The Daily Herald from Chicago, Illinois • Page 58

Section 3 Monday. Sept. 4, 1972 THE HERALD Roger The Terrible Was, After All, A Suburbanite Roger "The Terrible" Touhy, formet prohibition beer baron, was gunned down by five shotgun blasts on the front porch of his- sister's Chicago home on Dec. 16, 1959. Touhy, 61, notorious survivor of Chicago's Prohibition gang wars, had been paroled Just 22 days earlier from Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary, where he had served almost 26 years for the alleged kidnaping of John "Jake The Barber" Factor in 1933.

An hour after he was mowed down, he died on a hospital operating table. And his death stamped an end to an era that put Suburban Cook County on the top of the federal government's list during the Prohibition years, from 1920 to 1933. In his heyday, after throwing over a SSO.OOO-a-year car business for bootlegging, Roger The Terrible and a partner, Matt Kolb, carved an empire of North- nest suburban speakeasies, controlled a big slot-machine franchise, sold 18,000 bottles of illicit beer each week and boasted he made more than $1 million a year. Touhy directed his bootlegging empire for many yean from a home just north of Maryville Academy, on River Road in Des Ptaines. Touhy was born in 1898, in a house at 822 S.

Robey Chicago. He was the youngest of two girls and six boys and lived in a working-class neighborhood where everyone had big families and low incomes. His father was a Chicago cop. And an honest one. "Otherwise we would have had a hell of a tot less trouble getting up grocery and rent money.

And I might have managed to get farther in school than the eighth grade," he said. His mother died when he was 10, fatally burned when the kitchen stove exploded, and he and his family moved on to Downers Grove. Touhy graduated from St. Joseph Roman Catholic Parochial School there and enjoyed a normal boyhood, playing baseball and being teased about his curly hair. But after graduation he went to work.

In 1915 he met a dark-haired Irish girl by the name of Clara. She was 16 and fresh out of telegraph school working for Western Union at the Blackstone Hotel. He was working for Western Union, too, and after years of courtship, they were married in 1922. During these years Roger Touhy drove a taxi at night and sold cars by day. In 1926 his father died and his first son was born.

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PHONi 3M-IMO Daily 1 0 8 Mon li Thurfc 1 0 9 Sat 10 Sun 12'Spm make a little more money. Following this, he decided to be a bootlegger and bought into a distributorship owned by Matt Kolb for $10,000. Kolb was his partner and also ran a saloon on California Avenue in Chicago. "We sold beer to about 200 madhouses, nightclubs and saloons, all outside Chicago, to the west and northwest of the city. "Our boundaries were from the county line west to Elgin and from North Avenue to the Lake County line," he recalled later.

It was at this time he and Matt Kolb were grossing more than $1 million atone in beer sales. But what kind of guy was Touhy, a little Irishman (he stood only 5 feet 6 Inches tall with dark curly hair and blue eyes) Jack Cunningham, a semi-retired real estate salesman who lives in Barrington, told the Herald: "Sure, I used to see Roger at the gas station at 47th and Madison all the time. I don't know if he owned it or what, but he was there a lot of the time. It was during the late 20's. "He seemed like a nice enough guy.

He was dressed well, had black curly hair -a good-looking fella, he kidded everyone a lot. You'd take him for an average guy. I knew his brother Tommy, too. He was always a sickly one. I think he had TB.

I used to see him on River Road in the winter, always bundled up. "He used to go to Matt Kolb's place a lot. Kolb was Touhy's partner and was later killed by the Capone mob at a Morton Grove speakeasy." fCapone sent a $100 wreath to the funeral). Cunningham said he first got to know a few of the Chicago mobsters when they were trying to overthrow the labor unions toward the end of Prohibition. "I knew a fella by the name of Art Wallace, for instance, who was with the painter's union.

