The Untouchables

March 2, 1933. The remote section of the northern Michigan Lake front, 180 miles northeast of Chicago. The Chicago Syndicate, to improve the quality of their booze, is now smuggling in master brewers from Germany; the illegal immigrants had come 6,000 miles to the new country. Tonight, 8 new immigrants are brought in. One of them looks at the sign: ""Welcome to Chippewa Landing, Michigan""-- Bernd asks, ""Chippewa? What does that mean? But this is America, yes?"" Max Kerner tells him to move on.

Chicago, April 16, 1934. Prohibition is over, the main racket is now narcotics. The New York Syndicate, the ""Big 6"" send their representative Wally Corbin to Chicago, to pick up a shipment of heroin from Louie ""The Bear"" Madikoff-- he's the top dealer in the Midwest and the chief supplier of the NY Syndicate. Ness has already picked off 2 of Madikoff's runners. Wally picks up 1-1/2 kilos of the junk, worth $200,000.

May 17, 1932. There are many free soup kitchens in Chicago, but one of them in the skid row section is really a front; upstairs, gangster Chiz Gosher, twice convicted of white slavery, has his office. His partners in crime are the powerful, nationwide vice ring known as The Group, represented by hood Vic Cassandros. Chiz's niece is Ginnie Littlesmith, who runs the soup kitchen, and she is not involved in the rackets. Downstairs, Enrico Rossi is working undercover-- he's dressed in dirty old clothes, and phones Ness; Eliot tells him the raid is set for 12:45.* But Vic is soon tipped of Ness' impending raid; Vic goes upstairs and demands the ledger books from Gosher.

Chicago. Pete ""The Persuader"" Kalmisky, former bodyguard of Al Capone, accompanied by Syndicate business manager Alan Sitkin, have a meeting with Joey December, president of the debt-ridden Great Lakes Pacific Railroad. They form a crooked alliance; Joey agrees to transport their illegal liquor on his trains, in exchange for ""20% off the top."" After Kalmisky leaves, Sitkin talks privately with Joey. Sitkin gives Joey $100,000 for 10,000 shares of Canada Central stock, now worth $10 a share;

Chicago, after the Repeal of Prohibition; (so this would be around 1934). With booze legal, the racket czars step up their dealings in narcotics. Ness and Lee Hobson are chasing 2 dope-pushers, one of them is Benny Rivas. After the shootout, one hood is dead; Benny moans, ""Get me a priest."" Ness finds heroin on him; wanting to die with a clear conscience, Benny says, ""808"" and dies. That leads Ness to Maggie Storm's 808 Club.

March 3, 1932. It's the great train robbery, on the southbound express headed for Chicago. The Stryker brothers steal mail sacks containing 750 grand in payroll money. During the robbery, a baggage man and Lippy Carson (an associate of the Stryker brothers, who had worked as a mail clerk) are killed, and thrown from the speeding train. Since mail robbery is a federal offense, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are called in.

Early November 1931. On West Madison Street, there is a wonderfully diverse neighborhood made up of gypsies of Romanian, Hungarian and Czech descent. The area is flooded with Capone's rotgut, being distributed by Janos Colescu. There are many colorful characters, including the chestnut vendor with his singsong voice: ""Get your red-hot che-e-estnuts, the wind is cold."" When the rotgut leads to a drunken knife-fight that leaves a gypsy dead, the 8-member gypsy Senate, headed by Victor Bartok, with his brother Fedor Bartok, convenes. Eliot Ness shows up to offer his help to end the bootleg booze; they decline his help, saying they will handle matters themselves.

Chicago, March 2, 1932. The hottest nightspot in town is the Club Tunisian, owned by gangster Pete Kalik, who built it up from a small speak. Ness and Lee Hobson show up, but not to see gorgeous singer Mavis Carroll-- they had gotten an anonymous phone tip earlier. Lee Hobson is tired, he is due to take his vacation leave starting Friday. Ness and Hobson get contacted by the club comedian Eddie Paris, he is the one who phoned them. After his show, he meets with Ness and Hobson at the Denton Street wharf; Eddie wants Pete Kalik put away behind bars, he says Kalik is working out a big alcohol deal with the Partner, the mysterious man who had backed Torrio and Capone.

October 1932, Chicago.  With Capone in the slammer, other bosses are biting off chunks of Capone's empire.  One boss is Frankie Gruder, head of a group that is the forerunner of Murder, Inc.; Gruder wants control of all the Canadian imports and exports.  Gruder and his boys go to a warehouse, Gruder shoots a longshoreman.  Ness and his men show up and start blasting.  There's a shoot-out.  Gruder manages to escape.

