One of the rare questions out there is, are the small cities more criminally lucrative than the big ones? Well if you'll bear with me for a bit, it turns out there's more of a mystery here than you might think. We all know that there's more valuable stuff to steal in the big cities, so robbery is more profitable, also extortion, prostitution and gambling, mainly because of the larger population. But with the greater number of people, comes the greater rivalry, meaning in the business world, especially in the underworld. Yes, it's also easier to be anonymous because if you shoot someone publicly in the smaller towns, there's a very good chance that you’ll be recognized. But the thing is if you lived in a small town and you were a racketeer and member of the Chicago Mob, I believe that things were quite different. You see, in the old days the old racketeers were involved in every kind of dirty business but above all, in politics. So a corrupt individual like that surely knew the way on how to control a small group of people, and of course with less competition comes more profit. There are even examples where the whole towns were involved in shady businesses.
Although Burnham may not be one of the first smaller towns you think of when you think of crime, but I think that it should be. The tiny village is located 18 miles south of Chicago’s Loop area, which was created back in 1907 when the local residents voted to incorporate the area as the village of Burnham. The village's boundaries are Hammond on the east, Chicago on the north, and Calumet City to the south and west. During the time there was a huge commercial development in the village and also transportation and housing needs were being spurred by the growing steel industries. The strong demand for workers' housing led to residential growth in Burnham, Hegewisch, and Calumet City. For 40 years, from 1908 to 1948, the history of Burnham was tied to the activities of its Mayor and Irish racketeer, Johnny Patton.
Born in 1883, in the small town of Burnham, Illinois, Irish hoodlum John Patton became one of the most extraordinary individuals, who largely contributed to this so-called menace to society. Story goes that Patton since young age, to be precise at the age of 14, worked at a local bar which was visited by many interesting figures, such as politicians, business men and of course big time gangsters and hoodlums. Even though it was a small place, due to its strategic location straddling the Illinois/Indiana border and the inherent jurisdictional confusion, Burnham became the best place for opening brothels and saloons. So I believe that this so-called environment or crowd was the main reason for creating Patton’s wrong life decisions. Young Patton was a very talkative boy who loved to tell stories and also to listen to other people’s problems, but in reality he was a ruthless criminal who loved to rob rich drunks. Besides gambling, another racket which was operated in 90% of the bars at the time, was prostitution and so all of the girls were trained to empty the drunken’ costumer’s pockets. Few more drinks from Patton on the house and the poor victim got the “best” of it. Of course later the girls gave Patton the bigger share of the action because he was the one who allowed them to work unhindered.
During the elections for village president in 1908, none of the elderly candidates were interested for the position and so the youth had taken the competition over the presidency with the idea that they might be able to squeeze something out of it.
So connections are everything in this life and without them one just cannot succeed, and because of that, after the area was established as town, John Patton was elected as village president or the so-called position as “Mayor” of Burnham. He came by the nickname “the boy Mayor of Burnham” because he had taken office somewhere around the age of 23 and when first elected, Patton became the youngest mayor in Illinois. At first nobody cared if a small time crook was head of one of the smallest places in the country, because nobody could’ve predicted that the 1910’s were going to be the era of the rising street gangs.
The Boy Mayor of Burnham: Johnny Patton
That same year when he got elected, Patton was threatened with arrest as the result of prize fights. On June 12, 1908, the cops raided a building in Burnham which was the main place for those kinds of illegal activities and after firing a few shots, they managed to arrest 53 “fans”. The main thing which connected Patton to this whole mess was his ownership of a saloon in that same building, just above the floor where the fights occurred. Also many of the people, who managed to getaway from the cops, had taken shelter in Patton’s saloon. When the cops asked Patton about his alleged connections these illegal activities, naturally he denied any responsibility. This was the first time that the “Boy Mayor” has stirred up a “hornets’ nest.”
