On February 14, 1929, ten months to the day before the slaying of Skelly on the streets of St. Joseph, seven men, members of George “Bugs” Moran’s liquor dealing mob, were surprised in their garage hangout at 2122 North Clark Street in Chicago by four men. Two of the four carried machine guns and wore police uniforms.
The seven Moran gangsters were lined up against a wall and mowed down by the men who were masquerading in police uniforms. One of the seven men was still alive when police arrived, but he refused to talk.
Theories were advanced by the scores and men arrested by the dozens, only to be released after questioning. Then police officials announced that one of the men in a police uniform had been identified as Burke, known as a henchman of Scarface Al Capone.
Burke. Chicago police said, was one of four men hired by the Capone organization to wipe out the Moran gang in retribution for the murders of Pasqualino Lolordo and Tony Lombardo, of the Capone-Lombardo faction. Two of the other kills were Joseph Lolordo, brother of Pasqualino, and James Ray, of St. Louis, companion of Burke.
As in the killing of Skelly, it was Burke’s missing front tooth that led to the linking of his already infamous name to the massacre.
That Sunday afternoon, in St. Joseph, Chief of Police Alden received a telephone message from Officer Richard Anderson of the Des Moines, Iowa, police department, identifying Mrs. Fred Dane as one of the most desperate criminal characters of the west — a murderess and a highway robber! She had served time in the Missouri State Penitentiary for murder and highway robbery, and was known under the aliases of Viola Daniels and Viola Kane, the latter an alias frequently adopted by Burke.
Burke, the Des Moines officer also volunteered, was wanted there for leadership in two bank robberies and was known as James “Cornbread” Burchell. A confederate in one of the holdups had squealed on Burke and was serving time in prison, it was said.
“We’ll get the truth out of this woman now,” Prosecutor Cunningham announced.
But Viola Dane was sullen. She admitted nothing.
“That’s all a lie!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never been in trouble in my life.”
And she hadn’t. The next day when photographs and finger-print records of Viola Daniels and Viola Kane were received from Missouri they failed to correspond with those of the woman held in St. Joseph as Burke’s wife.
“Nevertheless, she hasn’t told us all she knows about this,” Cunningham insisted.
Deputy Police Commissioner Stege of Chicago came to the St. Joseph jail, and was closeted with the woman for more than an hour. When he came out of the cell, wiping the beads of perspiration from his forehead he admitted that he had been unable to extract any helpful information from her. Patrick Roche, chief investigator for the State Attorney’s office in Cook County, tried it. And he failed.
Couldn’t anything break this woman down? Every attempt had failed, but there remained one strong weapon — jealousy.
On Tuesday afternoon they buried Officer Skelly with all the honors that could be bestowed by a citizenry roused to the white heat of hatred over so ruthless a killing. More than four thousand persons, from the youngsters he used to call to on the streets to high police officials from cities of the Middle West, passed by his bier.
And during the funeral services word came to the county jail that Burke and a woman companion had spent the previous night at a tourist camp near Flint, Michigan. Mrs. S. H. Jarvis, operator of the camp, had identified Burke’s picture and said the man had told her he was on his honeymoon.
“He seemed all wrapped up in the girl,” Mrs. Jarvis told police. “She was very beautiful, bobbed golden hair and long, curling eyelashes.”
So Prosecutor Cunningham and Sheriff Bryant, determined to play what they regarded as a hole card, went upstairs to the women’s cell block and faced Viola Dane.
“Well, I guess we’re closing in on your husband,” the prosecutor said, with a casual smile. “He stayed at a tourist camp near Flint last night with a beautiful young blonde he introduced as his wife.”
The woman jumped to her feet.
“It’s a lie — a dirty lie!” she cried.
The prosecutor repeated Mrs. Jarvis’s report.
“I don’t believe it — you’re just trying to give me the works,” the woman sobbed.
The officers waited for her to recover her composure. And after several minutes of gentle persuasion she broke down and admitted that her story to them had been fictitious. She was really Mrs. Viola Brenneman, and she and Dane, as she continued to call him, were not married.
Her maiden name was Viola Ostroski and she had married John Brenneman in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1912 and divorced him two years later. Her mother lived in Kankakee, she said.
“I was living in Chicago when Gladys Davidson, a friend of mine, invited me to go to Hammond for a party,” she said. “That was in June, 1928. Fred, who lived at Burnham, was at the party and I became acquainted with him. In the summer of 1928 we went to Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and took a log cabin for several weeks and in the fall we went to Hammond to live in an apartment.
“He always told me he would marry me as soon as he could get a divorce from his wife, and so she wouldn’t find out about us we lived under the name of Reed in Hammond and later, when we went to Gary to live, he used the name of Herbert Church.”
“Did you ever see these business cards before?” the prosecutor interrupted, handing her a card which had been found in the bungalow on Lake Shore Drive. They showed the name of Herbert Church, salesman for the Columbia Commercial Feed Company, 1222 Wrigley Building, Chicago. Cunningham had found out that such a concern never occupied offices in the Wrigley Building, and that Herbert Church was unknown there.
“Yes, I’ve seen them,” she replied. “He told me that was his business, but I never knew much about his affairs.”
They moved to St. Joseph in September, 1929, from Gary, she explained, and Dane was never away from home more than two or three hours at a time.
“Do you know where you and Fred were on St. Valentine’s Day, last February?” Prosecutor Cunningham asked.
“We were living in Hammond. I remember the day distinctly because he brought me a big bouquet of chrysanthemums,” she answered quickly. “He left our home about seven o’clock that morning and did not return until about eleven o’clock. I remember it so well because he came home and I asked him about dinner and he told me to run down to the delicatessen store and buy something. But I persuaded him to go out and get some food for me to cook. I think he ordered the flowers when he went out for the groceries. That afternoon he went out to get some magazines and was gone about a couple of hours.”
The St. Valentine’s Day massacre in the North Clark Street garage occurred about eleven o’clock on the morning of February 14. 1929.
Viola Brenneman, as she had revealed herself, had thrown up an alibi for Burke, but feminine jealousy, aroused by the story of the beautiful blonde, had given the officers some new information.
VI
That same afternoon the entire town was thrown into an uproar of frenzied excitement when Roche announced to newspaper men that Burke’s hideout was surrounded and that he would be in jail before nightfall.
Captain Fred Armstrong of the Michigan State Police said that Burke was hiding in a cottage on the shore of Paw Paw Lake at Coloma, nursing an injury received when his automobile had crashed into the curb as he fled from the scene of the Skelly shooting. That night a squad of heavily armed deputies swooped down on the spotted cottage with machine guns, tear gas bombs and rifles, and were rewarded with the capture of a drunken caretaker.