Roger Touhy (September 18, 1898 – December 16, 1959) was an Irish American mob boss and prohibition-era Chicago bootlegger. He is 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.
Despite numerous appeals and at least one federal court ruling freeing him, Touhy spent 26 years in prison until he was finally exonerated and released in November 1959. In retaliation for filing a lawsuit against acting boss Tony Accardo and other senior Mafiosi, Touhy was murdered in an alleged contract killing by the Chicago Outfit less than a month after his release.
Early life and career Early years Touhy was born on September 18, 1898, at 822 S. Robey Street in Chicago, Illinois, to James A. Touhy and his wife, Mary ( Moroghan). James was an immigrant from County Sligo, Ireland. Roger 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 Touhy was known to be fiercely honest and incorruptible, but he was also a strict disciplinarian who beat his children so severely that his neighbors complained. Mary Touhy was a devout Catholic who required her children to attend Mass with her.
The Touhy family lived near Polk Street and South Damen Avenue on Chicago's Near West Side. Roger initially attended local public school in Chicago. In 1908, Mary Touhy died after a stove in the kitchen exploded and caused a fire, after which James Touhy moved his family to Downers Grove, Illinois. The family was Roman Catholic, and Touhy was an altar boy at their church. He attended St. Joseph Catholic School in Downers Grove, graduating from the sixth grade as valedictorian of his class.
All but one of Roger's brothers were engaged in criminal activity. James Touhy Jr. was shot and killed by a police officer during an armed robbery in 1917. John Touhy was killed by members of the Chicago Outfit, then led by Al Capone, in 1927 while engaged in bootlegging. Joe Touhy was killed by Victor Willert, a roadhouse owner, in 1929 after Touhy threatened his life for refusing to buy moonshine from the gang.; Tommy "The Terrible" Touhy served six of a 12-year sentence at Indiana State Prison for robbing the L.S. Ayres & Co. department store in Indianapolis in 1924.; Paroled in 1930, he served 11 of a 23-year sentence for stealing $78,000 ($ in dollars) from a U.S. Mail shipment at a Milwaukee, Wisconsin train station on January 3, 1933. Only Eddie Touhy, a bartender, seemed to steer clear of crime.
Legitimate employment Roger began working full-time for a living at the age of 13. His ham radio hobby enabled him to get a job as a telegrapher with Western Union, and he proved so adept that he was soon made manager of the small office where he worked. He was fired in 1915 for expressing support for unionization efforts. Touhy says he spent some time as a union organizer for the Commercial Telegraphers Union of America, but felt the job had no security. He joined the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, which qualified him for a well-paying railroad job. He 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 Touhy enlisted in the United States Navy in 1918. 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 Touhy taught officers Morse code. For the rest of his life, Touhy tried to impress people by claiming he taught at Harvard.
After leaving the Navy, Touhy traveled to Oklahoma with a friend from the Navy. He paid a petroleum engineer a bottle of bootleg corn whiskey to spend a few hours teaching him the fundamentals of petroleum engineering. Touhy bluffed his way into a petroleum engineering job, paying the drilling rig and well mechanics in corn whiskey to do his job. Saving $1,000 ($ in dollars), he began speculating in oil leases with his Navy friend. After about a year in Oklahoma, Touhy had made $25,000 ($ in dollars). He 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.
Criminal involvement Touhy's initial employment after his marriage was legitimate, and included being a successful automobile salesman by day and a taxicab driver by night. He made $50,000 ($ in dollars) a year selling cars. In 1927, 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. The same year, Touhy moved his family to Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Des Plaines was still quite a rural area, and the family lived in a large home on a farm on River Road just north of Maryville Academy.
The Touhy-Kolb bootleg empire According to Touhy, he began to bootleg immediately after founding his trucking firm. Shortly thereafter, bootlegger Matt Kolb allowed Touhy to buy into his business. Kolb owned a saloon near Touhy's automobile dealership, and Touhy said he once sold Kolb a vehicle. Kolb had once been part of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit, supplying as much as a third of the beer it sold but quit as the Outfit became more violent. For an investment of $10,000 ($ in dollars), Touhy became a partner with Kolb.