New York, middle of 1932. The Syndicate-- headed by Joe Kulak, Louis ""Lepke"" Buchalter and Dutch Schultz-- has the city's huge garment industry organized and under control. Now they are setting their sights on bakeries; there are 500 independent wholesale bakers in the city. They give Bull Hanlon the word: get the biggest independent baker, Adam Stone, to sign up and all the rest will fall in line.

Chicago, July 1934. Anonymous phone calls have been tipping off Ness and his men to narcotics activities; they do a bunch of raids. On August 4, even though sales have fallen off, Frank Nitti is ordering 15 kilos of heroin*, the biggest single shipment ever. That night, one of Nitti's boys makes the trade: dough for the H. He gets into a car driven by another of Nitti's boys, Manny Kravitz.

Chicago, January 1933. Ness and his men raid a speakeasy owned by gangster Mikhail ""Red Mike"" Probich, and run by Connie LaVerne. At the trial, Probich is represented by his crooked lawyer Morton Halas, who grew up in poverty. The trial drags on for 5 days. Finally, Ness is ready to call the last prosecution witness, Connie LaVerne, who ""is 80% of their case."" Morton Halas objects, on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband.

In the years following WWI, there was a flood of European immigrants into the USA. In the early 1920s, the 6 Genna brothers, place of origin Sicily, were headed to Chicago. The Genna brothers are nothing but a gang of bullies, and in a few short years they are the ruling lords of Little Italy, an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. One night, as the 6 Gennas are beating up a street vendor, Agent Enrico Rossi whales into them. The leader, Mike Genna, asks if he knows who they are; Rossi says, ""Yeah, the Genna brothers-- one rat with 6 heads!"" Mike Genna says that Enrico Rossi is Italian, just like them; Rossi says he's ashamed.

By the Summer of 1933, a new wave of crime has engulfed Chicago.  Due to a public outcry for action, Willard Thornton is appointed as a new commissioner to clean up the town.  At a press conference, Thornton arrogantly says his office does not publicly constitute criticism of any law enforcement agency-- while his tone of voice implies he privately does criticize them.  Eliot Ness is standing right next to him, looking more dour than usual. Ness and his men go on a raid, they find a shipment of heroin in a hideout.

Chicago, April 1932. The city is ruled by underworld czars, one of the toughest of which is Nate Kester, former henchman for the Capone mob. To put up a pretense of legality, he owns and runs the Odeon Theatre, which specializes in Burlesque, but his real operation is bootleg booze. Kester has his boys drag in Henry Bogar, who has a 5-6 state territory selling imported brandy. Kester tells him that from now on he will carry his stuff-- cheap rotgut with forged ""de Bouverais"" cognac labels. Bogar tastes the stuff, and calls it slop; he says brandy drinkers will never buy it as long as the real stuff is available.

Chicago, the 3rd week of November 1932. Working on an anonymous tip, Eliot Ness and his men raid a warehouse; all the crates are filled with champagne bottles, it was a shipment for the New Year's celebrations. Ness has the landlord who owns the warehouse, Michel (french for Michael) Viton, arrested; but he's released. Birdie, a deaf-mute, takes Viton to his boss, Edmund Wald, a bottle manufacturer (he's also the one who tipped Ness, to get rid of the competition).

September 16, 1933. Although Eliot Ness had successfully destroyed The Underground Court (episode # 46), he had not smashed its parent organization, the big Syndicate, in control of over 50% of the nation's crime. With the death of Judge Foley, who was the chairman of the Syndicate, 5 top-ranking members are now assembling at a roadhouse on the outskirts of Chicago-- to vote on whether or not to appoint Nero Rankin as the new chairman; Nero had been designated by Foley to be his successor, in the event of his death.

Chicago, last week of April 1933. Frank Nitti is offered a huge quantity of Chinese opium. Ever since the government had established the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the flow of opium from China to the USA had slowed to a trickle, and by 1932 the flow had almost ceased; now, with the end of Prohibition seeming imminent, the Syndicate is ready to deal in opium again. Late on the night of May 4, Nitti sends one of his top lieutenants, Ed Getty, to pick up some opium from Art Rele and his thug Cliff Anders. But Ness and Lee Hobson show up, too; in the shootout, only Art Rele escapes.

Ring of Terror-- Boxing ring, that is. July 1931, the Chicago Sports Arena was like a hundred other boxing rings across America-- a place where young toughs from reform schools and rotting tenements, willing to sacrifice their blood, could try to rise above the oppression of poverty. But the young men with the boxing gloves only got a small amount of the money; the big payoffs went to the gangsters.

