CHAPTER 38 of THE COOLEST SPOT IN CHICAGO:
A HISTORY OF GREEN MILL GARDENS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF UPTOWN
PREVIOUS CHAPTER / TABLE OF CONTENTS / NEXT CHAPTER
(If you haven’t read the earlier “Joe and Jack” chapters, start with Part 1 of this four-part story.)
A man appeared at the Commonwealth Hotel’s front desk on the morning of November 8, 1927, and asked for Joe Lewis’s room number, according to the Chicago Evening American.1 Lewis had told the hotel’s employees not to let any visitors come up to his room without notifying him.2 Did the hotel fail to follow his instructions?
A hotel maid named Mary Keane, who’d been cleaning Lewis’s room over the months, was working on the hotel’s 10th floor that morning. “It was about 11:45 a.m., that three men got out of the elevators and walked down the corridor past Lewis’s room,” she later told police (according to the American). “Then, when the elevator door had closed and the operator was out of sight, they came back and knocked on his door. He asked who it was and one of them gave him a name, which I didn’t catch. He opened the door and all three went in. I heard one of them ask him what he was doing and he said he was just trying to make up lost sleep. Then, as I went about my work, I heard laughing and talking in the room for several minutes.”
Keane’s story led the police to conclude that Lewis must have known the men who came to his room.3 That contradicts the version of the story in The Joker Is Wild, which says: “Three men, none of whom he recognized, brushed past him.” According to the book, one of the men told Lewis: “Just one favor, Joe. Don’t yell.”4 In another version of the story—a 1948 newspaper article—one man muttered, “We hate to do this, Joe.”5
One or two of the men clobbered Lewis on the head with the butts of their revolvers. The third man attacked Lewis with a knife,6 stabbing or slicing him 12 times, including many cuts to his head and face.7
“They came in to give me the works, but they didn’t expect me to put up a fight,” Lewis recalled in a 1937 interview. “They thought actors were sissies. I got in a few good licks myself and that got them a little peeved. They hit me over the head with their gun butts and one hoodlum lets me have the knife right by my ear.”8 In a 1946 interview, Lewis remembered: “One of them pulled out a .45 and belted me over the head and I went down trying to fight because I was desperate and I knew I was gone.”9
A report issued by Lewis’s physicians offered more detail about what happened when Lewis was hit on the head: “This blow fractured the skull and broke off nine pieces of bone directly over the parietal areas, which controls the center of speech in the brain. Then his assailants slashed laterally and longitudinally across the face from the region of the ear to the corner of the mouth and from the corner of the eye diagonally downward to the throat.”10
As Keane went about her work cleaning hotel rooms, two men apparently departed from Lewis’s room without her noticing. “I only saw one man leave—about 20 minutes after the three went in,” she told police. Employees in the hotel lobby saw the man who’d asked for Lewis’s number, leisurely walking out about half an hour after he’d arrived.11
Lewis believed he was unconscious for about 10 minutes.12 When he came to, he could barely move. “His first reaction was an impression that he was drowning,” Cohn wrote in The Joker Is Wild. “He was lying on the floor, his face immersed in a pool of blood. He remained in a state of shock for several seconds. He could not see.” He managed to wipe the blood from his eyes and pull himself over to the telephone. But when he tried to say “Help!” into the receiver, no sound came out of his mouth.
In The Joker Is Wild’s version of the story, Lewis dragged himself to his door and crawled out. No one was in the hallway at first, but then Mary Keane appeared and saw him—but she promptly fainted. Lewis managed to get to the elevator and push the button. When the elevator operator, Casey, saw Lewis in his bloody condition, he hurried downstairs to summon help.13
Keane told the story differently. She said she saw the door of Lewis’s room open, about five minutes after she’d seen that one man walking out. This time, “Lewis himself came out,” she said. “He was holding his stomach as though in pain and his face was covered with blood. I ran to the elevator, after he collapsed, and got the elevator boy and he got the clerk and someone notified the police.”14
Police arrived at the hotel and rushed Lewis to Columbus Hospital, which was a few blocks away, at 2540–48 North Lakeview Avenue.15 On the way there, Lewis gasped, “I know who did it,” just before he lapsed back into unconsciousness.
