When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping That Never Happened
John W. Tuohy. Barricade Books, $24.95 (302pp) ISBN 978-1-56980-174-1
JFK's pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged kidnapping of ""`Jake the Barber'"" Factor, ""the black sheep brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor""; lifetime sentences, attempted jail busts and the perseverance of ""a rumpled private detective and an eccentric lawyer"" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and, finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of photos. (Barricade [Suite 308-A 185 Bridge Plaza North, Fort Lee, N.J. 07024], $24.95 302p ISBN 1-56980-174-6; July)
Details
Reviewed on: 06/01/2001
Genre: Nonfiction