Butler County police alerted
after St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Gangland violence in Chicago captured headlines and attention across the nation the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 14, 1929, and fueled rumors in Butler County. The crime later was called "the most spectacular of the decade in Chicago." There were more than 500 gangland murders in the Windy City in the 1920s.

The 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre took the lives of seven men by machine-gun and shotgun fire at about 10:30 a.m. in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street in Chicago.

The mass shooting climaxed a struggle for control of Chicago's North Side. It pitted the powerful gang of Al Capone against the faltering group led by George (Bugs) Moran. Capone ordered his lieutenants to annihilate the entire Moran gang -- and they almost did it. Moran and two other gang members approached the garage, but fled when they believed police were raiding the building.

Moran had been lured to the massacre site by the prospect of buying bonded whisky.

At stake was the security of Capone's illicit liquor business, estimated at more than $60 million a year by federal authorities. The killings solidified the 30-year-old Capone's control over the Chicago whisky trade and other criminal activities.

The Chicago crime still dominated conversations four days later when three strange men checked into the Anthony Wayne Hotel at High Street and Monument Avenue in Hamilton. They aroused suspicion by arriving in an expensive car with Illinois license plates and asking for the hotel's highest priced room.

Wednesday evening, Feb. 20, two days after their arrival, they were arrested by Hamilton police as they walked from the hotel. When booked, they had a total of $150 in cash among them. One of the men carried a list of Chicago speak-easies and a falsified press card identifying him as a reporter for a Chicago newspaper.

Police Chief John C. Calhoun called it a "prize catch" and said "we are taking no chances." Names, descriptions and fingerprints were sent to Chicago police, who were still trying to unravel the St. Valentine's Day shooting. Fingerprints also were sent to Columbus and Washington for checking against state and national wanted lists.

To detain them, the three men were charged with loitering and questioned for five hours by Hamilton detectives. They confessed to being rum runners with "high class" connections, and one man admitted to operating in the Chicago area. No link to the Chicago crime could be established, although the trio's whereabouts Feb. 14 was uncertain. Eventually, they were identified as:

David Jerus, 38, of Toledo, who was wanted by Dayton police on a charge of bank robbery.

William C. Marshall, 47, also of Toledo. No charges or criminal record were found at the time.

Lawrence (Pat) O'Ruley, 24, Chicago, who was carrying a 45-caliber automatic pistol when arrested in Hamilton.

According to checks by Hamilton police, Jerus and O'Ruley had previous convictions. They also learned that two years earlier, Jerus had accumulated $400,000 through his bootleg business, but lost it all betting on horses.

Hamilton's "prize catch" was no help in locating the killers of the Moran gang. No one was ever convicted of the seven murders.

Was Al Capone in Hamilton?

Brooklyn-born Alphonse (Al) Capone ranks as one of the most famous -- or infamous -- mobsters of any era, and especially the Prohibition years. After moving to Chicago in 1921, he gradually worked his way up to the city's crime kingpin in 1925. His first Chicago employment was managing small brothels for Johnny Torrio. In the early years of Prohibition, Capone listed his occupation as either an "antique dealer" or "second-hand furniture dealer."

By the end of the 1920s, his control of the bootleg trade brought him a yearly income of more than $20 million. He attained his power by having rivals killed.

Strangely, it wasn't a violent crime that landed Capone in jail. In October 1931 he was fined $80,000 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion. He was released in November 1939 and died Jan. 25, 1947, at his Florida estate.

In the process of publishing a 1978 newspaper series on Little Chicago -- as the Hamilton area was known during Prohibition -- the most asked question was: "When are you going to write about Al Capone in Hamilton?" Other readers asserted that "Capone was here," and identified several houses he reportedly used in and around Hamilton.

Research from the 1960s through the 1990s uncovered no evidence of Chicago's top criminal being in Butler County. Capone look-alikes prompted some local reports.

By the mid 1920s, Capone's whereabouts were well known. He wanted it that way. When crimes were committed at his direction, it was a convincing alibi if Capone could document his location and activities. Granting an interview to one or more Chicago reporters at the exact time his henchmen killed, maimed or wreaked havoc enabled Capone to honestly say "I didn't do it, I wasn't there."

It was the Purple Gang that influenced some criminal activities in Little Chicago, according to several sources familiar with the time. Some insist that the Stockton Club in Fairfield Township was controlled by the Detroit mob. They contend that the gang used it as a haven for members being sought elsewhere. It also was possible that the club (on the northeast corner of Dixie Highway and Seward Road) was used to launder some money from robberies, bootlegging and extortion.

Not much has been written about the Purple Gang in comparison to Al Capone, John Dillinger and other criminals of the era.

Its leader was Abe Bernstein. His top lieutenants included Ed Fletcher, George Lewis and two brothers, Harry Keywell and Phil Keywell. The Keywell brothers are believed to have aided Capone by participating in the St. Valentine Day Massacre in 1929.

"The most notorious members of the Detroit criminal syndicate, the Purple Gang, were made up of a group of Jewish hoodlums who had grown up together on Detroit's East Side," wrote Philip P. Mason, a Wayne State University history professor. "They manufactured and sold bootleg alcohol, smuggled liquor from Canada and controlled hundreds of Detroit-area speak-easies," Mason said. "For many years the Purple Gang was the major supplier for Al Capone and his Chicago criminal empire."

"The Purple Gang faced stiff, often dangerous competition from other gangs run by the Licavoli family and other Italian Mafia organizations," Mason said. "Although truces were often worked out and sections of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair divided up between the gangs, periodic warfare erupted, ending in bloodshed and murder."

A former local police officer said it was believed that some members of the Capone gang from Chicago and the Purple Gang from Detroit "sometimes came to Hamilton for a few days or weeks when things got hot for them in those cities. "They were led to believe that they would be safe here as long as they committed no crimes," he explained. "There were -- and, in fact, still are -- some men here who had an association with the Purple Gang," he said when interviewed in the mid 1970s.