Over the years, Patton proved to be also quite useful for the town and its citizens by bringing clean water directly from Chicago and connected sewer services into Burnham and above all, he also maintained the order on the streets. I believe that keeping the order wasn’t some very hard thing for the young Mayor to do so because the town population at the time was nearly 1000 residents and I also believe that there was no other more powerful racketeer than Patton in that same area. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and nearly all inhabitants were strong for him. One day few Tribune reporters visited the “Boy Mayor” in his home town and this is what he said:
PATTON: One way or another they know me pretty well around here because I’ve done little things for them from time to time.
REPORTER: Do you believe in keeping the town wide open?
PATTON: What do you mean, wide open? I do everything above board, then you know where you are. In Chicago everything is hidden, but things go on just the same, ma’am. They pretend there they don’t sell liquor after 1, but everyone who knows can get it. Say, speaking of Chicago, do you know that we have better lightning in this town than any other place in Cook County?
REPORTER: Where do you get the money for these things, must be pretty expensive taxing, isn’t it?
PATTON: Well yes ma’am it is. That’s one of the reasons I like to have all of the saloons open all the time. That is why I say to the people, if the saloons are closed after 1 and on Sunday, why then no one comes from Hammond, Gary or Chicago and our saloon keepers will go absolutely busted. Why, we don’t have any trouble with our own people or the ones who come over from Hammond. It’s the Chicago people who come out who make all the fuss and who get us our bad name for us. They think they are out in the country and do anything they please.
REPORTER: Nice little town isn’t it?
PATTON: Yes indeed ma’am. I’m pretty proud of it.
With Patton’s “help”, Burnham became open-wide as the skies. He figured that if the respectable people wanted to stop by for a chicken dinner, than why would not the disreputable people like stopping at places where they could play slot machines and have a good time with some of the girls. The town was filled with roadhouses and became open all day, all night, all Sunday, all any time that there was anyone who loved to buy the “bottled joy of life” or dance to the sound of a nickel piano. Many of these roadhouses were operated by one of Patton’s partners in crime, Frank Hitchcock. This guy was former Levee bagman of such corrupt figures as Mike Kenna and John Coughlin, and by now functioned as “underboss” to Johnny Patton. Hitchcock became Burnham's number one criminal man, because besides operating the roadhouses he also used to do a lot of hijacking and kidnappings. The 'round the clock business attracted red light enterprises which were mostly operated by old time pimps at the time such as the Guzik family, Mike Heitler and Jim Colosimo and Patton worked with them all. At one time Burnham had more disorderly houses and prostitutes per capita than any comparable spot in the world and so the people who were thirsty for pleasure and the old mighty dollar, quickly flocked to Burnham.
By the early 1910’s, Patton also controlled a burglary crew which operated in the Burnham, Hammond and Calumet City areas and had a good score like at least three robberies a week. Patton’s right hand man and leader of the crew was Italian gangster and saloon owner Charles Costantio and their street guy or man on the field was Julius Rosenthal. Other prominent gang members were the Dominick brothers, Jerry Orlando, Ben Chaken, Frank Lemar, Charles Dwartz, Martin Duffell, Frank Quinn and Jerry Raffles. They would drive their automobile to another car in which they loaded the goods and from there they went to one of two places where usually Constantio helped in storing the goods until Patton inspected and found a way to dispose of them or in other words, to sell them. The crew was organized and run like a reputable business. They met twice a month and usually at these meetings they divided the proceeds of former robberies and planned new ones. Story goes that if a member failed to attend these meetings, he was fined $200 by Patton or Constantio.
But as the famous saying goes “there’s no honour among thieves”, well the same thing goes for Patton’s gang. These men had no compunction against beating one another out of the proceeds of a robbery if it did not entangle them with the authorities in any way. One time they stole a lot of silk out of a car and Constantio bought the share of the others in it for $1,700. Later the gang stole it from him and sold it to Patton for $3,000. Patton met with the gang at the Island hotel in Burnham, two weeks later, and laughed at them because he had sold the goods for $19,000 and so he bought himself a $100 worth of wine to celebrate.