He was a business agent. And there was another guy with the Capone mob Younghusband his name was. Anyway, Wallace had a falling out with Younghusband and killed his wife, so to retaliate, Younghusband killed Wallace." was sent to Stateville Penitentiary in 1933 for allegedly kidnapping John "Jake The Barber" Factor, a crony of the Capone mob. At the time, Factor, also was wanted in England for a $7 million stock swindle. Recalls Cunningham: "Most of us regarded Factor as a no-good guy because he used to beat people out of their money.

He ran an illegal bucket shop and would try to sell good stock over the telephone and later talk the same people into buying lousy stock and losing all their money. "Factor was the one who put Sam Perry out of business at the Dells (a Capone- operated nightclub near Morton Grove) because he wouldn't testify for The Barber during the Touhy kidnapping trial. "Jake was always no good, even before the trouble he got into over in England. CAUGHT ROGER TOUHY was arrested July 19, 1933 in Elkhorn, for the kidnaping of John "Jake The Barber" Factor He was picked up, on a minor charge, his car having damaged a lightpole in Elkhorn. Here Elkhorn police were showing how tough gangsters from Chicago.

treated Touhy wasn't a killer either. I'd stake my life on that. He was a bootlegger, and hell everybody went to the bootlegger in those days. Law officers, politicians nobody believed in Prohibition. "There were a lot of speakeasies back then.

They were in the back of business offices and some were even open to the public. Federal agents couldn't do anything if they caught you drinking beer or whiskey. That wasn't against the law. But making it and selling it was. A lot of beer came down from Canada.

I remember there used to be a lot of Cartings beer around in those days. One of the better known speakeasies was at the corner of Lake and Clark Esther's Fish House they called it. "I remember too, there wfcs a young Italian that came out to the suburbs in those days and he must have done something the mob didn't like. He had real black hair and was fairly young. "Well, he got caught in a speakeasy one night and they tortured the poor devil so, his hair turned gray overnight.

I don't mean from dye, he turned gray from torture and the police found him the next morning about 10 a.m. He was dead. "I knew Accardo back then too. They used to call him Joe Batters long before he got the nicknames of Big Tuna and Tough Tony. I saw Big Al (Capone) only twice, but I knew his brother Ralph pretty good.

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Capone and Touhy both had hired killers, I know that," said Cunningham. During his first years in prison, Touhy became despondent and later said: "I wasn't a man anymore. I was a dead thing. I stayed awake until dawn in my cell, thinking I was without hope. I was buried alive in prison and I would die there.

I couldn't see a light ahead anywhere. Nothing but darkness and loneliness and desperation." This was after the U.S. Supreme Court had turned him down for a rehearing. His wife Clara and their two sons, about whom he was concerned at all times, had moved to Florida under an assumed name. But in 1942 Roger Touhy escaped from Stateville and it was then the Chicago a dubbed him "Terrible Touhy." Said Touhy: "That fitted me like calling Calvin Coolidge an anarchist.

The only conviction I ever had in my life, up to the time of the Factor frame-up, was for parking my car too close to a fireplug." After his escape, he sent word for his brother Eddie, his only siurce of income, to send him money. He did $25,000. Eddie owned a roadhouse called Eddie's Wonder Bar, near the state fairgrounds outside Madison, Wis. Another man who knew Touhy was the late Ray Driscoll, who used to live at 728 S. Vail in Arlington Heights.

Driscoll was a tough FBI agent who helped capture Touhy after he escaped from Stateville. "There were three gangs in Chicago during the '20s run by Bugs Moran, Al Capone and Roger Touhy all big bootleggers during Prohibition. The three gangs were like three companies competing for the sale of the same product, booze, only the gangs were trying to eliminate each other. "I remember Roger. It was 1942.

Touhy had escaped and we finally co- ralled him and some of his boys at the corner of Foster and Kenmore in Chicago. "It was 4 a.m. and we had a gunfjght. Two of his men were killed and we finally captured him. All he could say was 'Why don't you leave me alone? I haven't done "And you know, although Touhy had been tossed in the pen for kidnapping Jake The Barber, a Chicago financier and man-about-town, I don't think he really did it.

