Murder at 5615 W. Roosevelt - 1929

SLAIN IN CICERO SALOON

"William J. Vercoe, 51 years old, a credit expert who recently ventured into business for himself and met reverses, was shot to death last night at the bar of the Pony Inn cafe, 5615 Roosevelt road, Cicero.  Machine gunners killed Assistant State's Attorney William H. McSwiggin three years ago in front of the same resort, which was operated then, as it is now, by Harry Madigan and Michael Wendel.

"Hours after Vercoe died, when the county highway police had found no clues in the victim's apparently respectable past nor obtained enlightening statements from various witnesses, they declared there was only one credible theory in the murder.

"'What probably happened was that Vercoe strayed into a tough spot and spoke out of turn,' said Chief William Collins of the highway police.

Policemen Hear Shot

"Two highway policemen, James Howe and Eugene Majors, heard a single shot from the saloon as they rode past at 6:30 p.m.  Finding front and rear doors locked and observing a number of persons clambering out of the windows, they pursued two of the fugitives, who identified themselves as Wendel, one of the owners, and George McNally, the bartender.

"Inside they found the Negro porter, William Johnson. Bloodstains led from the bar to a stairway, where Vercoe's body, with a bullet wound behind his left ear, lay.

"McNally said Vercoe and two companions came in fifteen minutes before the shooting.  He served them a round of beer and busied himself at the bar until he was called to the women's parlor in the rear when he heard the shot, McNally said.

Attempt to Hide Body

"Wendel, who claimed he was in his office adjacent to the barroom at the moment of the shooting, joined him in attempting to remove the body, McNally said.  They dragged it to concealment, cleared the place of customers, locked the doors from the inside, and fled through windows.  Both men professed they had never seen Vercoe's companions before last night.

"In the slain man's pockets were cards naming him as president of the Vercoe Fuel Oil corporation, 711 (3?)1 South California avenue, and listing one Paul Freeland, 808 East 49th street, as vice president.  Freeland is Vercoe's son-in-law.

"Freeland said Vercoe purchased the oil company, an $80,000 concern, last February, and was lately attempting to obtain capital to rehabilitate it.  Mrs. Vercoe, he said, had been sent to Kankakee Insane asylum fourteen months ago, and Vercoe had frequented Cicero saloons since then, playing cards and endeavoring to interest his barroom acquaintances in the oil company.

"At the Rybski home it was said that for two weeks Reichel had been importuning Rybski daily to go with him to look at an automobile, but Rybski could not find time from his work to do so.  Yesterday morning about 10 o'clock, Miss Rybski said Reichel called for her brother and they left together 'to see that machine.'  He was not seen alive by the family after that.

"At the detective bureau, Reichel was grilled until late this morning.  He steadfastly denied that he had written the extortion notes."

Saloon in Front of which McSwiggin was killed again murder scene

"Madigan's Pony inn at 5615 West Roosevelt road, in which William J. Vercoe was found shot to death behind bar.  William H. McSwiggin, assistant state's attorney, was killed in front of the saloon, where the crowd is gathered."

Source: Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963); March 20, 1929; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1890-1984), page 2.  Photo back page of newspaper.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  This is a most peculiar report in the Chicago Tribune.  In the last sentence of the article "what" extortion notes are they talking about?  The whole story just sounds rather bizarre.

Overview of McSwiggin and Capone Relationship

The following Blog post from The Chicago Crime Scenes Project gives a "sanitized" version of the events of the night of April 27, 1927.

"William McSwiggin was Assistant States' Attorney in Chicago, and had vigorously pursued an indictment against Al Capone in 1924 for killing Joe Howard in a South side bar.  While unable to successfully prosecute Capone (despite the presence of several eye-witnesses), McSwiggin became known as a "hanging" prosecutor.  But there was more to him than met the eye.

"McSwiggin was also a card player, gambler, and drinker, and that naturally brought him into close contact with Capone and his associates on a regular basis.  In fact, with the passage of time, Capone began to consider McSwiggin a friend.  One night in late Spring, 1926, after dinner at his parents' house, McSwiggin and a few close friends went out for a night of gambling and drinks.  Shortly after leaving the house, their car broke down and they ended up joining a couple of other friends in their car. These friends were the O'Donnell brothers, rival bootleggers who had a growing feud with Capone.