When Lewis arrived at the hospital, his prognosis looked grim. The Tribune reported that “physicians hold little hope for his recovery.”16 But he survived after seven hours on the operating table,17 under the hands and scalpel of Dr. Daniel A. Orth, a prominent Chicago physician known as a pioneer in anesthesia, who’d been president of the Columbus Hospital staff since 1920.18
The police called Roy Mack, telling him that Lewis had been “nearly murdered” and summoning him to the hospital for questioning. “When I arrived, a policeman was outside the door of Joe’s room to prevent a possible attempt to finish the job,” Mack recalled. “He had been hammered on the head with pistol butts, and one side of his face had been carved until his entire cheek was hanging like a piece of rag. The lower slash almost grazed his jugular vein. His tongue was lacerated. His larynx was injured. He was close to death from loss of blood and skull fracture. … He had lost his voice and his memory.”19 In addition, Lewis’s right arm was severely injured by knife wounds, making it impossible for him to move it.
Did Lewis’s attackers think they’d killed him? Or did they deliberately leave him injured in ways that would seem to prevent him from ever performing onstage again? According to the doctors who treated Lewis, his wounds suggested that his attackers had known exactly what they were doing. The knife thrusts “were evidently designed to cut through the parotid gland and facial nerve, which they did, paralyzing his entire face and severing what is known as the Stenson’s duct, which supplies saliva to the mouth,” the doctors wrote. “The manner in which the blows and knife thrusts were delivered indicated at least a rudimentary knowledge of the human anatomy. The injuries were concentrated only at areas where they would deprive him of the use of those facilities that affected his career as a singer.”
A reporter for the International Feature Service suggested that four deep crisscross lines carved across Lewis’s cheeks had been designed “to indicate the double cross.”20
Two assistant state’s attorneys tried to question Lewis as he lay in his hospital bed, but he was unable to talk or write. Using nods, he managed to communicate that he’d been attacked by three men. Asked if he knew the name of one assailant, he nodded. But he was unable to write the name.21
Chicago Evening American, November 9, 1927.
According to the American, police and prosecutors saw three possible explanations for the attack on Lewis: “A cabaret war, between night club and cabaret owners and organizations over entertainers. An invasion of gangland warfare into cabaret and night club circles. A love affair.”22
A detective sergeant told the Tribune that “Lewis had the sort of face that women love and that the men who stabbed him may have done so to punish the singer for philandering with wives or sweethearts.” But the Commonwealth Hotel’s manager said she’d never seen Lewis with any women at the hotel.23
Captain Goldberg dismissed a rumor connecting Lewis with entertainer May Carroll. “It is absurd to say that the fight had anything to do with girls,” he said. “May was with the ‘Follies’ in Chicago. She got out of a job, and wanted to go to New York for a visit. She asked Joe to let her have her trunks put in his room while she was in New York, so that she wouldn’t have to pay room rent to store them. Joe said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ That’s how her trunks came to be in Joe’s room. She is still in New York.”24
In an interview a decade later, Lewis recalled: “Some of the boys at the time said I’d been mixed up with some hoodlum’s wife, and I couldn’t even say no because I couldn’t talk. But I’ve learned it doesn’t do much good to deny accusations anyway.”25
Almost as soon as Lewis was taken to the hospital, Goldberg ordered Jack McGurn’s arrest as a suspect.26 Meanwhile, the American noted that Green Mill manager Danny Cohen and Rendezvous part-owner Frank Korte both said they “knew nothing” when they were questioned.27 The Tribune quoted Cohen: “McGurn hasn’t a nickel in my place. If he went after Lewis it wasn’t on our account. McGurn is a customer of the Green Mill, but that’s all.” 28 Cohen told another reporter: “Lewis … told the customers he was leaving. I didn’t like that so I fired him.”29
The state’s attorney’s office questioned Cohen that night, and then released him. An attorney for Cohen told the American: “Cohen is a friend of Lewis, and likes him. He knows nothing of the attack.” But police captain Hugh McCarthy still wanted to question Cohen as well as McGurn. “We are going to find the men who cut Joe Lewis up, and prosecute them to the limit,” he said. McCarthy also remarked: “Lewis is a pitiful sight. He can’t talk—his throat was slashed. He may never be able to talk again. His right arm was cut so badly it is useless.”
