I am wondering why is this guy never brought up in any book about the Chicago gangland when he, along with Sam Cardinelli, was the only major gangster ever convicted for murder in Chicago in the first half of the century (well, to be honest, even in the 2nd part the only one was Rocco Infelice I think)? When I browsed the newspaper archives of the 30s, his case seems to have made headlines everywhere, not just in Chicago: Rooney had the circular distributors union as a legal front and in 1933 he and accomplice Henry Berry shot night watchman Stanley Gross who guarded a fabric belonging to some guy who resisted threats and didn't pay protection money; Rooney and Berry were both drunk and even brought Rooney's girlfriend along to watch the shooting: a hit that almost beats the recent one in Philly by Nicodemo on the level of "professional planning". Rooney and Berry got life, the girlfriend Rosalie Rizzo 24 years and some other gangster 1 to 5 years for extortion.
Still, as publicized as it seems to have been, this hit isn't mentioned even in the book "A History of Violence:: An Encyclopedia of 1400 Chicago Mob Murders" which seems to cover almost all gangland killings in Chicago in the 20th century.
The only possible mention is in the book "When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy" by John W. Tuohy :
The next blow came when two of the syndicate's best gunners, Nicholas Maggio, and his partner in crime, Anthony Persico, were targeted in a retaliation killing for the murder of Bill Rooney. John Rooney, the business agent for the billposters' union and brother to Bill Rooney, ambushed and killed the two men on a back stretch of road deep inside Touhy's territory.
although I am not sure it's the same John Rooney.