November 1932. FDR was moving to end Prohibition, and the crime syndicate was already shifting away from booze to narcotics. In the next few months, the narcotic supply is running low. February 20, 1933, Frank Nitti and his lieutenant Pete Konitz fly down to New Orleans, where the Mardi Gras will be taking place. Bouchard is busy having Sully fit his car with bulletproof glass. Later, Nitti is demanding a drug shipment from Bouchard.

Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio.  With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc).  Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers.

September 8, 1934. A cruise ship from Cuba to New Jersey has caught fire. There are over 300 passengers on board; some of the passengers and crew are jumping overboard to avoid the flames. Ness and his men, on assignment in New Jersey, speed to get there when the ship docks; Ness has an arrest warrant for Valentine Ferrar, racketeer and founder of the Big Syndicate. Valentine Ferrar had been in Cuba, picking up a million bucks collection money for the Syndicate.

On the night of May 25, 1931, 2 trucks are rolling into K.C., carrying $1-million worth of Jamaica Ginger rotgut, also known as ""Ginger Jake."" The trucks are owned by Rafael Torrez, gangster and race horse trainer, who has a monopoly on the Jamaica Ginger. Rival crime boss Jerry LaCarver, wanting in on the enormous profits, is ready to hijack the trucks, along with his gang of 5 hoods: the 2 notorious Roth brothers, Andy Bello (alias Louis Belmont), Richie Peters and Wally Heilman. They hijack the trucks with dynamite and shotguns.

Chicago, December 1931. With Al Capone in prison, the bootlegging part of his empire was split in 2. One of Capone's lieutenants, Mayer Wartel, acquired the speakeasies; another lieutenant, Karl Positan, acquired the breweries and distilleries. In an attempt to take over the entire operation, Positan withholds his whiskey and beer; the number of speaks flourishing drops to an all-time Prohibition low. Eliot Ness and his men keep an eye on the situation. Nitti's plenty sore.

Movie: ""The Alcatraz Express"" (Disclaimer shown on screen) ""The events portrayed in this film are fictitious. The Federal Prison guards portrayed do not represent any actual persons, living or dead. ""Nothing herein is intended to reflect unfavorably on the courageous and responsible prison guards who supervised Capone during his internment in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta and during his transfer from Atlanta to Alcatraz.

The night of May 3rd, 1934. A traveling carnival is at the Midway, 35 miles outside of Cleveland. There are half a dozen bellydancers on stage, as the barker goes, ""Hurry, hurry, hurry,"" and a sign reads: ""One dime shows you the best hootchy koochy show in the world!"" Hans Eberhardt, twice convicted for armed robbery and dope peddling, spots Ness and his Untouchables and the local police about to pull a raid; he runs to the office trailer of carny Otto Frick.

Chicago, September 8, 1932. That night, a convoy of 4 trucks, which had crossed the Canadian border, are driving towards Chicago; they are hauling 1,000 cases of Canadian scotch, valued at over $100,000. Ness and his Untouchables have set up a roadblock just outside of town. 7-8 miles up ahead of Ness there is another roadblock, set up by gangster Phil Corbin, owner of Chicago's Club Continental; he's waiting with his boys to hijack the convoy.

Chicago, late Summer 1932.  Eliot Ness and his men had stemmed the supply of narcotics coming into the Windy City from Asia and southern Europe.  Now the Underworld was using new ways to supply the city's 5,000 dope addicts.  The Syndicate was robbing drugstores, doctors' offices, wholesale drug houses-- any place which kept a supply of painkilling drugs.

New Jersey, the night of April 16, 1931. Waxey Gordon, the undisputed beer baron of New York, is muscling in on New Jersey, which is run by Frankie Dunn, ""Bugs"" Donovan and Roger Weiden. Waxey is waging a gang war to eliminate rival gangsters for control of the Jersey beer market. Waxey and his boys smash into a brewery owned and run by Frankie Dunn; they blast with their choppers until the large beer vats, Frankie and his workers are filled with holes.

New York, 1931. While many people were unemployed and poor during the Depression, gangster-owned speakeasies and nightclubs created a new mobster aristocracy. One top mobster is Jack ""Legs"" Diamond -- known to the Underworld as ""the Clay Pigeon"" because of the many times he'd been shot at, and survived.

1934. Prohibition had been repealed (the Volstead Act ran from January 17, 1920 - April 7, 1933). The syndicate was looking for new sources of revenue. Frank Nitti expands his empire, and goes after small theatres-- with his extortion racket. Late one night, after theatre owner Harold Coldman had refused to pay, Nitti has his triggerman Louie Campagna throw some acid into Coldman's face, blinding him. Eliot Ness and his men are on the case-- this is only the latest in a series of muggings and beatings; even a theatre was burned down. Ness knows if he lets Nitti get away with extorting the small, independent theatre owners, in a few months Nitti will go after the big chains.

