I remember that one of these hits were particularly brazen, a flatbed truck with a load pulled up to guy in the middle of downtown Chicago traffic and the hitters popped up from hiding places on the truck and riddled the car with shotgun blasts and tommy guns. The truck sped away and of course no one was even arrested.

Continental Wire was built from the ashes of Moe Annenburg's Nation-Wide Wire Services, which was a partnership with the Outfit. Annenberg was a newspaper mogul who started his career using Chicago street gangs to trash the news-stands of people who refused to boycott competing papers. In the 1930s Annenberg got in big with Republican politics but he got a federal rap for tax evasion and died in prison. His son went on to become very close to Ronald Regan and was named Ambassador to England, two of the best journalism schools in the country are named after his son.