So besides his various burglary businesses, Patton was also involved in the prostitution business, which by this time was one of the most lucrative underworld operations. By now many criminals in the big cities such as Chicago and New York already had their problems with the law and they had to constantly relocate their businesses but in the tiny town of Burnham, it was a whole different story. For example when World War I occurred back in 1914, Burnham became known among military circles as the “lawless village” and in no time, the town resembled an army base. Huge number of soldiers and sailors filled the brothels and resorts and that’s when the so-called “Boy Mayor” made his first big amount of cash. He started investing his money in other various brothels and gambling joints around the Chicago area, especially in the south suburbs and also around northwest Indiana. Story goes that things got so bad that the Mayor of nearby Hammond threatened to publish the names of brothel secret owners from his town and close the road to Burnham. But it was a time of huge political and police corruption and on top of that, Patton was the law in his own town and so his business stayed untouched. Four years of savage and terrorizing war had shaken Europe but for Patton that war was never a problem, but instead it became a very profitable situation.
But as much as I “glorify” Patton’s underworld achievements, when he was quickly recognized by the big time crime lords such as Jim Colosimo back in Chicago, he immediately shared his operations or else. Sometime by the end of the war, Patton, his partner Hitchcock and Colosimo together invested in a brothel known as the Arrowhead Inn, which of course was located in Burnham at Entre and Chippewa Streets. Previously the joint was owned by Chicago big shot Ike Bloom but now it was operated by people who were instructed personally by Patton himself. Even the former chief of police worked there as a bartender and also few aldermen worked as waiters. Story goes that the only time the board of aldermen held a meeting was when the waiters gathered around and talked about the good old days. Now if some of the infamous racketeers by now established Chicago’s notorious Levee as a mob haven, the south suburb of Burnham got its top spot on the vice chart from many mob bosses, principally Jim Colosimo. In fact, when the Levee closed down back in 1915, Burnham became the new place for fun because it was the era of the automobile and the town was just 15 miles south of the Levee, which was a very short distance by car. The club became a real “cash cow” for Colosimo and the rest of the gang and so the old Italian boss became one of the most prominent guests at the place. Also story goes that with Colosimo’s help, many old Jazz headliners provided musical entertainment to the Arrowhead crowd.
But there was also another small time investor in the same joint known as Joe Hogarty, who became the start for an ongoing war between Colosimo’s and Patton’s faction and another gang which was led by Moss Enright. Enright was already in numerous other conflicts with the Italian faction of Chicago, such as Mike Carozzo, mostly in the union business. But on November 22, 1916, Enright’s brother Tommy entered Patton’s joint with Sonny Dunn and few other men who were accompanied by few nice looking girls. They were greeted by Joe Hogarty himself, who was also accompanied by two girls. In fact Hogarty’s nickname was “Dandy Joe”. According to witnesses, the parties sat together, drank and laughed all night. Suddenly someone made a remark for someone’s girlfriend and Hogarty stood up, went to the bartender and borrowed two guns. While Hogarty was gone, Dunn stood up and went looking for him because he knew that there was going to be trouble. Hogarty took the revolvers and saw Dunn and told him to stop under the threat of his guns. So now the two men returned to the table and Hofarty placed two revolvers on the table and remarked to the men on the table something like “Now I’m going to show who’s a tough guy!” He shot two times, one went through Enright’s hat and one in Dunn’s hip. Suddenly all of Enright’s seven men stood up, made a circle around Hogarty, pulled out their guns and pumped 18 bullets into his body. After that Enright’s party left the joint and took a train which headed for Chicago.
Now this became a huge disaster for Patton and his friends back in Chicago, who owned a lot of stock in that joint, because Hogarty’s murder attracted a lot of media and police attention since it was such a spectacular hit. During this period many clubs around Burnham were shot and many people were killed during the process. For example, three gunmen entered in Sol Van Praag’s joint in Burnham and besides shooting the whole place up, they also shot to death his main operator Joseph Grabiner known only as the “Jew Kid”. One police officer remarked that “Burnham is as safe as Siberia for the stickup mob.” As additional info, Van Praag was an old time corrupt politician and ex-pimp from the First Ward who enjoyed a lot of privileges with his partnerships such as the Colosimo’s and the Guzik’s. Also some mob historians all over the internet claim that Hogarty was an enemy of Patton and Colosimo which is obviously false, because there are strong facts which imply that he was their ally.