"The O'Donnells' shiny new Lincoln went cruising through Cicero with McSwiggin and friends, hitting bar after bar, until they ended up here, at the Pony Inn, not far from Capone's Cicero headquarters.  When word came to Capone that his rivals were encroaching on his territory, he sent a convoy of Lieutenants, armed with machine guns, to make his displeasure known. No one told him his friend McSwiggin was with the group.

"As the drinking party left the Pony Inn, bursts of gunfire sent fifty rounds into the group, killing three, including McSwiggin (the O'Donnells, the targets of the attack, escaped unharmed).
Public outcry at the gangland death of a state prosecutor pushed the police into action.  Chicago police invaded Cicero, arresting Ralph Capone and raiding several Capone-owned joints.  Al fled the city, spending the summer of 1926 among friends in the Italian community in Lansing, Michigan, until the heat died down enough for him to return to the Chicago area.

"Never again, however, was Capone completely unmolested by the police.  Though he had never intended to hurt McSwiggin, he had lost his standing with the public, who began to put increasing pressure on the police to shut down gang operations."

Posted by Kendall, The Chicago Crime Scenes Project: Photographs of locations associated with infamous criminal incidents in Chicago. Thursday, September 30, 2008.

McSwiggin Assassinated in front of the Pony Inn - 1926

The following are excerpts from several books on the assassination of William McSwiggin, Assistant State's Attorney of Cook County, in front of Harry Madigan's Pony Inn, April 27, 1926.  The excerpts give you some background and insight on what it must have been like in Chicago in the 1920s - a time when our Harry and John Madigan ran a saloon.

******************************************************************************

Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-Made Man, Fred D. Pasley, Ayer Co., 1987, page 128

"The debacle of the police department may be said to date from a triple machine-gunning the night of April 27, 1926, when there died William H. McSwiggin, assistant State's attorney of Cook County; Thomas Duffy, barber, beer peddler, and precinct captain in McSwiggin's faction of the Republican party, and James J. Doherty, gangster, who McSwiggin had previously prosecuted for murder, Doherty being acquitted.

"They were riding about together, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, visiting the saloons and speakeasies of Capone's West Side territory.  Duffy and Doherty were henchmen of the brothers Myles and Klondike O'Donnell, the guerrillas of the bootleg war, aligned sometimes with the O'Banions, again with the Capones, depending on the financial advantages presented -- but generally going it alone.

"They had had a sort of entente with Capone when he entered Cicero, but had called it off.  Now they were his bitter enemies and business rivals.  For months they had been muscling in on the West Side beer trade while he was busy with Weiss, Drucci, and Moran on the north.  One of the customers they had taken away from him was Harry Madigan at 5615 West Roosevelt Road, Cicero.

" 'When I wanted to start a saloon in Cicero more than a year ago, Capone wouldn't let me,' Madigan told Chief of Detectives Schoemaker. 'I finally obtained strong political pressure and was able to open.' "

*******************************************************************************

Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, by John Kobler, New York, copyright 1971. Reprinted: Da Capo, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 2003, page 173

"Jim Doherty had driven only a few blocks when his engine began to sputter.  He left his car for repairs in a West Side garage, and the five men changed to Klondike O'Donnell's new Lincoln sedan.  A sixth man joined the party, Edward Hanley, a former police officer.  He drove.  They roamed Cicero for about two hours, drinking beer in several saloons.  Their last stop was Harry Madigan's Pony Inn at 5613 [sic] West Roosevelt Road.  A two-story, white brick building with a big weedy lot behind, it stood a mile north of Capone's Hawthorne Inn stronghold.

"Relations between Capone and the O'Donnells had deteriorated to the brink of open combat. The Irishmen grew daily bolder in their encroachments upon Capone's Cicero territory.  Harry Madigan later explained to Chief of Detectives Schoemaker how matters had stood: 'When I wanted to start a saloon in Cicero more than a year ago, Capone wouldn't let me.  I finally obtained strong political pressure and was able to open.  Then Capone came to me and said I would have to buy his beer, so I did.  A few months ago Doherty and Myles O'Donnell came to me and said they could sell me better beer than Capone beer, which was then needled.  They did and it cost fifty dollars a barrel, where Capone charged me sixty.  I changed, and upon my recommendation so did several other Cicero saloonkeepers.'"