On Lewis’s second day in the hospital, police investigators asked him if McGurn was one of the men who’d attacked him. Lewis shook his head, indicating no, the American reported. Lewis scribbled three names on a piece of paper: “Joe G.,” “Dan C.,” and “Tony R.” Police officers repeated each name, asking him what they meant. When they said, “Tony R.,” Lewis pantomimed with his left hand—the only one he could move—indicating that Tony R. was the man who’d stabbed him. And Lewis nodded his head when a cop suggested, “Joe G.—is that Captain Joseph Goldberg?” Lewis nodded again when asked, “Do you want to see him?” By the time Goldberg arrived, Lewis had grown weaker, and his writing was now illegible.
“We have been friends for a long time,” Goldberg told the American. “The moment Joe is in possession of all his faculties he will tell me who the three men were who attacked him in his room. I have an idea that they are a North Side gang. I think I know this ‘Tony R.’”
If Goldberg suspected McGurn—and if he also believed “a North Side gang” was responsible—did that mean he thought McGurn was still allied with the North Siders rather than Capone? Or was something else going on, which he could only hint about? The American noted that McGurn was a “former lieutenant of the slain Dean O’Banion,” but it didn’t explain how that had anything to do with his alleged desire to stop Lewis from leaving the Green Mill. Instead, it quoted a cryptic comment from Goldberg: “As far as the idea that McGurn is concerned goes, something has been expected in North Side circles. I’m not giving out any secrets when I say that. Everybody on the North Side knows it.”
Goldberg reflected on the gravity of the situation. “It is terrible the way these hoodlum sluggings and attacks are taking place,” he said. “Here is a fellow who was going about his work in a legitimate way. It was all right when he left the Frolics to go to the Green Mill. But when he left the Green Mill to go to the Rendezvous, at an almost 100 percent increase in pay—then this happens. But this is one case that is going to be run down, and hoodlums … punished to the limit. Joe is well liked, popular, respected. And the hoodlums try to ‘get’ him just like they do other hoodlums.”
Goldberg also noted that the “Dan C.” in Lewis’s scribbled notes might be Danny Cohen.30 The next day, Lewis was able to sit up in bed for the first time. Rendezvous Cafe manager John Fogarty visited, along with Al Black, a pianist from Rockford who’d played with Lewis. They asked Lewis who’d attacked him. “Lewis would hold up three fingers, indicating three men, and go through a pantomime of slashing and stabbing,” the American reported. When they asked him for the name of the man who’d stabbed him, Lewis wrote: “Danny Cohen.”
But the American downplayed the significance of this. “His brain temporarily clouded by pressure of a skull fracture, Joe Lewis … today confused, with varied answer, the efforts of police to learn the identity of the three men who attacked and stabbed him twelve times in his room,” the newspaper reported.
“Joe is exactly like a child, trying to learn to talk for the first time,” the attending physician told the American. “His mind is not perfectly clear. The pressure on his brain is of such extent that his understanding is temporarily impaired. That would account for the irrelevancy of his answers to our questions.”31
It took a week for the police to find Jack McGurn. When he was taken into custody on November 15, the Tribune noted that he “says he is a real estate operator, with an office at 64 West Randolph street.” The police took McGurn to Columbus Hospital, where Lewis was unable (or unwilling?) to identify him as one of the men who’d attacked him. In a statement to an assistant state’s attorney, McGurn denied having any knowledge of the assault. He was released without being charged.32
None of these moments in Lewis’s hospital room appear in The Joker Is Wild. Instead, the book describes an episode later during his hospital stay, when police brought another suspect into his room, apparently sometime in December. The way Cohn told the story, the police told Lewis they’d arrested one of his attackers. “We know he’s one of the three, but we’ll need your identification—to make it official,” a detective told him. But Lewis shook his head. Goldberg said, “Don’t be a damn fool. This rat tried to kill you. He’s a public menace as long as he’s free.”
