Word: roger
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...prison parole. For an instant she thought she heard the steps. Then, unmistakably, she heard another sound she had also been half-listening for: the harsh roar of shotgun fire. She rushed to the front porch, found two men twitching in a gumbo of blood. One was her brother Roger ("The Terrible") Touhy, 61. notorious survivor of Chicago's Prohibition gang wars, who had been paroled just 22 days earlier from Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary; he died* an hour later on a hospital operating table. The other man, critically wounded, was Walter Miller, 62, a retired police sergeant...
...Wreath. In the thunderous heyday of Prohibition gangsterism, Roger the Terrible was the jaunty cockalorum of northwest Cook County. After leasing a few trucks to rumrunners, he abandoned a $50,000-a-year automobile business for bootlegging-and thereupon set in motion a relentless procession of events that led to his death. With a partner, Matt Kolb, he carved out an empire of suburban speakeasies, controlled a big slot-machine franchise, sold 18,000 bottles of illicit beer each week, boasted that he made $1,000,000 a year. He also made enemies: to Al Capone and his henchmen, Touhy...
...kidnaped him for $70,000 ransom. Tubbo Gilbert seconded the accusation, led the police investigation (along with the FBI's Melvin Purvis). Thomas J. Courtney, bright young state's attorney (now a Chicago circuit judge), directed the case of The People of the State of Illinois v. Roger Touhy, and won Roger Touhy's undying enmity. Through two long, sensational trials and until his death, Touhy claimed that the kidnap rap was a frame-up by the Capone gang and corrupt officials to put him away permanently. His sentence: 99 years...
...called positive evidence that the kidnap story was fraudulent. In a 1954 rehearing of the case, Federal Judge John P. Barnes pronounced the kidnaping a "hoax," ordered Touhy released (he was jailed again after 49 hours, when a higher court overruled Judge Barnes). Ray Brennan, a Chicago reporter, gave Roger a florid assist in writing his bitter memoirs, The Stolen Years (TIME, Nov. 30). In 1957 Illinois' Governor William G. Stratton reduced Touhy's sentence to 75 years, and last month, after nearly 26 years in the pen, Roger the Terrible was paroled, and Reporter Brennan...
...contrast to his classic, gang-style death, Roger Touhy was buried quietly, with no flowers, no eulogies, in Mount Carmel Cemetery, known as the Boot Hill of gangsters. Near by are the tombs of Frank ("The Enforcer") Nitti and Paul ("Needle Nose") La Briola. Dion O'Banion is also buried there, and near the Touhy plot is a grave site reserved for Anthony ("Tough Tony") Accardo, kingpin of Chicago's rackets, and present unchallenged boss of the Capone...