*******************************************************************************

Capone: The Man and the Era, Laurence Bergreen, Simon & Schuster, 1994, page 164

"... [He did] not know that among the men accompanying "Klondike" O'Donnell was Billy McSwiggin, the prosecutor Al like to call his friend.  The 'rifle with a big round magazine' that Capone had bestowed on his associate was, of course, a machine gun.  Several other Capone henchmen joined the man who had warned Capone.  Together they walked to the back of the hotel, entered their waiting automobiles, and formed a five-car convoy consisting of a lead car, two cars following to block traffic if necessary, Capone's chauffeured limousine tailing at a distance of fifty feet, and finally another car well behind the limousine.  The convoy arrived within moments at the Pony Inn.  At half past eight, McSwiggin, Hanley, Doherty, Duffy, and the O'Donnell brothers staggered out of the Pony Inn, heading for the Lincoln and the next stop on their spree, and as they did so Capone and his men watched from the safety of their five-car convey.

"That was when McSwiggin's night on the town with the boys ended, and the nightmare of blood and terror began.  As McSwiggin's group came into view, Capone's gunmen let loose, and the unmistakable rhythm of a machine gun firing split the night.  Whether Al himself had fired any shots was not clear, and it would soon become the matter of impassioned debate.  As the convoy rolled past, the victims fell to the street; the entire attack had taken only seconds to execute, and over fifty shots had been fired. ('I saw a closed car speeding away with what looked like a telephone receiver sticking out the rear window and spitting fire,' said one elderly witness of her first look at a machine gun in action." Red Duffy, his body nearly cut in two by the bullets, and Jim Doherty were gravely wounded.  The O'Donnell brothers and Edward Hanley were lucky to survive; they had reacted quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets.  As for Billy McSwiggin, the 'hanging prosecutor' whom Al Capone had called his friend, he was writhing on the sidewalk, his body riddled with twenty bullets lodged in his back and neck.

"Fearing another attack, the O'Donnell brothers hastily dragged Duffy to a tree and left him. ('Pretty cold-blooded to leave me lying there,' he remarked just before he died the following day.)  They then carried Doherty and McSwiggin to their Lincoln sedan and sped to "Klondike's" house on Parkside Avenue.  By the time they arrived, both McSwiggin and Doherty were dead.

"Panicking, the O'Donnells hauled the bodies inside, removed the contents of their pockets, ripped the labels from their clothes, as if these precautions would change anything, and returned the corpses to the car.  The O'Donnells drove away from the city and its lights to the black prairie extending from the outskirts of Berwyn.  They came to a halt along a deserted stretch of road, shoved the remains of McSwiggin and Doherty out the door, and fled.  At ten o'clock that night, the driver of a passing car noticed the bodies.  He stopped to investigate and discovered they were still warm."

Ragen's Colts and Harry Madigan

Ragen's Colts was a chiefly Irish street gang which dominated the Chicago underworld during the early twentieth century. By the late 1920s and early '30s, the gang became part of the Chicago Outfit under Al Capone.

Originally established as an athletic club, the Ragen's Athletic and Benevolent Association was soon led by team pitcher Frank Ragen. He hired out members of the club to Chicago Democrat politicians to do various forms of election fraud. Due to the gang's activities and increased votes by recent immigrants, the Democratic Party soon gained control over the Chicago City Council and Illinois legislature.

The gang quickly expanded, numbering 160 members by 1902 and 2,000 by 1908. It earned the motto "Hit Me and You Hit 2,000". By the end of the decade, the gang had financed careers of hundreds of Chicago city officials, including prominent aldermen, police chiefs, and city treasurers, as well as Ragen himself. Ragen became Chicago police commissioner. By 1920, many members of the gang had become notorious criminals and gunmen, such as William "Gunner" McPadden, Harry Madigan, Joseph "Dynamite" Brooks, Danny McFall, Hughey "Stubby" McGovern, Davy "Yiddles" Miller, and Ralph Sheldon.

