95 Facts About Roger Touhy

Roger Touhy was an Irish American mob boss and prohibition-era Chicago bootlegger.

Roger Touhy is best remembered for having been framed by his rivals in Chicago organized crime for the fake 1933 kidnapping of Jewish-American organized crime figure and Chicago Outfit associate John "Jake the Barber" Factor, a brother of cosmetics manufacturer Max Factor Sr.

In retaliation for filing a lawsuit against acting boss Tony Accardo and other senior Mafiosi, Roger Touhy was murdered in an alleged contract killing by the Chicago Outfit less than a month after his release.

Roger Touhy was one of eight children, the youngest of six boys, with an older sister and a younger sister.

Rare for the Chicago Police Department at that time, Patrolman James Roger Touhy was known to be fiercely honest and incorruptible, but he was a strict disciplinarian who beat his children so severely that his neighbors complained.

Mary Roger Touhy was a devout Catholic who required her children to attend Mass with her.

The Roger Touhy family lived near Polk Street and South Damen Avenue on Chicago's Near West Side.

In 1908, Mary Roger Touhy died after a stove in the kitchen exploded and caused a fire, after which James Roger Touhy moved his family to Downers Grove, Illinois.

The family was Roman Catholic, and Roger Touhy was an altar boy at their church.

Roger Touhy attended St Joseph Catholic School in Downers Grove, graduating from the sixth grade as valedictorian of his class.

All but one of Roger Touhy's brothers were engaged in criminal activity.

John Roger Touhy was killed by members of the Chicago Outfit, then led by Al Capone, in 1927 while engaged in bootlegging.

Joe Roger Touhy was killed by Victor Willert, a roadhouse owner, in 1929 after Roger Touhy threatened his life for refusing to buy moonshine from the gang.

Roger Touhy began working full-time for a living at the age of 13.

Roger Touhy was fired in 1915 for expressing support for unionization efforts.

Roger Touhy says he spent some time as a union organizer for the Commercial Telegraphers Union of America, but felt the job had no security.

Roger Touhy joined the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, which qualified him for a well-paying railroad job.

Roger Touhy obtained a position with the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and moved to Colorado.

The United States entered World War I on April 6,1917, and Roger Touhy enlisted in the United States Navy in 1918.

Roger Touhy did not see combat; rather, the Navy assigned him to a teaching post at Harvard University near Boston, Massachusetts.

The college had lent the Navy classroom space, and Roger Touhy taught officers Morse code.

Roger Touhy paid a petroleum engineer a bottle of bootleg corn whiskey to spend a few hours teaching him the fundamentals of petroleum engineering.

Roger Touhy bluffed his way into a petroleum engineering job, paying the drilling rig and well mechanics in corn whiskey to do his job.

Roger Touhy returned to Chicago, and on April 22,1922, he married a 23-year-old telegraph operator, Clara, whom he had met seven years earlier while working for Western Union.

In 1927, Roger Touhy formed a legitimate trucking firm with his brothers Eddie and Tommy.

Touhy's first son, Roger Scott Touhy, was born in 1927 as well.

Shortly thereafter, bootlegger Matt Kolb allowed Roger Touhy to buy into his business.

Roger Touhy purchased oil trucks and had them painted to look like Texaco vehicles to hide the delivery of his alcohol.

Roger Touhy even hired off-duty police officers to drive the trucks to help avoid arrests.

For several years, Roger Touhy avoided problems with law enforcement by becoming one of the best fixers in the Chicago area.

For high-level officials, Roger Touhy printed personalized labels for each person to whom he gave bottled beer.

Roger Touhy aided law enforcement by keeping bottom-rung gangsters out of Des Plaines, and refused to allow brothels to operate in the northwest and west suburbs of Chicago.

Roger Touhy won the grudging respect of the local community for regularly donating large amounts of beer to local civic, fraternal, and social fundraising events, and for buying ice cream for hundreds of children each Sunday.

At one point, Roger Touhy was selling Capone 800 barrels of beer a week at a discounted price of $37.50 per barrel.

Roger Touhy's gang was small, so he chose to intimidate Heeney and Rio: he lined his office walls with handguns and rifles, and borrowed submachine guns from the local police.

Roger Touhy hired off-duty police officers and local farmers to lounge around the building while armed.

Roger Touhy arranged for a man to call his office every few minutes.

Roger Touhy told Heeney that he didn't want anything Capone was offering, and to stay out of his territory.

Heeney and Rio left convinced that the Roger Touhy gang was large, well-armed, and ruthless and that a gang war would be devastating to the Chicago Outfit.

Once more, Roger Touhy "playacted" for the men, who left convinced Roger Touhy was more powerful than he really was.

Roger Touhy asked them to resist Capone's attempt to get them to sell punchboards or buy low-quality beer, and in turn Touhy said he would resist Capone.

Roger Touhy sent Francis "Frank Diamond" Maritote, Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt, and Frank Rio to see Touhy again.

The playacting did not impress Rio this time, even after Roger Touhy claimed to have 200 prison-toughened thugs in his gang.

Roger Touhy, sensing trouble, told the trio that he was hosting a party for all his men that night at The Arch, his Schiller Park roadhouse.

Roger Touhy invited Capone, Nitti, and all the other top leaders of the Chicago Outfit to the party.

Roger Touhy had no intention of hosting a party; instead, he closed the roadhouse early in the evening and removed all liquor from the premises.

Roger Touhy sent Murray "The Camel" Humphreys to Touhy to suggest an alliance.