The police brought the suspect, “a squat Italian, about five feet three inches tall,” into Lewis’s room. The suspect froze when he saw Lewis, but Lewis looked back at him “without a flicker of recognition,” Cohn wrote.
After the police took the man out of the room, Goldberg supposedly asked Lewis, “He was one of ’em—wasn’t he?” But Lewis repeatedly shook his head. Goldberg angrily accused him of lying: “You’re a bigger sucker than I thought you were. The ‘code.’ The good old ‘code.’ Everything goes—rape, arson, murder—everything except helping a cop do his duty. Maybe McGurn’ll give you a medal for Christmas.” Lewis supposedly wrote down an explanation for why he hadn’t identified the suspect: “WANT GET HIM MYSELF.”
According to The Joker Is Wild, this particular suspect was found six days later in an alley, shot to death. The two other men who’d attacked Lewis were soon supposedly slain as well. 33 “The three thugs … who mangled him were wiped out within a few months by gangsters who were fond of the comedian,” Roy Mack said.34 There’s no way of verifying this, since the names of these men are unknown. The Chicago Police Department’s list of homicides didn’t include anyone found shot to death in an alley in December 1927 or January 1928.35
Bugs Moran assigned two of his top henchmen, brothers Pete and Frank Gusenberg, to guard Lewis’s hospital room, according to The Joker Is Wild. “Hoodlums continued to drop in at all hours of the day and night to inquire about Joe’s condition and, while they were there, drink a few toasts to his health and take a hand in Fogarty’s continuous poker and crap games,” Cohn wrote. He also described how a group of gangsters persuaded two “well lubricated” nurses “that they would perform the Charleston with greater efficacy if they removed their uniforms.”36
Meanwhile, Lewis was relearning how to speak, with assistance from a Catholic priest, J.A. Heitzer. “His speech center, behind the frontal lobe of his brain, had been destroyed,” Cohn wrote.37 On November 29, a Variety correspondent reported: “Hopes for the complete recovery of Joe Lewis are bright. He has regained his voice and the use of his right arm. … his physical gain has been speedy. The serious skull contusion, which temporarily deprived Lewis of his power of speech, is not yet healed, and it is believed another operation will be necessary.”38
Was Lewis hiding what he knew about his assailants from the police—either because he intended to take his own revenge or because he feared that mobsters would come after him for talking to the cops? Or had the injuries to his head wiped out these portions of his memory? Did he still remember whom he was talking about when he’d said “I know who did it” on the way to the hospital? Could he recall why he’d scribbled down “Tony R.” and “Danny Cohen” during his first days of recovery? All of this is unclear. His doctors said, “Lewis remembers little except that three men entered his room and one dealt him a terrific blow with a revolver butt.”
The physicians explained how they’d helped Lewis regain his faculties: “operations have lifted the pressured from his skull, remodeled the gaping fracture, and his speech has returned. By a plastic surgeon the Stenson’s duct has been reset. Another plastic operation will remove all facial scars.”39
The plastic surgeon who worked on Lewis—and the physician who released this report—was Dr. Henry J. Schireson, who would become controversial in the years ahead, accused of mutilating and defrauding patients.
He reportedly once described himself as the “king of the quacks,” and one newspaper investigation called him an “evil genius.” His medical licenses were revoked in Illinois and Pennsylvania, but then restored by the supreme courts in both of those states.40
Whatever the truth of the later allegations against him, Schireson won praise for helping Joe Lewis, as did Dr. Orth and others at Columbus Hospital. The International Feature Service noted “the gallant efforts of scientists who watched over him with unremitting care for weeks, performing a series of delicate operations to make his miraculous come-back possible.”41
In early December, the Rendezvous began posting daily updates about Lewis’s condition on a sign on the front of the nightclub. The café said Lewis would be returning to work in a few weeks.42 Meanwhile, a December 13 dispatch in Variety reported that the Green Mill had failed to survive Joe Lewis’s departure. The newspaper delivered the news in two terse sentences: “Danny Cohen’s Green Mill has closed. Business terrible.”43 If Jack McGurn ever did have any ownership in the Green Mill, it likely ended at this time. The club would later reopen, but under new owners, with no obvious connections to McGurn.
