In 1927, he and his gang member brother Vincent rebuffed attempts by police to undergo mental testing for a possible hold in a psychiatric hospital. McErlane somehow avoided death while the object of a dozen shootings. The gang at that time of open street combat controlled the South Side illicit beer and liquor racket. Again, his rata-tat-tat missed the wished-for gangster, “Dynamite Joe” Brooks, but killed an innocent bystander.Īs of 1926, McErlane’s liquor gang had murdered 15 people, beating the raps time after time – as witnesses dreaded retribution - and robbed a mail train of $135,000. His next episode with a Thompson took place that October 3 at the Regan A.C. O’Donnell, standing outside a drugstore at 63rd Street and Western Avenue, ducked below a nearby auto as McErlane’s burst shattered the store’s window. The Thompson, created as a military weapon, could fire 100. McErlane’s ill-famed debut of the Tommy gun during the beer wars occurred on September 25, 1925, with O’Donnell his intended victim. McErlane proved himself a merciless killer during the Outfit’s “beer wars,” slaying three members of a rival liquor gang run by Edward “Spike” O’Donnell. During Prohibition in 1922, with his partner Joseph Saltis, he signed up with the Outfit bootlegging gang led by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. During his marathon pneumonia delirium, medical attendants heard him scream, “Don’t let them take me for a ride!”īorn in Chicago in 1894, McErlane slid into crime by his late teens. Chicago lore credits him as the first mobster to use a Thompson submachine gun in an attempted gang hit, and with originating the term “one-way ride” to describe a doomed hit target. McErlane, with the Saltis-McErlane Gang of the city’s South Side, was as cruel and mean as any in gangdom and a maximum danger when blackout drunk and armed. Upon his death from a torturous, four-day bout with pneumonia in 1932, Frank McErlane was described by Chicago Police as the “toughest gangster of them all.” His ruthless bootlegging peers in the Windy City feared him so much they reportedly paid him a “pension” of hundreds of dollars a week just to stay out of town.įrank McErlane was one of the most trigger-happy bootleggers in Chicago during Prohibition. Below is our list of the top five mobsters you’ve probably never heard of. We found quite a few compelling stories about forgotten members of one-time syndicates, large and small, and picked a handful of the best. They had their ride of “success” as criminals, came and went, and now exist only in imperfect, fast-written, snapshot news articles, official police and court documents, interviews and unreliable but entertaining gossip and hearsay. The history of the 20 th century contains many stories of notable true crime characters who dared to flout state and national laws, some through violence, and others avoiding it, for profit. In researching American organized crime through decades-old newspapers available online, it’s amazing how many significant Mob figures gained infamy and broad coverage of their exploits in their time, only to virtually disappear from memory. This newspaper report about the death of Frank McErlane was published on November 6, 1932, in the Tacoma (Washington) Daily Ledger.
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