The years after World War I were a time of increased social tension, as returning veterans competed with more recent immigrants and newer African American migrants from the South for jobs and housing. In several cities, such tensions erupted in rioting, often instigated by one of slightly older, more established groups to restore dominance over a newer group, often a minority. The Irish and African Americans were both concentrated in housing on the South Side and in jobs at the stockyards located on that side of the city.

The Ragen gang were believed to instigate fights between black and other South Side neighborhoods that contributed to the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The gang led raids from Irish neighborhoods into the Black Belt, where they looted homes and killed several people. Blacks retaliated by attacking other South Side neighborhoods. As news of the attacks spread, other neighborhoods around the city began rioting. Violence lasted four days and resulted in 38 deaths: 23 black and 15 white, and more than 1,000 injured.

The Ragen Colts also directed their anger at the Ku Klux Klan for its anti-Catholicism. In 1921, "In September, 3,000 people from the stockyards district (of Chicago) watched as the Colts hanged in effigy "a white-sheeted Klansman."" (Tuttle)

During Prohibition, the gang soon began bootlegging. Member Ralph Sheldon formed his own group and began hijacking rival liquor shipments. While the gang came into conflict with the Chicago Outfit during the bootleg wars, Capone, impressed with the gang, hired them as enforcers for the organization. The Irish Ragen gang were eventually absorbed into the organization following the establishment of the National Crime Syndicate in 1932. Many members would later become top leaders of the Chicago crime syndicate.

In 1920 several members of Ragen's Colts split off to form the NFL football team, the Chicago Maroons, later known as the Chicago Cardinals.

• Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
• Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
• Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2005. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
• Tuttle, William, M. Jr. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 University of Illinois Prses, 1996.

Source:  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, accessed January 1, 2009.

Harry Madigan, the Mobster?

Bill Sullivan found a contemporary video of 5615 W. Roosevelt Road, Cicero, the building where Harry Madigan ran his saloon in 1926 and the site where Assistant States Attorney William McSwiggin was assassinated.  Although the building looks a little different from the newspaper photo of it in 1926, the Cook County Assessor's website notes the building at 5615 W. Roosevelt Road is 96 years old.  So, it must be the same.  Thanks Bill for finding this.



Included on the You Tube webpage below the above video, the following comment was included:

"Assistant States Attorney William McSwiggin had two sides to him and it ended up costing him his life. By day he was known as a hanging prosecutor who tried to bring Al Capone to justice. By night he was a card player, drinker and all around bon vivant who traveled in the same social settings as the men he prosecuted. It was late spring in 1926 when he was out for a night of carousing in Cicero with some friends. Along the way the hooked up with the O'Donnell brothers who were well known north side gangsters who were at odds with Al Capone. Al Capone got word that his enemies were out and about in his town he dispatched gunmen to take them out. They caught up with the group at the Pony Inn on Roosevelt Rd. just west of Central. The Pony was a Capone controlled speakeasy that was run by an Irish mobster named Harry Madigan. Madigan was a member of the renowned Irish gang Reagan's Colt's. He would later go to jail for kidnapping and extortion. Anyway the gunmen raked the group with machine gun fire as they left the club. Three were killed including McSwiggin the O'Donnell brothers escaped unscathed. Here we present the Pony as it looks today a nondescript place called Sarno's. Maybe it's just a coincidence or perhaps things haven't changed much. Last year Cicero crime boss Michael Sarno was sentenced to prison in a case that involved extortion, illegal gambling, police corruption and a bombing. The more things change?"

Source:  ChiTownView's Channel, YouTube

*******************************************************************************

However, in The Illinois Crime Survey published by the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice in cooperation with The Chicago Crime Commission, 1929 (Blakely Printing Company, Chicago) Chapter XXIV, "The Gangster and the Politician," Section 9, "Same: Election Violence," page 1005 it reads:

"Ragen members could be secured to do "stong arm" work in the elections in other districts as well as the stockyards area.  Hugh McGovern with John and Harry Madigan and John O'Brien kidnapped a Cicero clerk of election by the name of Joseph Rice and held him prisoner in a West Harrison Street saloon.  The plaintiff charged kidnapping and assault to kill.  The history of the trial of these four men is an interesting sidelight on the administration of the law.  True bills were voted by the April grand jury in 1924.  The case did not come up for trial until June, 1926.  Critics of State's Attorney Crowe, who was elected in the primaries of 1924 when so much violence was used in the elections, accused him of purposely shelving this case along with others that grew out of the 1924 elections.  Just before the case was due to come to trial a new assistant prosecutor was assigned to it, in place of the one who had been familiar with the case from its inception.  The men were acquitted of the charge although the defense had offered no closing argument and the assistant prosecuting attorney in charge had made only a brief summary of the case for the state.  The prosecuting witness, who had positively identified his assailants as McGovern, the Madigan Brothers, and O'Brien two years before, refused in 1926 to say that these four were the kidnappers, and it was generally understood that it was for fear of his life."

So, although there seems pretty good evidence the Madigan brothers might have been guilty of kidnapping and extortion, the record of The Illinois Crime Survey indicates the men were acquitted.  Also, to my knowledge, Harry Madigan was never "convicted" and sentenced to jail.

A little earlier in The Illinois Crime Survey, Chapter XVII, "The McSwiggin Assasination as a Typical Incident," Section 6, "The Federal Grand Jury Indicts Capone and the O'Donnells," page 836-837, it reads:

"While State's Attorney Crowe's grand jury was in session, primarily to consider the solution of the McSwiggin mystery, a Federal Grand Jury was busy investigating prohibition violations, with possible bearing on the murders of Duffy, Doherty and McSwiggin.  United States District Attorney Edwin A. Olson, in charge of this Federal Grand Jury, was of the Deneen faction.  Chief Svoboda, of the Cicero police, and Joseph Klenha, president of the village board, were summoned to appear.

"Federal agents had seized a stock of beer samples stored in the basement of the Cicero City Hall.  It had been reported that immediately after the triple slaying, Cicero policemen had visited every saloon in the village and collected beer samples.  According to the information given the Government on May 22, the police had told the saloon owners:

   " 'There is going to be a big investigation.  Don't tell anybody anything.  If you open your faces these samples go to the prohibition office and your prosecution under federal statues is certain.'

"The Federal Grand Jury, on May 27, returned two indictments, naming the leaders of the two rival beer gangs, the Capone gang and the O'Donnells, charging conspiracy to violate the prohibition law.  Those in the Capone gang who were indicted were Al Capone, Ralph, his brother, Frank Smith, Charles Fischetti and Peter Payette. The O'Donnell gangsters named were: William (Klondike), Myles, and Barnard O'Donnell, and Harry Madigan, the owner of the saloon where McSwiggin and his companions were killed."

Harry Madigan was indeed indicted due to violation of the prohibition law, However, in searching other documents, I have yet to find that Harry Madigan was convicted of any federal charges associated with these prohibition violations.  But I'm still looking.

Crime of the Century - 1926

A website, Homicide in Chicago, 1870 - 1930, has recently been created.  Under "Crimes of the Century," information on the 1926 Capone vs. McSwiggin case is included.  Of note with this case is that the murder took place in front of Harry Madigan's tavern in Cicero, Illinois.

Helen Sullivan McIntyre, niece of Harry Madigan, said her mother, Nell Madigan Sullivan, as well as her mother's sisters and her grandmother, Bessie Thompson Madigan, were all "mortified" when the murder occurred and the Madigan name was in all the newspapers.

Harry always denied any involvement with the mafia and evidence that either he or his partner in the tavern were convicted of any wrong doing has yet to be located.  However, there seems to be quite a bit of information implicating Harry, and sometimes John Madigan, with involvement with various Chicago gangs.  See also a previous posting on this site: Harry Madigan, 1885 - 1956.

On the Homicide in Chicago website is a photo of Harry's tavern at 5615 W. Roosevelt.  A Tribune newspaper account of the murder is also included.  Images from this site are reproduced below.  To enlarge any image, double click twice on it.

Tribune front page Wednesday, April 28, 1926

Article on front page

Photo of Harry Madigan's saloon at 5615 W. Roosevelt Road

Source: Homicide in Chicago, 1870 - 1930