As Lewis lay in his hospital bed, Al Capone was on the move. When cops went to Capone’s headquarters at the Metropole hotel on November 28, they discovered that he’d evacuated his rooms there.44
By this time, Capone wielded his power in Chicago like a potentate. Describing one of his courtroom appearances that fall—when some vagrancy charges against Capone were quickly dismissed—the Daily News wrote: “Dapperly dressed and wearing several flashing diamonds, Capone moved in and out of the courtroom with the pomp and protection of a feudal lord of old. He was surrounded by a bodyguard of ten or twelve burly henchmen, who put [up] a brisk fight with photographers in an effort to prevent their chieftain being snapped as the party left the building.”45 A wire service headline called Capone “A King With a Gun for a Sceptre.”46 And Capone’s henchmen reportedly boasted: “Scarface is the works. Why not? He elected Thompson.”47
But Capone surely knew that he wasn’t invincible. Capone and his close associate Tony Lombardo had recently been the target of more assassination plots by Joe Aiello.48 An “insider” told the American that a full-blown war between the gangs was now inevitable. He predicted “more murders, more shooting, until there is only one gang left.”49
Meanwhile, the Chicago police had turned more aggressive, when the chief of detectives, William O’Connor, told cops in roving motor car squads what to do if they saw any known gangsters: “Shoot to kill and argue afterwards.” The International News Service called it “the most drastic order ever given Chicago policemen.”50 Within a day of that order, the police gunned down one reputed gangster as well as one of their own officers, a victim of friendly fire.51
In the midst of these tensions, Capone went on a hunting trip somewhere in the “north woods.” Newspapers quoted Capone’s mob announcing that the boss had left town “for a much needed rest and to hunt.” When Capone and his henchman returned a week later, they didn’t bring back any game.52
Speaking to reporters on December 5 at the Metropole, Capone announced that he was leaving Chicago—taking a vacation and possibly going away for good. “Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best they can,” he said. “I’m sick of the job—it’s a thankless one and full of grief. I don’t know when I’ll get back, if ever. … I’ve been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor. I’ve given the people the light pleasures, shown them a good time. And all I get is abuse—the existence of a hunted man—I’m called a killer. Well, tell the folks I’m going away now. I guess murder will stop. There won’t be any booze. You won’t be able to find a crap game, even, let alone a roulette wheel or a faro game. I guess [police superintendent] Mike Hughes won’t need his 3,000 extra cops, after all. Public service is my motto. Ninety-nine per cent of the people in Chicago drink and gamble. I’ve tried to serve them decent liquor and square games. But I’m not appreciated. It’s no use.”53
Capone said he was heading to St. Petersburg, Florida, but reporters spotted him a few days later in San Diego and Tijuana.54 He then went sightseeing in Los Angeles, where the police chief strongly suggested that he should get out of town.55 “Why should everybody in this town pick on me?” Capone told the Los Angeles Times. “I wasn’t going to do anything here. … We are tourists and I thought that you folk liked tourists. I have a lot of money to spend that I made in Chicago. Who ever heard of anybody being run out of Los Angeles that had money? … We all had a fine time today before the police told us that we had to go back home. We went through a film studio. I never saw them make pictures before.”56
As Capone departed L.A. by train, Chicago police officials warned him not to return.57 The Associated Press called him “virtually a man without a city.”58 Capone arrived in Joliet on December 16. As he stepped off a Santa Fe train, Joliet police officers searched him and four of his associates, who’d arrived to greet him. The cops found guns on all of the men and arrested them.59
