Casper Daily Tribune, 25 January 1925, page 7: last of 'beer king' trio shot

Page 7 of the Casper Daily Tribune, Wyoming, Sunday, 25 January 1925. The United Press story by Edward C. Derr, datelined Chicago, January 24, says the feuds of “the fight for supremacy in the traffic of beer” broke out again that evening, “when Johnny Torrio, lord of a powerful ‘syndicate of beer runners,’ was shot and wounded, apparently by gunmen of a rival syndicate.”

It calls Torrio “the sole survivor of a triumvirate of underworld characters,” says that Dean O’Bannion (as the paper spells it), another of the three, had been shot to death two months earlier, and says Torrio had been sentenced days before in the Sieben brewery case but allowed ten days to settle his affairs. It describes the wound as not believed dangerous; later reports, such as the Evening Star’s of 26 January, said his condition was critical.

The characterizations of Torrio and of the “rival syndicate” are the wire service’s, not findings.

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