1926 | Crime
Crime
Gunmen spray Chicago bootlegger Al Capone's Hawthorne Hotel headquarters with machine-gun fire in broad daylight September 20, firing from eight touring cars that parade single file through the streets of the suburban area, but no one is killed and the cars disappear into the traffic.
Illegal liquor traffic is estimated to be a $3.6 billion business and has spawned a gigantic underworld of criminal activity since 1919. Widespread defiance of the Prohibition laws is encouraging citizens to flout other laws, and the "Noble Experiment" is clearly a failure, but Ohio-born Anti-Saloon League of America general superintendent Francis Scott McBride, 54, leads temperance forces in opposing efforts to end Prohibition (see Capone, 1927; Wickersham, 1931).
The Hall-Mills murder of 1922 makes new headlines. New Jersey police arrest Frances Stevens Hall September 29 and charge her with having murdered her husband and his mistress, the case goes to trial in October, a jury turns in a not-guilty verdict December 3, and the case remains a mystery.