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Frank McErlane death.... Chicago gangster...
Frank McErlane death.... Chicago gangster...
Item # 725414
October 09, 1932
THE DETROIT NEWS, October 9, 1932
* Frank McErlane death
* Irish-American gangster
* Thompson submachine gun
The top of the front page has a one column photo with heading: "ONE WAY RIDE 'INVENTOR' DIES" with subhead. (see)
Complete with 20 pages, rag edition, light toning and minor war at the margins, generally nice.
background: Frank McErlane was a uniquely volatile and high-functioning sociopath who fundamentally shifted the lethality of Chicago’s gangland conflicts by introducing the Thompson submachine gun to the underworld. While many of his contemporaries, like Al Capone, viewed violence as a tool for business, McErlane appeared to view it as a personal hobby, often fueled by a lethal combination of religious obsession and alcoholic psychosis. He is notoriously credited with the first "Tommy gun" hit in 1925 and the invention of the "one-way ride," but his cruelty extended far beyond strategic assassinations; his hair-trigger temper led him to murder his own wife and her dogs in a drunken fit, and he once attempted to gun down a rival while his own leg was in a cast. Ultimately, McErlane became so unstable and feared that even his criminal allies in the Saltis-McErlane Gang distanced themselves, leaving the man who pioneered the most iconic weapon of the Prohibition era to die not by the sword, but from pneumonia in a lonely hospital bed, still hallucinating about the very "rides" he had once mastered.
Category: The 20th Century
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