"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

I was a teenage Gopher

Ninety seven years ago four members of the Gopher gang waited outside of the Miner’s Eighth Avenue Theatre for a guy named Martin Sullivan to emerge from the show. Why? So they could kill him. Why? Who knows.
After the curtain dropped, Martin exited, with approximately two hundred other people and the four gunmen opened fire. They succeeded in wounding their target with two bullets in the hip and one in the thigh. The gunmen then took off running, but a couple of cops, who were nearby, managed to captured two of them (Wm. MacNamara age 16 & Henry Thompson, 17) after a running gunfight. Sullivan was taken to Bellevue Hospital but did not comment on the shooting. They rarely did.

BTW- Wm. MacNamara was released from Sing Sing just last week at the age of 113. He holds the record for serving the longest jail term in New York history. Whe asked what he thought about the dubios honor he cupped a hand to his ear and replied, "Eh?"

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