"We booked Touhy on a technicality, the only way we could enter the case. He had failed to register for the draft and had failed to notify his draft board of a change of address," said Driscoll. At Maryville Academy, some of the MIRACLE DRUGS have replaced the "Sulfur Molasses" type medication of the early part of the century, however, our personal service, which started in 1924 when our original pharmacy was founded has remained the same. We've enjoyed your past patronage and look forward to many years of continued service to the Jack T. Keefer and Staff KEEPER'S PHARMACY 5 W.

PROSPECT AVI. MT. PROSPECT, ILL. 60056 CL 5-3220- CL 3- 1031 (Photo Courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times) old-timers say this about Roger Touhy: "Al Capone ruled supreme in Chicago, but Roger Touhy had staked out the entire northern suburbs. Roadhouses were then funspots in the north and had fallen like dominoes as Roger became the sole distributor of the bootleg suds and booze.

"Roger Touhy became almost a local hero in the area. Like many other bootleggers, he was exceedingly generous with his products and freely provided the liquid for many suburban fund-raising civic, fraternal and social endeavors. Maryville had extremely mixed emotions about Roger as the Touhys lived a respectable existence on a farm due north of the school. They were regulars at Sunday Mass and seemed sincerely interested in the student population. Frequently on Sunday afternoon he would give ice cream to all the kids.

"As the demand and business increased, Roger expanded his interests to include his farm and property. The region was still quite rural with only narrow dirt roads as connecting links. It was quiet and secluded and posed only one unresolved problem, the disposal of waste by-products which were not only aromatic, but prima facie evidence for federal revenue agents. "Roger neatly resolved the problem by inviting his neighbors on a three-week European vacation with him. "They naturally accepted.

During their absence an engineering firm moved in and leisurely constructed an elaborate drainage system from the Touhy property across their farm to a nearby creek flowing into the nearby Des Plaines River. "When the weary vacationers returned home, they never suspected anything as there was no visible evidence that their property had been disturbed or that they were unwittingly aiding in the manufacture of intoxicating beverages. "Roger Touhy went to great lengths to maintain a mask of respectability. On one summer day a regatta was scheduled on the Des Plaines River near Maryville. It was to be gala affair.

"Unfortunately, the Touhy brewer was not a sports enthusiast. He was paid for an ability of distilling liquor and this he was doing that morning. The day was hot and humid and as the original water pollution was carried to the creek and the Des Plaines River, the bouquet of freshly aged spirits was quite evident along the river banks. "It is rumored Roger spent a fortune that Saturday buying up all the perfume to be had in Chicago. They continued working that night, all night, sprinkling their purchase along the shoreline, into the creek and the grassy areas for several miles around.

And it was a mystery how the oak grove smelled like roses and the apple orchards blossoms smelled like gardenias." What was then called the "mob" operated bootlegging operations throughout Wheeling, Palatine and Barrington townships. And a check through old Herald clips confirms this: On Sept. 8, 1928, two federal agents raided one of the most complete distilling operations in the county the Wolf Stock farm, west of Palatine. (Today it's the sales office of the Inverness Countryside.) They were holding four men (a fifth had escaped by diving out a window) and had sent word they needed help. The time was 3 a.m.

Suddenly seven men, each armed with a sawed-off shotgun, appeared from nowhere and confronted the agents. The agents released their prisoners and the 11 men fled. Seven hours later two truckloads of feds pulled up to the barn and its four silos. Entering, they then smashed $50,000 worth of the finest distilling equipment available and poured kerosene over five tons of The operation took eight hours. In a nearby town, rumors were flying that local people know something they aren't telling.

And the next Tuesday the Palatine Enterprise hit the street with a (Continued on Page 9).