Union Daily Times, 29 April 1926, page 1: Machine gun used in killing of the hanging prosecutor

Front page of the Union Daily Times, South Carolina, Thursday afternoon, 29 April 1926. The headline reads “Chicago Gangsters Use Machine Gun in Killing ‘Hanging Prosecutor’ and Two Others.”

The Associated Press story, datelined Chicago, 28 April, says the same “wall of silence” that had defeated police efforts to solve 87 gang and rum slayings in the previous three years had “nullified a day of investigation” into the shooting of Assistant State’s Attorney William H. McSwiggin the night before. It says McSwiggin, James J. Doherty (a “beer boss”) and Thomas Duffy (a saloon keeper) were riding in an automobile past a saloon in Cicero when fire came from a car alongside, that at least one and probably two other men were with them, and that the motive could not be isolated “from a crowd of suppositions.”

The count of 87 slayings, the prosecutor’s record of death-penalty verdicts and the characterizations of the other men are the wire story’s and are not verified here. Headline as read from the Library of Congress OCR text of the page.