At the beginning of 1918, some “unknown” hoodlums also fired few shots at John Patton but luckily for him, they missed. When the cops asked him on who might’ve been responsible for the attack, he simply blamed some freight car thieves but did not give any names. But the problem was that the government heat was already on and so Patton started having a lot of problems. Not long afterward in September, 1918, the police arrested one of Patton’s associates in his burglary crew, Ben Chaken regarding a robbery and took him to the Burnham police station. While an officer in whose care Chaken had been left, went out to seek some of the stolen goods. Before this cop got out of the station, John Patton entered and stopped him. The cop was said to have accepted $100 to leave Chaken's cell open so he can walk out, which he really did. So the cops had to search for few days until they got him. He was found by department of justice officials as he tried to join the army. So to save his skin, Chaken started talking and every member of the gang, including Patton, were arrested in connection with the wholesale robbing of cars in the Calumet region, for which more than thirty have been taken into custody. Also thousands of dollars worth of merchandise was said to have been recovered by the cops of the South Chicago police. In one of the searches the cops found large quantities of government goods, consigned to the army in France and it was also said that much of the stolen goods from Chicago’s South Side had been hidden in Burnham.
As usual, Patton protested at being detained because he was taken while applying himself assiduously to a large steak in Colosimo's resort. At first he made few jokes for the cops and invited them to dine with him. Then, as the seriousness of the situation dawned, he grew more vociferous. He was taken in an automobile to his home, which was searched and then a search was made also at the Burnham city hall. Nothing was found and so Patton was driven over eighty or ninety miles of Indiana highways while the cops plied him with questions. Upon the return to Burnham the angry Mayor was released and he made a statement in which he denied all knowledge of stolen goods or of thieves. “I didn't have nothing to tell them, I don't know anything about the crooks. This is the first time in my life I've ever been arrested or called a thief. Its shame." he said. Patton was released on $3,000 bond and was later discharged by United States Commissioner Lewis F. Mason.
Obviously the constant releases of Patton from jail became also the constant hard and painful reality of Burnham, which became the new tale of “Sodom and Gomorrah”. Many innocent bystanders got hurt or even killed on streets of Burnham, mostly by drunken drivers and street hoodlums with guns. For example in just one week, five fatal accidents occurred in the small town which was a huge problem. Patton didn’t care as long as the profits came right in his pockets but the problem was that nobody can control an alcohol fuelled crowd, and at the same time thirsty for wild sex and big sums of cash. Once, two guys kidnapped a man from the Loop area in Chicago, brought him to Burnham, robbed him out of his $200 and they had thrown him at the railroad tracks, where he got ran over by a train. Also by this time some of the investigators in Chicago concluded that a huge part of stolen property in their city was “taken care of” in Burnham. Even some of the policemen, while in uniforms, were often seen having fun with the girls and having more than few drinks, all on Patton’s tab. Some sources say that there were many young individuals of all ages, visiting and working at the roadhouses.
