Chicago Police Failed Hit On Frank Nitti
Chicago 1932 is a time of change in Chicago.
Al Capone is in prison sentenced to 11 years for tax evasion. His pet mayor
Big Bill Thompson, the cities last
Republican mayor, is out replaced by
Anton Cermak who puts together a multi ethnic coalition to capture the top spot. One of his first actions is to put together his own elite squad of police officers to get rid of gangsters, he doesn't like. The
Capone organization seems to be in trouble.
On
December 19th detectives
Harry Land and
Harry Miller who are Cermaks ace hit men / detectives raid a betting parlor located on the fifth floor of an office building at 224 N.
La Salle.
On the way in they make a key mistake by enlisting a passing patrolman to back them up
. In the ensuing raid a gun battle breaks out resulting in the death of gangsters the injury of detective Lang allegedly by
Frank Nitti who is shot three times by Lang and critically wounded.
Nitti survives and is put on trial in
February 1933 for shooting Lang. That's when the true story emerges when testimony by Harry Miller reveals the true mission of the raid was to collect on a $15,
000 contract put on Nitti by north side hoodlum Ted
Newbury at the behest of Mayor Cermak. Then the officer that joined the raid testifies that Nitti was unarmed and Lang shot himself. Nitti is acquitted
Miller and Lang are both fired.
Lang never goes to jail for shooting Nitti supposedly because he threatens to blow the whistle on Cermak's corruption. In April of 1932 the mayor travels to
Miami and is gunned down while attending a rally for president
Roosevelt. The shooter is Joe
Zangara a “deranged” gunman and one time marksman for the
Italian army. His target was “supposedly” Roosevelt.
There is an interesting book of historical fiction called
True Detective by
Max Allan Collins that revolves around that revolves around this incident.
This clip is another in our series "Chicago
Crime now & Then" check out our playlist.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ChiTownView?feature=watch
Opening and closing music is;
Constancy Part 2
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
I have many sources for this series but the two sites that are at the top of my list are.
MyAlCaponeMuseum. http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/index
.htm
Chicago
Crime Scene Project. http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/
ChiTownView is a production of MindsiMedia we have a web portal that offers more video,
http://www.mindsimedia.info/