The Complete Public Enemy Almanac

THE COMPLETE PUBLIC ENEMY ALMANAC - New Facts and Features On the People, Places, and Events of the Gangster and Outlaw Era: 1920-1940

If American crime had a golden age, it was between 1920 and 1940—the roller-coaster years when a rural nation became urbanized and the nineteenth century finally gave way to the twentieth. The same forces that reshaped society also changed the face of crime, and soon the Progressive movement that battled urban decay led to the unintended consequences of increased police and political corruption, drunkenness transformed from a working-class vice to a middle-class rebellion, and organized crime established nationally.

The Completely Public Enemy Almanac is the ultimate reference book for the gangster era, with many unique features:

* A highly original and revisionist history of the period, covering the entire nation
* A unique, unmatched collection of gangster and outlaw biographies
* Hundreds of illustrations and period photographs
* A full, first-ever crime chronology of the period
* Dozens of short features on everything from the shift from local to federalized law enforcement to the history of body armor and goofy schemes to deal with "motorized bandits"
* The origins and meanings of such terms as the "one-way ride," "X marks the spot," "the real McCoy," "G-Man," "Public Enemy," and many more
* Innovative lists, including the Chicago Crime Commission's "body count" of gang-style murders during the period
* New light on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre , the Kansas City Massacre, the deliberate killing of Pretty Boy Floyd, the mysterious death of Baby Face Nelson, and other events
* An exhaustive bibliography (including numerous short reviews) of every true-crime book published about gangsters and outlaws of the twenties and thirties

Meticulously documented, lavishly detailed, exhaustively researched, and written with an eye for the truths that have remained largely hidden, The Complete Public Enemy Almanac provides a reliable source of information about the violent and lawless era of the twenties and thirties.

WILLIAM HELMER, a former senior editor at Playboy, is the author of The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar and is coauthor of Dillinger: The Untold Story Expanded Edition, Baby Face Nelson: Portrait of a Public Enemy, and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre: The Untold Story of the Gangland Bloodbath That Brought Down Al Capone. He lives in Boerne, Texas.

RICK MATTIX, an expert on the criminal gangs of the twenties and thirties, is a prominent researcher and consultant to authors and television documentaries. The coauthor of Thompson, the American legend: The first submachine gun and Dillinger: The Untold Story Expanded Edition, and author of numerous magazine and journal articles, he lives in Bussey, Iowa.

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Secret Societies

Sylvia Browne’s research, combined with her amazing communication with her spirit guide Francine, has uncovered the fact that many secret societies affect the lives of each of us every day...whether it be in the areas of religion, politics, economy, government, crime, or other worldwide influences. Throughout her lecture tour, Sylvia shares her knowledge of the conspiracies, coverups, long-held secrets, misinformation, and power manipulations of secret societies in both the past and present and how they can affect us today and in the future.

Sylvia explores it all, and even gives us information on a powerful secret society that no one has even heard about. You will learn about secret societies that have good intentions, those that do not, and the ones to watch, which have goals that could help or hinder us. Some will really raise the hair on your neck!

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The Fed's Secret Weapon to Bust the Mob

The end of the Operation Family Secrets trial in Chicago has also brought an end to one of the government's secret weapons against the mob.

The secret weapon has a name: John Scully.

For 25 years, Mr. Scully has been a gangbuster for the United States attorney in Chicago, a workhorse prosecutor who put away dozens of organized crime figures with piercing arguments, a devotion to justice and a gentlemanly style.

Scully timed his retirement for the end of the Family Secrets trial last week. He talked with the I-Team about the case and his career.

"The family secrets trail that just ended, was that the highlight of your career, would you say?" ABC7's Chuck Goudie asked.

"Yes," Scully answered. John Scully is a man of few words, maybe because those he does speak carry so much weight.

Just ask Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese and "Little Jimmy" Marcello, three of the Chicago Outfit bosses who Scully helped to convict last month of their roles in decades of criminal rackets and eleven long-unsolved gangland murders.

"There have been very few mob murders solved over the years," Scully said. "This is the result of the work of an awful a lot of people for an awful long period of time, resulted in basically in the solving of a number of cases."

After the Family Secrets victory last week, Scully's retirement was one of the first things they noted. "I can't think of retiring on a higher note," said Pat fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney.

Sixty-year old Scully is a South Sider who graduated from De LaSalle High School. He attended the Naval Academy and was assigned to ship duty during the Vietnam War aboard the U.S.S. Hull, a destroyer that put Captain Scully right off the coast of Vietnam for months.

When Scully received his law degree from the University of San Diego after the war, his enemies changed, from the North Vietnamese to North Side Chicago mobsters and their outfit brethren on 26th Street, from Grand Avenue, Cicero and Elmwood Park.

In 1993, Scully prosecuted the On Leong gambling ring based in Chinatown, a major case that exposed payoffs to the mob, Chicago police and even a Cook County judge.

Five years ago, he took down William Hanhardt, the once-successful chief of detectives for the Chicago police. Hanhardt was sentenced to 15 years for operating a nationwide jewelry theft ring, and he was an outfit operative with a badge.

"A perfect cop in the mind of an awful amount of people. He cleared so many cases and did police work that resulted in a number of people being prosecuted and being prosecuted legitimately," Scully said. "He just never took his skills against the Chicago Outfit."

At the time Hanhardt went to prison, Scully was already working on a cloak-and-dagger investigation targeting the upper crust of the outfit.

It began with a letter from Frank Calabrese Jr., son of mob boss "Frank the Breeze." It was a letter so secret that Scully's long-time trial partner, Mitch Mars, didn't reveal it to others in the office for months.

"What was the danger at that point?" Goudie asked.

"Frank Jr. was cooperating, and it was going to be against his father who was a killer in the Chicago mob," Scully answered.

In 2002, with Frank Jr. still undercover, his uncle Nick Calabrese stunned prosecutors by offering to cooperate as well, admitting that he had committed at least 14 mob hits. "There was not the realization on the part on our office or the FBI that he had been involved with murders," Scully said.

Scully said he is amazed that murderer Joey "the Clown" Lombardo took the witness stand and tried to talk his way out of the charges.

"As you sat there and looked at him, could you get the clown image out of your head?" Goudie asked. "No, I didn't have the image of Joey 'The Clown,' I had the image of Danny Seifert," Scully said.

Seifert was the Bensenville business owner that Lombardo murdered in 1974 to prevent him from testifying in a case that Scully had assisted.

"Did you feel threatened by these people?" Goudie asked.

" No, that has never been a part of the Chicago outfit's background, at least in recent years, over the last 30 or 40 years& going after agents, going after prosecutors, going after police officers," Scully said.

Scully's retirement became effective while the jury was deliberating. He was given special permission to remain at the government table. Then when the verdicts came in, he packed up and went home.

Scully said he has no plans for the big salaries that some of his colleagues receive after retiring to private practice. He plans to spend time with his grandchildren.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Ex-FBI Agent Chooses Bench Trial

A former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation waived his right to a jury trial on murder charges yesterday, instead putting his case in the hands of a judge whom the F.B.I. once investigated when he was a student. The former agent, Roy Lindley DeVecchio, has been charged with helping a prized informer from an organized crime family commit four murders in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

As jury selection was set to begin yesterday, lawyers for Mr. DeVecchio asked for a bench trial before the judge overseeing the case, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of State Supreme Court. Justice Reichbach warned the lawyers that he had been investigated by the F.B.I. while a student at Columbia University, where he organized student protests in the 1960s. Mr. DeVecchio was undeterred. The trial was set to begin on Oct. 15.

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