When the war ended, Patton’s joint again drew plenty of heat. On May 18, 1919, Chicago Tribune reporter Morrow Krum entered the Arrowhead Inn and saw Colosimo, Patton and another individual sitting at one of the tables. After that the reporter entered in one of the phone booths at the place and called his office to inform them on the situation at the club and other joints around the Burnham area. When he finished his phone call, he stepped out on the veranda and was accosted by none other than Jim Colosimo. “You dirty rat, we heard you calling your office” Colosimo said, so Krum stepped away and as he did so, Colosimo punched him in the mouth. Suddenly a group of men, who had been standing behind Colosimo, jumped the reporter and one short guy particularly, punched the poor news guy so many times in the face that one of his eyes was dislocated. At the end the short guy allegedly told the reporter that “You’re damn lucky to get out of here alive, you rat”. The obvious problem that Colosimo had with the reporter was the fear of public and government knowledge or discovery of this so-called “wide open” town. In fact the reporter did some damage by reporting that at the Arrowhead Inn, the Beverly Gardens and the Jeffrey Gardens, alcoholic drinks were being purchased with all the side trimming of women and songs. Immediately warrants for the arrest of Colosimo and his short violent friend, which I believe was John Torrio, were issued but very typical of that era was that nobody ever got arrested and in a short time period the whole thing went down the toilet.
Now all of these so-called legal problems were very bad for business, and when business is down, other rivals usually try to take your place. So somebody had to do something and that somebody was none other than Colosimo’s right hand man John Torrio. Now Patton was considered a connected guy but Torrio was connected on another level since he belonged to the Italian criminal secret society which was widespread all over the country. So now Torrio and Mike Carozzo had to take one old problem in their own hands by asking help from their “relatives” far on the east coast in the Buffalo area in upstate New York. So the problem was solved when the guys on the east coast sent one of their best hitman only known as “Tommy the Wop”, who on February 5, 1920, pumped hundreds of shotgun pellets into Moss Enright’s body. Later information came up that two weeks before the slaying of Enright, the imported Italian hitman was first seen with Carozzo and later with Torrio at Patton’s joint the Burnham Inn. Right after the killing of Enright, all the joints in Burnham were searched by the cops but they found nothing. When they questioned Carozzo regarding the killing, he simply said “If I had killed Moss Enright I wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, I’d be proud of it.” As additional info, just three months later, Jim Colosimo was also killed at his own joint. Now many authors claim that in fact Colosimo’s hit was ordered by Torrio which I personally believe also, but some mob historians claim that Colosimo’s demise was in fact retaliation for Enright’s killing.
The birth of Prohibition in Chicago was marked with the death of Colosimo and now Patton’s new partner in crime was John Torrio. Now we all know that Torrio was quite different than his previous boss, meaning he had no limits in choosing schemes or people for making the big buck and he handled the “dirty stuff” in a very different way. Torrio lived by a code which stated “It’s a business. If you do wrong to me in our business, we’ll settle it without going to court. And if you do wrong, you’ll know you’re doing it and you know the consequences.” Torrio and Patton were two very similar individuals with good vocabularies, no accents, and never uttered a profane or a lewd word. At first, the rising Italian underground star saw the Irish racketeer as useful and tactful “front man” for bawdy house keepers who ran their locals more or less on the gang principle, meaning on the basis of common interests which were best served by cooperation. During this period, these so-called criminal connections between various criminals, such as Torrio and Patton, became known as “the vice syndicate.”
Now the first problem Torrio had with his new partner in crime John Patton was the robbing of rich drunken costumers. Patton still had many associates, such as Hitchcock, who believed in their old ways of doing crime, but Torrio showed them that those kind of criminal actions were bad for business. For example, if an “unauthorized” robbery occurred in some of Patton’s nightclubs on some of the drunken “gentlemen”, and especially if he was sufficiently important to be worth bothering about, than Torrio would go personally to the thieves, recover the money and return it to its rightful owner.
So during Prohibition, the combination between Torrio and Patton proved to be quite lucrative. One news account from the year of 1920 refers to the village as the “cabaret town” of Cook County and adds that of all the small towns in the country, Burnham is “perhaps the one most often visited by amusement seeking visitors.” Two of the first so-called roadhouses which were operated by the Torrio/Patton alliance were the Burnham Inn and the Speedway Inn. The Speedway Inn was fronted by Patton’s associate John Williams and was protected by policeman Joseph Lupe. Every time the cops decided to raid the joint, Lupe signalled the gang so they can hide most of their “equipment”. In fact, the joints were quite near the industry area of Southeast Chicago, also the south suburban towns such as Harvey and Chicago Heights and also Northwest Indiana, a location which proved to very lucrative. Burnham’s location also played major role in making an easy getaway for the visitors to avoid any possible raid by the police by simply slipping across the Indiana border. Later the duo also opened the Coney Island Café and the Barn and also bought the Roadside Home on the road to Joliet, Illinois. The Roadside Home was a real fancy joint with a huge floral garden, and inside the place had that old English architecture, three stories high with gabled roofs.
