CRIME: Dean of Bootleggers

As Al Capone learned, when a major-league racketeer is tough enough to survive the bullets of his confreres and shrewd enough to evade the police, there is one pitfall left for him: the income-tax laws. Of all the known criminals currently at large in the U. S., none is tougher or shrewder than roly-poly, button-eyed little Johnny Torrio, whose chin was almost shot away in Chicago in 1925, whose skill in evading the police goes back to before 1920 when he belonged to Brooklyn’s famed Five Points Gang. Last week, in New York City, a Federal grand jury that had worked on the case for three months finally indicted Johnny Torrio and three henchmen for conspiracy to evade income taxes for 1933, 1934 and 1935, thereby defrauding, the U. S. Government of a total of $110,000.

Of the U. S. school of criminals that flourished in the prohibition era, Johnny Torrio was probably dean. From Brooklyn’s Five Points Gang he went to Chicago as chief gunman for James (“Big Jim”) Colosimo. As assistant in Chicago, Johnny Torrio selected a stocky Brooklyn boy named Al Capone. In 1920, Jim Colosimo was shot dead. Torrio succeeded him as Chicago’s top racketeer and kept Al Capone as a $75-a-week underling. Johnny Torrio left Chicago shortly after Dion O’Banion’s elaborate funeral in 1924, went back to be riddled with bullets by O’Banion’s gunmen. He recovered, served a short jail sentence for running a brewery, and went to Italy for a holiday. When he returned he settled down in New York, announced that he was going into business.

The business which Johnny Torrio went into and later sold was a firm named Prendergast Davies Co., Ltd. which then specialized in acquiring Government revenue tax stamps, putting them on cut whiskey. Aware in April 1936 that the Government was investigating his affairs, Johnny Torrio blandly decided on another trip to Italy, applied for a passport.When he went to the White Plains, N. Y. post office to get the decoy registered letter which the Government mailed to him, he was popped into jail. When bail was set at $100,000, his wife produced it in cash from her handbag.

Last week’s indictment was an indirect result of Torrio’s arrest in 1936. Evidence dragged out of 100 reluctant witnesses by United States Attorney Lamar Hardy indicated that in 1933, Torrio’s income was $150,000, that Prendergast Davies (now in other hands) had done a $4,500,000 business in 1934. Chief of Johnny Torrio’s current associates appeared to be a brother-in-law named William Slock-bower. Said Mrs. Slockbower to reporters: “We never expected anything like this . . . I’m sure it’s going to be a terrible surprise to my husband.”