Record

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.)

1925-01-26

Page Page 5

Evening Star, 26 January 1925, page 5: poisoned bullets may kill Torrio

Poisoned Bullet May Kill Gangster: Five Shots Failed to Hit Vital Spot, But Chicago Victim's Condition Critical

Paper
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.)
Date
1925-01-26
Page
Page 5
Headline
Poisoned Bullet May Kill Gangster: Five Shots Failed to Hit Vital Spot, But Chicago Victim's Condition Critical
Rights
A United States newspaper published in 1930 or earlier. Public domain in the United States. The Library of Congress serves the page from Chronicling America.

Page 5 of the Evening Star, Washington, Monday, 26 January 1925. The Associated Press story, datelined Chicago, January 26, opens: “Poisoned bullets may complete the job of removing John Torrio, bungled by three gunmen, who failed to put any of five bullets in a vital spot.”

It says Torrio was shot as he left his automobile with his wife in front of their home the previous Saturday (January 24), that he was critically ill, and that he refused to name the gunmen. It reports that police said 115 men had been arrested, none of them named as wanted, that the police theory linked the shooting to the recent killing of Dion O’Banion (the OCR prints “O’Bannon”), and that Torrio had been sentenced to nine months in jail for beer running.

The theory of motive is the police’s, as the wire story reports it. The Omaha Morning Bee’s front-page United Press story of the same day, which counts six shots, is filed as its own clipping.

No scan of this page is stored yet: the research pass saved the Library of Congress OCR text of the page, but the page image could not be downloaded while loc.gov was refusing requests, so the page shows a document plate. The scan is at the Library of Congress link.