New York City. Saturday, September 23, 1933. Top rackets boss Milo Sullivan is the head of ""Crime, Inc.""  He has a meet with 5 other crime lords: Augie Epstein (gambling, Miami); Harold Bishman (political power in Louisiana); Ralph Lucci (rumrunner, Detroit Purple Gang); Dino Monteiro (slots, K.C.); and Arte Martin (numbers, prostitution, Seattle).  Their profits from Prohibition had been enormous; with Prohibition ending, they were going to put their money to good use, creating the Underworld Bank.

New York City: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx. On the evening of June 8, 1933, Max Baer knocked out Max Schmeling in the 10th round of their scheduled 15-round championship boxing match.* The gate was $240,000. (Since 60,000 fans were there, that means the average ticket price was $4.00) An hour later, one of the Granite Armored Cars, with 4 armed guards, drives off with the receipts. Doreen Maney steps in front of the moving truck; the driver slams on his brakes, but Doreen falls down as if she's been hit.

March 31, 1934; Prohibition is over. Al Capone is still running things from Alcatraz, his new money-maker is ""white slavery"" which refers to prostitution; his main operation is run by a mean gangster named Mig Torrance. Right now, Eliot Ness is conducting his 7th raid since being assigned to closing down the houses. While all the other hookers are escaping through a trap door, one of them, young Mary Sage, lays on a bed-- dead from a drug overdose.

Movie: ""The Gun of Zangara"" Chicago. November 9, 1932. FDR has just been elected president, and the repeal of Prohibition is inevitable. But later that night, Ness and his men smash another of Capone's breweries. Agent Youngfellow asks Eliot, ""Are we going to be out of work?"" But Ness tells him no-- after all, bootleg booze was only a part of the Capone empire: there's still narcotics, gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, etc. Capone may start muscling in on legitimate businesses; in fact, Ness is having a meeting with Mayor Anton Cermak-- they want to ""clean up this town"" before the Chicago World's Fair in the spring of 1933.

Little Egypt (not the Belly Dancer) was the city of Morraine, the heart of the gangster-infected area in downstate Illinois known as ""Little Egypt."" Election night, 1931. New mayor Marcus Stone is giving a speech on the radio-- he meant what he said about reform, and promises to rid the town of Charlie Byron (a Major in WWI) and his gang, whom he calls ""bloodsuckers"" and ""scum."" Listening to the radio is Major Byron, who gives his gang orders to knock off both Mayor Stone and Sheriff Mooney; they both get tommy-gunned that night.

Spring 1931. Gangland warfare had broken out again with sudden violence in the streets of St. Louis. Tim Harrington, who was long entrenched as the undisputed boss of the city, was fighting off the challenge to his leadership from Joe Courtney, an upstart hoodlum. The elder Dink Conway calls for a sit-down between the two, at the Jockey Club. Dink points out they are operating the old way: shootouts and dealing in cash. He offers them organization and protection, and says the new way is to use fronts to cover your criminal activities and keep books so the Feds can't get you on income tax evasion (he knows what happened to Al Capone).

Chicago, March 31, 1933. Giuseppe ""Joe"" Bucco is at home when he gets a visit from his wife's cousin, Barbara Vittorini-- she says her husband Arturo has been missing for 3 days, and accuses Bucco of killing him. Bucco has his flunkie Abe Garfinkel take her home. Bucco knows about rub-out attempts, Guzik's boys once shot him 4 times, but he lived; Bucco swears to his wife Anna that he doesn't know where Arturo is.

The night of August 3, 1933, outside the Louisburg Federal Prison in Pennsylvania. After serving 2 years of a life sentence for his part in the holdup of a Federal Reserve bank shipment, Frank Halloway is busting out, climbing over the wall. When a fellow inmate breaks his leg from the jump from the high prison wall, ruthless Frank Halloway hops into the getaway car that was left there for him-- and runs over the hapless inmate.

