Word: ganged
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Broken by death and disgrace though the Ohio Gang is, memories of its high revels and rapacious graft from 1921 to 1923 still linger in the back eddies of Washington gossip. Never has the full story been told of the clique which came into power the day Warren Gamaliel...
...large hand in racketeering's perfection. Born in Brooklyn of an Italian family, he was a "good boy" until he was 17. Then, in a Greenpoint pool room, he knocked down a stranger, thought he had killed him. A cousin in Brooklyn's "Five Points" gang hid him away from the police. When the stranger recovered, young Al was already at work on small "jobs." In a Coney Island fight he was slashed across the left cheek, though later he like to insist that the scar came from War service with the Lost Battalion...
...Capone went to Chicago as bodyguard for Johnny Torrio, hired by Jim Colosimo, big restaurant and brothel man. Prohibition started to create a public demand for liquor. Gangs were formed to supply the demand, to beat off rivals. Capone began as a brothel keeper, which started his police record with a $50 fine. In 1923 Colosimo was murdered. Torrio took command of the liquor and vice gang, Capone becoming his No. 1 assistant. Fierce was the hostility between the South Side gang under Torrio and the North Side gang under Dion O'Banion. In 1924 O'Banion was shot down...
...when any of his own men fell in battle. He wore flashy diamonds, a rose in his lapel. The sight of photographers used to drive him into a profane rage. Legends grew up about him: that he traveled in an armored car, wore a bullet-proof vest. With every gang murder that occurred in Chicago, his name was automatically connected. But the police could never fasten upon him even the semblance of legal guilt...
Oldtime campaigners when approached with the question as to whom they would nominate as champion hunter of Greene County usually designate Donald Henderson of Nineveh and Elza Shiver of Spraggs. There are no necessary qualifications for captaincy of competing teams except that the candidate must be one of the "gang" and a leader in affairs of the countryside...