When Humphreys threatened Roger Touhy, Roger Touhy pointed a shotgun at him.

Humphreys was visibly intimidated, and Roger Touhy sent him back to Nitti, humiliated.

Capone's last attempt to intimidate Roger Touhy came on March 4,1931, when an Outfit member named Summers visited Roger Touhy and proposed bringing brothels, gambling, and taxi dance halls to the northwestern suburbs.

Roger Touhy bribed two of his men to take Summers out drinking.

Roger Touhy feigned ignorance of the two men's identity and suggested that Summers knew who they were, but Capone had already had Summers killed.

Cermak then met Roger Touhy and urged him to take over Capone's territory.

Cermak allegedly offered to allow Roger Touhy to take over bootlegging in Chicago if the war was successful.

The alleged alliance between Cermak and Roger Touhy alarmed Al Capone.

Some time in the first three months of 1931, while Roger Touhy was vacationing in Florida, Capone's men threatened Matt Kolb with death if he did not pay them $25,000.

Marcus "Studdy" Looney of Chicago Outfit met with Roger Touhy and showed him a list of various American Federation of Labor unions in the area and how much money each of them had in their treasury.

The press reported at the time that the Sicilian faction was responsible, although labor historian David Scott Witwer says someone from Roger Touhy's gang was the likely culprit.

Roger Touhy was aware of the collusion between Courtney and the IBT to dominate the District Council.

Roger Touhy's last known involvement with the labor movement came in April 1933.

Early that month, Horan and Arthur Wallace met with Roger Touhy and told him they were giving in to the Chicago Outfit's demands.

The Chicago Tribune initially declared that Roger Touhy himself led the kidnappers, but a few days later reported only that "members of the Touhy gang" had committed the kidnapping.

Some historians assert that the Barker-Karpis gang was manipulated into kidnapping Hamm so Roger Touhy could be framed for the crime and eliminated as competition for the Chicago Outfit.

Roger Touhy reported the accident and attempted to pay for the pole.

Roger Touhy could have sought a writ of habeas corpus, as Purvis decline to provide the names of his eyewitnesses to a federal court.

Federal law enforcement officials now claimed that Roger Touhy had kidnapped people in Kansas City, Missouri; Denver, Colorado; and Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, and had operated a vast kidnap ring operating across the entire Midwestern United States.

Drill, the United States District Attorney for St Paul, now admitted the case against Roger Touhy was thin at first, but he was "fairly confident" that now it had "nothing lacking".

Roger Touhy was indicted for leading a $234,000 mail robbery in Sacramento, California, in February 1933.

Roger Touhy was able to testify about a Wisconsin road sign he saw, which the prosecution said put the place of his imprisonment in Wisconsin.

Two other prosecution eyewitnesses, dentist Dr Horace C La Bissoniere and drug store owner Clarence J Thomas, testified that Touhy "resembled" the man who left ransom note in Thomas' drug store.

Factor did give almost daily interviews with the press on the courthouse steps in which he accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping and torturing him.

Roger Touhy claimed he was at a motel in King City, California, the week of the Hamm kidnapping.

Dan Gilbert claimed several eyewitnesses saw three members of the Roger Touhy gang loitering about the Dells Roadhouse where Factor was kidnapped.

Now claiming that his blindfold had slipped one day, he accused Roger Touhy of being his kidnapper.

Roger Touhy was able to provide an alibi for the night of Factor's kidnapping, with several neighbors testifying that he had sat on his front porch conversing.

Roger Touhy was convicted on March 13,1934, and sentenced to 99 years in prison as well.

Roger Touhy re-entered Stateville on December 31,1942, and was sentenced to an additional 199 years in prison for the escape.

Roger Touhy successfully sued the studio for defamation of character, but Fox was able to distribute the film overseas without legal repercussions.

The ruling was the culmination of an appeal Roger Touhy began in 1948.

The State of Minnesota appealed the ruling, arguing that Roger Touhy had not exhausted his state appeals before filing his federal appeal.

Roger Touhy was released on August 10,1954, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered him returned to prison after just 48 hours of freedom while the appeal was pending.

Roger Touhy won parole on the kidnapping charge on February 20,1958.

Roger Touhy was eligible for parole after serving a third of the sentence, and was granted parole on November 12,1959.

Roger Touhy left Statesville Prison on November 24,1959, having served exactly 25 years and nine months.

Roger Touhy lived with his sister, Ethel Alesia, at 125 N Lotus Avenue in Chicago.

Roger Touhy was struck in the left leg above the knee, and in the right leg below the knee.

Roger Touhy was taken to St Anne's Hospital, where he died an hour later on the operating table from loss of blood.

Roger Touhy received last rites a few minutes before he died.

Roger Touhy claimed he ran afoul of the law only twice before the Hamm kidnapping case.

Roger Touhy claimed to have sent his children to college while in prison, one attending the University of Florida and the other Stetson University.

At one time, Roger Touhy owned a small farm and home in Des Plaines, Illinois, as well as a home on a large piece of property in Florida.

The parties settled out of court, with Roger Touhy receiving $15,000 in damages.

At the time of his death Roger Touhy had no property, and only $35,000 in cash and some furniture in storage.

Jake Factor's libel suit against Roger Touhy was dismissed due to Roger Touhy's death.

Roger Touhy filed a habeas corpus proceeding in federal District Court against Ragen, the warden of Stateville Prison, alleging he was restrained in violation of the Due Process Clause.