Touhy's bootlegging business expanded dramatically. Touhy and Kolb built 10 illegal beer and liquor breweries northwest of Chicago and built a wooden barrel manufacturing plant in Schiller Park for transporting the goods. Touhy purchased oil trucks and had them painted to look like Texaco vehicles to hide the delivery of his alcohol. He even hired off-duty police officers to drive the trucks to help avoid arrests. Unlike other bootleggers, Touhy and Kolb consulted a chemist, and brewed a high-quality beer.
Demand for Touhy's beer was extremely high. Touhy and Kolb sold their bootleg alcohol to a network of 200 bars, nightclubs, and roadhouses west and northwest of Chicago. They regularly sold 18,000 bottles of beer a week. During summer (the peak season for beer drinking), they could sell an enormous 1,000 barrels of beer a week, making a profit of $50.50 ($ in dollars) on a $55 barrel.
Touhy and Kolb also got into the slot machine racket in 1926. Although illegal, slot machines were highly popular, and Touhy and Kolb were able to put hundreds of them in drug stores, gas stations, grocery stores, and taverns throughout the area they controlled. The two men grossed $1 million ($ in dollars) from slot machines alone that first year.
For several years, Touhy avoided problems with law enforcement by becoming one of the best fixers in the Chicago area. Like nearly all bootleggers, he paid extensive bribes to judges, police, and prosecutors, and he supplemented his payments with free shipments of his high-quality beer (which often was more prized than the cash). For high-level officials, Touhy printed personalized labels for each person to whom he gave bottled beer. He aided law enforcement by keeping bottom-rung gangsters (who were more likely to cause problems for a community) out of Des Plaines, and refused to allow brothels to operate in the northwest and west suburbs of Chicago. He 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.
Rivalry with Capone
By the late 1920s, the Chicago Outfit was ordering hundreds of barrels of beer a week from Touhy and Kolb. At one point, Touhy was selling Capone 800 barrels of beer a week at a discounted price of $37.50 per barrel ($ in dollars) (making a profit of 488 percent on each barrel).
Capone first tested Touhy's toughness by sending Outfit members Willie Heeney and Frank Rio to meet with Touhy. The men told Touhy that Capone felt the northwestern suburbs were "virgin territory" for brothels, illegal gambling, and taxi dance halls.
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. Touhy hired off-duty police officers and local farmers to lounge around the building while armed. While Touhy talked with Heeney, men would occasionally enter the office, grab a weapon, and casually tell Touhy they were going to kill someone. Touhy would nod in agreement or mumble his approval. Touhy also arranged for a man to call his office every few minutes. He would answer the phone, pretend to listen, and then order someone intimidated or killed. 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 Touhy gang was large, well-armed, and ruthless and that a gang war would be devastating to the Chicago Outfit. Capone backed down. Word of the meeting spread, and Touhy gained the unlikely nickname "Touhy the Terrible".
A short time later, Capone sent Louis "Little New York" Campagna and Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn to Touhy. They advised Touhy to turn over part of his business to the Chicago Outfit, but Touhy refused. Once more, Touhy "playacted" for the men, who left convinced Touhy was more powerful than he really was.
According to Touhy, he now approached local law enforcement and retailers and told them about Capone's interest in the western suburbs. He 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. The appeal worked.
Capone now attempted to lure Touhy into a trap. He 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 Touhy claimed to have 200 prison-toughened thugs in his gang. 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. Touhy invited Capone, Nitti, and all the other top leaders of the Chicago Outfit to the party. Touhy had no intention of hosting a party; instead, he closed the roadhouse early in the evening and removed all liquor from the premises. Chicago police and Cook County sheriff's men raided the premises that evening, sent there on a tip by Capone.
Capone then laid a second trap. He sent Murray "The Camel" Humphreys to Touhy to suggest an alliance. Humphreys and his driver/bodyguard, James "Red" Fawcett, met with Touhy and asked him to come to Capone's headquarters in Cicero, Illinois, to meet with underboss Frank Nitti and hammer out a deal. Warned by a Capone insider that the Outfit intended to kill him, Touhy told Humphreys that Nitti should come to Schiller Park. When Humphreys threatened Touhy, Touhy pointed a shotgun at him. Humphreys was visibly intimidated, and Touhy sent him back to Nitti, humiliated.