Brownsville Herald, 28 April 1926, page 1: “Hanging prosecutor” is slain

The front page of the Brownsville Herald for Wednesday, 28 April 1926 carries the banner “‘HANGING PROSECUTOR’ IS SLAIN” and a column headed “2 Companions Also Killed by Gangsters,” with the deck “Officials Unable to Account for Murder of Youthful Prosecuting Attorney.” The story is credited “By The Associated Press” and datelined Chicago, April 28. It says William M. McSwiggin, an assistant state’s attorney, “was slain last night in a blast of machine gun fire poured by gangsters into an automobile” in which he and three other men were riding. Two of his companions were killed: James J. Doherty, called a “reputed leader of beer runners of Cicero,” and Thomas Duffy, “owner of a saloon.”

The place is printed in the sentence “The hail of lead came from an automobile which drew up beside the car in which McSwiggin and his companions were driving in Roosevelt road at Fifty-Sixth avenue on the boundary line between Chicago and Cicero.” The story also quotes Captain John Stege, veteran captain of detectives, saying the prosecutor “was marked for death because of his prosecution” of two men sentenced to prison for killing two policemen.

This archive cites the page for the place the wire gives, the date, and the officials’ statements as quoted. That motive is Captain Stege’s as printed, and the page does not say who fired. Line-break splits in the Library of Congress OCR are joined in the quotation.