Also some of the brothels in Burnham were built like barracks, with a bar and a large drinking room below stairs and dozens of small bedrooms above stairs. These so-called barracks were mainly for the foreign workers in the nearby mills and so as a precautionary measure, the chairs and tables in the large drinking room were firmly fastened to the floor which was a method to prevent the guests from hitting themselves over their heads when they became fighting drunk. Some sources say that just one of these “30-girl barracks” produced $10,000 a month in profits.
Patton and Torrio were so smooth and so firm in enforcing their rules, making officials happy and building the town of Burnham in their own image. So this was the time when the new organization, now under Torrio, also started buying breweries and also started gathering many independent gangs under their rule, who in turn retailed the product. During that time, Patton owned a huge house at 142d Street and Burnham Avenue, which was built atop a huge underground garage for alky trucks and he also owned a massive brewery at 2800 E. 138th Pl. Many truckloads of booze hauled from Burnham to Chicago’s South Side but also many bootleggers who bought booze from Patton, found themselves fooled by the seller himself, meaning Patton already had many Prohibition agents in his back pocket and so he had a scheme of his own.
For example, once came along a buyer from Milwaukee and bought two trucks filled with booze. Now as the trucks abandoned the Burnham area and entered the South Side, two policemen stopped the drivers and arrested them. Now the drivers were taken to custody at the South Chicago police station and later were turned over, including the booze, to Prohibition agents Victor Bougner and Frank Hassett. From this point on the agents took the booze and the drivers, of course after the buyer from Milwaukee already paid $1,000; to the Burnham Inn to take the problem in front of John Patton. Now the truckers were told to inform the buyer that his trucks would be on a certain location. Later the trucks really showed up as far as the deal went but there was a problem because the booze was always gone. In May, 1925, both corrupt agents were arrested and discharged from the force. As for Patton, he was arrested and questioned regarding the scheme but he left the police station like nothing ever happened. From this point on, Patton was considered a big time bootlegger and also a full-fledged member of the Torrio crime organization because he and Torrio were not some “15 minute eggs” of gangdom but instead they managed to place the boozedom on a much higher level by organizing the traffic on a wholesale scale.
Now if a c-criminal wanted to open a brewery in the Burnham area, first he had to go and see Patton for permission and if he does not, the brewer’s life became troubled. Patton always followed a certain kind of twist in his dealings by keeping his word only with the Torrio group. If he told Torrio that he would bring $30,000 that same day, he really did it with no questions asked. Obviously he feared for his life but he was no squawker. The Irish racketeer was all about business and never talked about “I heard someone was out to get you, no sir, that wasn’t in his book. His corruption funds became so large that most of the government officials couldn’t stand up against temptation. The big time racketeers such as Torrio and Patton realized that there was a fortune from booze and girls even before Prohibition, but now there was much bigger fortune under Prohibition.
Patton during the 1920’s
In 1923, Chicago’s South Side and the southern suburbs, which was Torrio’s territory, was constantly raided by government agents, which in fact was an operation for a sweep through the area. On June 10, ten detectives raided the Speedway Inn and arrested 36 people, confiscated all of the gambling equipment and also arrested the keeper John Williams. Fifteen places were raided that same day all over the South Side. On January 22, 1923, Patton was arrested in the early morning hours by South Side Chicago police after they had stopped a truck in which Patton and one Harry Benson of Hammond were hauling eleven cases of booze. So Patton was held before the federal grand jury by United States Commissioner James IL, Glass on charges of violating the prohibition law. “Unusually”, later all charges were dismissed.
