ballistic findings so convincingly that the jury unhesitatingly ordered Burke arrested for the grim assassination.
Examining the two guns, Major Goddard found that the serial numbering on the barrels had been carefully filed. But the application of a strong acid brought out the markings in their full intensity because of the effect of the stamping on the texture of the steel.
One bore the number 2347 and the other 2580, and it was a simple matter to trace their origins. They had been sold by a New York manufacturer to a Chicago dealer, who had in turn sold one of them to authorities of Marion County, Illinois, and the other to a man who had said he was purchasing it for Elgin, Illinois, police officers.
“Number 2347, and perhaps the other one, was used in the slaving of the seven Moran gangsters.” Major Goddard said.
Meanwhile, Viola Brenneman had engaged an attorney and was fighting for her release from jail in St. Joseph. A technical charge of receiving stolen goods had been placed against her by Prosecutor Cunningham, and he demanded ten thousand dollars bond for her release.
If she were released she might lead them to Burke.
After resting in jail for two weeks, she was released and went directly to the home of her mother in Kankakee. Officers trailed her, but their stalking yielded no clew to the killer. Finally they ceased their surveillance.
Reports of Burke, some vague and others apparently well founded, continued to pour in. He was reported seen, usually with blond women — one of his weaknesses since his first “job” with Egan’s Rats in St. Louis — in a half hundred American cities. Chicago’s gang hideouts, or at least some of them, were searched. Detroit police reported that he had crossed into Canada. He was reported seen in Springfield, Illinois, again in Gary, Indiana, and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Then Police Commissioner Grover Whalen of New York announced that Burke’s deadly weapons were also responsible for the murder of Frankie Yale, Brooklyn gang chief. Yale’s gorillas charged that Burke and James Ray were responsible. Yale had been suspected of having had a hand in the murders of “Big Jim” Colisimo and Dion O’Banion in Chicago in his capacity as the boss of gun handlers for Capone. Shortly before Yale’s sudden and inglorious demise, however, Yale and Capone had broken off friendly relations.
When Alfred “Jake” Lingle, the Chicago Tribune reporter, was shot last summer, John H. Alcock, now acting commissioner of police, said Burke might have had some part in that slaying.
It was not until mid-summer that the trail of Burke grew really hot. On the evening of July 24 Thomas Bonner, minor racketeer and stool pigeon on Chicago’s south side was slain in front of his home by two men who drove by in a Ford sedan and leveled a machine gun upon him. An investigation revealed to the police that only two days before Bonner and a Chicago druggist had driven to Hess Lake, near Newaygo, Michigan, where Burke was rumored to have been hiding out at a small resort.
Police were informed that Bonner had gone to the resort to learn of Burke’s hiding place in order that he might direct the authorities there and cut in on a portion of the ten thousand dollars reward money. Fifteen detectives led by Lieutenant John McGinnis of the homicide squad sped to the resort, to learn that the man they were hunting had left twenty minutes before.
It can be disclosed now that Burke’s escape on this occasion was caused by the carelessness of an officer who mentioned the impending raid in the presence of one of Burke’s friends.
The widow of Thomas Bonner is certain that Burke killed her husband.
“How do I know?” she says. “Why, didn’t they work together as brakemen years ago, and didn’t Burke hang around Tom’s saloon before prohibition? Don’t worry, I know Fred Burke. He was scared because he thought Tom was getting ready to squeal and cut in on the reward for the St. Valentine’s Day killings.”
Less than a month later a squad of St. Louis police raided a downtown hotel on a tip that Burke was hiding there, but instead they found a gambling house owner and a well-stocked arsenal. A month after the Merchants’ Trust Company in Paterson, New Jersey, was held up and robbed of twenty thousand dollars, and half a dozen terrorized girl employees identified Burke’s pictures from police files. More leads... leads to nowhere.
But there was one agency that continued its relentless scouring of the country for the mad killer. The United States Department of Justice, remembering the two hundred thousand dollar mail truck holdup in Toledo, Ohio, in which a policeman had been slain and Burke’s acquittal of a thirty-five thousand dollar railway express robbery in St. Louis in 1925, was determined that this man should be brought to justice. Operatives had been working continuously and secretly on the manhunt for months, and finally their opportunity came.
VII
It was late in December of 1930 — a year after the Skelly killing in St. Joseph, Michigan — that Joseph. Hunsaker, a lean-faced young truck driver, living in Green City, Missouri, about one hundred and seventy-five miles northeast of St. Joseph, Missouri, became suspicious of a stockily-built, black-haired stranger who visited a farm home three and one-half miles west of Green City frequently.
The stranger flashed a big roll of bills, went around in flashy clothes, and drove an expensive automobile. When he drove into town he never got out of his car, and he avoided the people in Green City.
Hunsaker had seen a picture of Fred Burke, his cold, steely eyes glowering, and over it the caption: “Thousands on His Head!”
There had been something familiar about that face — and those eyes. In the picture Burke was clean-shaven, but there was an unmistakable resemblance between him and the stranger with the big, expensive automobile and roll of bills.
The young driver browsed around the town, learning what he could of the stranger.
Bit by bit he learned that the man was known as White, and that he was supposed to be a big business man in Kansas City. Last summer he had married Bonnie Porter, the tall, slender, blond daughter of Barney Porter, at whose home near Green City he visited.
Hunsaker was satisfied that he had located the widely hunted killer. He sat clown and wrote a letter to the Department of Justice agents in Chicago. Three days later he received an important locking letter warning him to proceed cautiously, keeping an eye on the man until he received further orders. Chief of Police E. M. Matthews of St. Joseph, Missouri, also received a letter. He was asked to investigate the information supplied by the truck driver.
Three times a squad of St. Joseph police went to the little four-room farm house midway between Green City and Milan, making the trip in the middle of the night. But each time they learned from their informant that the man they sought had left shortly before.