In the police lockup, Capone paced up and down his cell while an International News Service reporter tried to interview him. “I’m mad!” Capone shouted—so loud that jailers came running with shotguns. Sneering at these lawmen, Capone exclaimed: “Law and order! Protectors of the common people! The great police! Law and order—hell. They are hounding me to death. I’m through with all police. They can go to hell and be damned!”60
He seemed to be in a better mood when he returned to Joliet a week later, appearing in court, where he pleaded guilty to carrying a gun and paid a fine of $1,000, peeling off large-denomination bills from a roll of money. “Maybe this will be a lesson to you,” the judge said. Smiling, Capone replied, “Yes, judge, it certainly will. I’ll never tote a gun again in Joliet.”61
A few days before Christmas, Capone doled out thousands of $5 gold pieces to the proprietors of various downtown Chicago businesses. The Herald and Examiner reported that “the popular gangster’s most trusted agent” went around the Loop in a “fast automobile,” reaching into a bag and handing out these coins “at places where lighter forms of entertainment are provided.” Some people received just one coin, while others got much more. “All the recipients were associated in some way with the Capone Enterprises, Unlimited—beer selling, beer running, gambling, etc.,” the newspaper wrote, estimating that Capone distributed more than $8,000 in the Loop alone. “I guess it doesn’t look much like they were running him out of town,” a gambler remarked.62
At Christmastime, the Tribune offered further evidence that some Chicagoans had fond feelings for Capone, regardless of how fearsome of a criminal he was. After the newspaper published one reader’s description of a Tom and Jerry cocktail from the days before Prohibition, another reader (identified as “Old Soak”) wrote in to say how enticing that drink had sounded. “I am ready to vote to put Al Capone in the White House,” the letter concluded.63
PREVIOUS CHAPTER / TABLE OF CONTENTS / NEXT CHAPTER
Footnotes
1 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
2 “How Science Saved…”
3 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
4 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 13–14.
5 Mel Heimer, “My New York,” (Valparaiso, IN) Vidette-Messenger, November 24, 1948, 1.
6 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 13–14.
7 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
8 Allan Keller, “Comedian Enjoys Making Them Laugh, But Gangsters Almost ‘Froze’ His Smile,” Evansville (IN) Press, June 11, 1937, 27.
9 Westbrook Pegler, “That Joe, He Just Floors Our Pegler,” Wisconsin State Journal, January 8, 1946, 6.
10 “How Science Saved…”
11 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
12 Pegler, “That Joe.”
13 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 13–17.
14 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
15 1923 Chicago city directory, 1127, Fold3.com.
16 “Cabaret Man’s Fears Told as Stabbing Clew,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1927.
17 Hank Messick, The Beauties and the Beasts: The Mob in Show Business (New York: David McKay, 1973), 30.
18 “Hold Services Tomorrow for Dr. Daniel Orth,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 7, 1945, 28.
19 Mack, “Night the Mob ‘Got’ Joe E. Lewis.”
20 “How Science Saved…”
21 “Cabaret Man’s Fears Told as Stabbing Clew,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1927.
22 “Stab Cabaret Star.”
23 “Cabaret Man’s Fears Told as Stabbing Clew.”
24 “Joe Lewis Accuses ‘Tony R.’ as Stabber,” Chicago Evening American, November 9, 1927, 1, 9.
25 Allan Keller, “Comedian Enjoys Making Them Laugh, But Gangsters Almost ‘Froze’ His Smile,” Evansville (IN) Press, June 11, 1937, 27.
26 “Cabaret Singer Slashed,” Chicago Daily News, November 9, 1927, 10.
27 “Stabbing of Actor in Hotel Room Still Deep Mystery,” Chicago Evening American, November 9, 1927, 2.
28 “Cabaret Man’s Fears Told as Stabbing Clew.”
29 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 24.
30 “Joe Lewis Accuses ‘Tony R.’ as Stabber,” Chicago Evening American, November 9, 1927, 1, 9.
31 “Joe Lewis, Mind Clouded, Names Cohen as Stabber,” Chicago Evening American, November 10, 1927.
