GANG CREMATIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 199, 23 August 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

GANG CREMATIONS.

CHICAGO'S NEW HORROR

DISPOSAL OF VICTIMS

A crematorium' for gangster dead—an ingenious and ghastly device for removing' the evidence of wholesale murder— ■was hunted by the Illinois State s .attorney's men recently, while police puzzled over another and particularly brutal gangland assassination. Pat Roche, of the attorney's office, said he had reliable information that a North Side gang was cremating its murder victims, thus 'getting rid of the "corpus delicti." The disappearance of William Higgins, St. Paul, Minn., racketeer, and Ben Bennett, New York, whisky dealer, has given credence to tlie_ crematory report, Eoche said. He pointed out further that within a week there had been two gang gun attacks in Chicago in which the victim, after being shot down, was carried away in the automobile of his attackers. This gang murder was the tenth in the Chicago area within three days. The victim was Thomas Somnerio, 33 _ years old, who was tried and acquitted of complicity in the election day (1928) slaying of Octayius Granady, negro lawyer. Soinnerio's body was found in au alley at the rear of the SOO block 011 Harrison Street, Chicago. The body was cut and bruised, indicating torture. The wrists were wired. A welt around the neck indicated Somnerio had been garroted. Indicted and tried with Somnerio for the Granady murder were Louis Clemente, aligned with the Capones, and Rocco Belcastro, reputed expert in bombmaking. Police are certain that Somnerio's murder was in reprisal for the "little massacre" of . three Druggan associates at Pox Lake some days before. They say it is just another episode of blood in the renewed gang war, precipitated with the slaying of Joe Blue, exconvict and friend of Terry Druggan, one-time beer baron. Blue, if the police theory is correct, went to Chicago from New York, and entered the beer business, defying the warnings of that group of Sicilians still identified as members of the Genna gang. Blue felt secure, police reasoned, "with the backing of Terry Druggan and George Druggan, brothers. But Blue was slain. This, in effect, was a defiance to the Druggan followers. It led, police said, to the slaying of Phillip Gnolfo, a Genna man, and the wounding of two companions. The Genna group, as police reconstruct it, wasted 110 time in retaliation, for three of the Druggan group were machine-gunned to death in the 'Tittle massacre" of Fox Lane. George Druggan himself was so severely wounded that he may die.