This meant that Torrio’s empire started to crumble down and so did his peace arrangements with the North Side faction and by 1925, Torrio was out of the way and new boss of the South Side faction was Al Capone. On April 7, 1925, Capone gathered all of his top men including Frank Nitti, Joe Fusco, Robert Larry McCullough, Jake Guzik, John Patton, Joseph Piza, and Anthony Arrissa, each carrying from $500 to $15,000, at one of Capone’s headquarters located at 2146 South Michigan Boulevard, to announce the new formation and rules of the new organization, which was now known as the Capone mob. But somebody noticed the gangsters and notified the cops and so an hour later, a huge police squad raided the joint and arrested all of the participants at the meeting. The police recovered records which revealed that Patton, Capone and the rest of the bosses, were operating an efficient illegal organization which was engaged in operations netting millions of dollars a year. Story goes that during the raid, Patton attempted to bribe his way out of the situation by asking the detectives on what was their price to return the documents and at the same time he showed them $5,000. He was arrested for attempted bribery and like always, when the case came up in federal court the accused gangsters were freed and the books were returned. Of course Patton was personally discharged by a very friendly judge and again, not long afterward Patton was arrested again on charges of dry law violations and extortion conspiracy, but he was freed again. Later he was again nabbed carrying 14 cases of whisky, and guess what? Once more he was freed. From this point on Patton became the number one suspect in every gangland slaying or bootlegging raid that occurred in the Chicago area. For example in June, 1925, Sicilian gangster Mike Genna was killed by rival factions and the cops immediately questioned Patton but as usual they got nothing. He was later also questioned regarding the shooting of two policemen.
One of the most gruesome stories which involved Patton’s name was in 1927 when Capone decided to make some “changes” at the Hawthorne Hotel located at 4823 22nd Street, Cicero, which was his new headquarters. Capone decided to kill one of his front man known as Theodore Anton, who was later found buried in quicklime on an abandoned parking lot in Burnham, near Patton’s home. You see the Capone mob was a bloodthirsty organization but also had its own rules, so anyone who belonged to this criminal brotherhood had to follow the “program”, including their underlings. Well one of the problem was in 1925, when Patton’s partner in crime Frank Hitchcock decided to go solo, meaning became independent. But Capone and Patton never thought that Hitchcock would change sides by cooperating with the rival gangs from the North Side. There are also other numerous mistakes which Hitchcock did, for example swindling a lot of gangsters for their money and also his wealth was estimated at $500,000, which was a lot of money for a criminal of his stature. So on July 27, 1927, very early in the morning Hitchcock and his wife reached their home in Burnham, where they were met by four swarthy men who first took his wife’s jewelry and forced him to enter their car. Few hours later the cops found Hitchcock’s dead body at 135th Street and Torrence Avenue, only a very short distance from Burnham. He had been shot through the head from the back and nobody was ever convicted for the murder.
By now the relationship between Capone and Patton became a whole new lucrative situation. But besides that, they also became close friends because they both loved the same sport which was golf and for their own luck, Patton also ran a country club called Burnham Wood which featured a nine-hole golf course, and of course his frequent guests were Capone and his men. Capone loved playing golf and Patton was very good at it and so on September 15, 1928, the duo enjoyed a game of golf on a sunny Saturday morning at the Burnham golf links. Some sources say that they were also accompanied by Jake Guzik, Jack McGurn and Fred Burke. According to the story, after finishing the game, Capone and Patton got into an automobile when Capone’s .45 caliber pistol suddenly discharged. It was in his right hip pocket and so the bullet plowed down through the fleshy part of his right leg, narrowly missed the abdomen and then imbedded itself in his left leg. In a state of panic, Patton took his wounded buddy to the Hammond hospital, where he was given an extensive suite under a false name. A physician was summoned and the treatment of the wounds began and Capone was saved. Months after the accident, Capone always remarked that Patton was a terrible person but he sure knew how to play golf because according to numerous sources, Capone was the worst player of them all.