32 “McGurn Seized in Stabbing Case, but Is Not Identified,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 16, 1927.
33 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 27–29.
34 Mack, “Night the Mob ‘Got’ Joe E. Lewis.”
35 Database at Homicide in Chicago, 1870–1930, https://homicide.northwestern.edu/.
36 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 19, 23–24.
37 Cohn, Joker Is Wild, 25–26.
38 “Joe Lewis Improving, Recovery Chances Good,” Variety, November 30, 1927, 55, https://archive.org/details/variety89-1927-11/page/n181/.
39 “How Science Saved…”
40 “Court Denies a Rehearing in Schireson Case,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 9, 1933, 12; “‘Quack’ Schireson Resumes Practice After Prison Term,” (Camden, New Jersey) Courier-Post, March 27, 1944, 3; “Dr. H.J. Schireson, 68, Dies in Phila.,” Wilkes-Barre (PA) Times-Leader, March 28, 1949, 10; Schireson v. Walsh, 354 Ill. 40, https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/schireson-v-walsh-21907-893845090.
41 “How Science Saved…”
42 “Rendezvous Announcing Joe Lewis’ Return,” Variety, December 7, 1927, 54, https://archive.org/details/variety89-1927-12/page/n53/.
43 “Green Mill Closed,” Variety, December 14, 1927, 55, https://archive.org/details/variety89-1927-12/page/n117/mode/2up.
44 Eig, Get Capone, 122.
45 “Gunman Slain by Police; Gangs Arm,” Chicago Daily News, November 22, 1927, 1, 4.
46 NEA Service, “A King With a Gun for a Sceptre,” Grand Island (NB) Daily Independent, December 9, 1927, 13.
47 “$75,000,000 a Year Prize in Chicago’s Bloody Gang War,” Detroit News, December 18, 1927, Metropolitan Section, 3, 16.
48 “Policeman Slain in Gang Chase; Bomb Marks New War,” Chicago Daily News, November 23, 1927, 1, 3.
49 “Gangland Wars Again Over Vice and Gambling Spoils,” Chicago Evening American, November 22, 1927, 2.
50 Associated Press, “Chicago Cops and Gunmen Waging War,” Des Moines Tribune, November 22, 1927, 17; International News Service, “More Slayings Due in Chicago Gangster War,” Lancaster (PA) Daily Intelligencer, December 2, 1927. A version of the same article is credited to Francis F. Healy in Bayonne (NJ) Times, December 2, 1927, 5.
51 International News Service, “Chicago Gangland War Takes Another,” (Bowling Green, OH) Daily Sentinel-Tribune, November 23, 1927, 1.
52 International News Service, “‘Scarface Al’ Back to Carry on Gang’s Work,” Belleville (IL) News-Democrat, December 5, 1927, 2.
53 “‘You Can All Go Thirsty,’ Is Al Capone’s Adieu,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1927, 1, 6.
54 Associated Press, “Capone Reported at Tijuana Track,” Oakland Tribune, December 10, 1927, 1.
55 “Chicago’s Gang Chief Sent Home,” (Los Angeles) Record, December 14, 1927, 1.
56 “‘Scarface Al’—Came to Play, Now Look—He’s Gone Away!” Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1927, 2, 1.
57 “Capone Quits Los Angeles for Chicago,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 14, 1927, 1.
58 Associated Press, “Al Capone Is Escorted Out Los Angeles,” Grand Island (NB) Daily Independent, December 14, 1927, 1.
59 “Capone, 4 Aids Fined $2,601 in Joliet Courts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 23, 1927, 8.
60 Francis F. Healy, International News Service, “Scarface Al Will Fight to Stay at Home,” Seattle Union-Record, December 29, 1927, 12.
61 “Capone, 4 Aids Fined $2,601.”
62 “Capone, Alias Santa, Leaves Gold in Loop,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, December 22, 1927, 3.
63 “A Line O’ Type or Two,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 21, 1927, 10; December 26, 1927, 10.