March 1935. One of the toughest mobsters in New York City is Dutch Schultz. He and his mob were responsible for over 100 murders. Dutch is into every racket: liquor, narcotics, labor shakedowns, the numbers, selling protection. But "Lucky" Luciano is muscling in on his territory; to try to keep his clients from paying to Luciano, Dutch Schultz has his boys work his clients over with fists. When Joe Floris won't pay 30% protection money to Schultz, saying he is already paying 15% to Luciano, Joe Floris gets some acid in the face, blinding him. But Dutch has a gentler side, too-- his wife just had a baby

April 19, 1931. New York City. Every 48 hours, more than 25 million pounds of fruits and vegetables stream into the city; this multi-million dollar business is the target of gangsters. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables have recently been brought to New York on special assignment to investigate the produce market racket. After senior Angelo Cestari, a produce retailer, is machine-gunned by one of Terranova's gangsters, Ness talks to his son Tony Cestari; Tony tells Ness that his father didn't deal with Terranova like the other retailers did, and now he's paid the ultimate price.

February 1931. In Churchill Downs, the entries for the Kentucky Derby are closed. Tight-fisted Dutch Schultz, beer baron of the Bronx, places a bet with the Syndicate: 100-grand in the Winter-book on Enchantment to win the Kentucky Derby. Trying to get the most for his money, Dutch knows he will get much better odds now than if he waits until race day.

March 2, 1932. Gangster Joe Carroll, sidekick of George "Bugs" Moran, kidnaps 9-year-old Larry Halloran, Jr.-- the son of Lawrence Halloran, president of the United Trucker's Union. It just so happens that at this very moment, Ness and his Untouchables are trying to nail Bugs Moran-- who is now the top criminal in Chicago, since Capone is in prison. Ness leaves Agent Martin Flaherty in charge; Ness has to fly to Washington, DC, since the brass wants him to give Congress the whole story about the Capone operation.

January 16, 1935. Oklawaha, Florida. Eliot Ness, along with Bill Youngfellow and Martin Flaherty, are closing in on Ma Barker, who is holed up in a house along with 2 of her sons, Lloyd and Fred. Ness says they are wanted for everything from bank robbery, kidnapping, to first-degree murder. Now that Ness has found where the Barkers are, he contacts half a dozen state troopers and local police for backup. From a distance, Ness yells at Ma Barker and her boys to surrender and come out with their hands up. Ma Barker goes to a closet, and inside is an arsenal of weapons-- machine guns, pistols, hand grenades, etc., enough for a small army. She fires a chopper at Ness; he jumps behind an 8-foot long wooden flower pot that gets riddled with bullets. Ma Barker throws a hand grenade that almost blows up Bill Youngfellow. Ma Barker is the most vicious outlaw they've ever faced. In a flashback, we see how it all started in Tulsa, Oklahoma years ago: Ma Barker was a church-goer, but always making excuses for her 4 boys who were committing petty crimes, which escalated into serious crimes. In 1927, while the 4 boys were looting a store, Herman got shot by a policeman. Pa Barker finally had the guts to walk out on the bunch. Ma and her 3 boys committed bank robberies, and killed a bank guard; also a kidnapping. They committed crimes in a 10-state area. In 1935, Pa Barker tipped Eliot Ness, and Ness almost caught the Barker gang in St. Paul, Minnesota. Then the Barkers kidnapped a millionaire's son and got $200,000 ransom. Arthur "Doc" Barker and his fiancée Eloise left the gang; Arthur took his share of the ransom and went to Chicago, but all the serial numbers were recorded with the police. Around the first of January, 1935, when Arthur spent a $10 bill, the grocer informed Eliot Ness, so Ness knew Arthur was in Chicago. Ma Barker stupidly sent a birthday cake to Arthur (who was using the alias Clarence Tillman), and enclosed a postcard, "Greetings from Oklawaha, Florida." Arthur even more stupidly picked it up at the post office (January 8), even though there was a "Wanted" poster with his photo on it in the post office lobby. Bill Youngfellow tailed him; Arthur was soon arrested by Ness and his men. Back to the present: January 16, 1935. Ma Barker lobs a hand grenade at Flaherty and almost blows him up. Ma Barker throws another grenade at Eliot Ness, crouching behind a large, fallen tree limb, and the explosion almost kills him. Ma Barker is the most malicious outlaw they've ever faced; she keeps firing her machine gun and screaming defiantly. Eliot Ness, trying to give them every possible chance to surrender, brings Arthur to the scene, hoping they will give up. Lloyd decides to surrender, and walks outside and throws down his chopper; his own brother Fred shoots him in the back. Lloyd manages to crawl back inside the house, and dies. Ness lets Arthur walk all the way to the house; he tells his mom they don't have a chance. Then Fred, shot up badly himself, dies. Ma Barker calls Arthur "scum" for surrendering, and points her chopper at him; nevertheless, she lets him walk back to Ness. Arthur couldn't get Ma Barker to surrender, and she finally gets shot inside the house. Thus ended the threat of the Barker gang.