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| DATE OF BIRTH = April 19, 1903
| DATE OF BIRTH = April 19, 1903
| PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Chicago, Illinois]]
| PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Chicago, Illinois]]
| DATE OF DEATH = May 16, 1957
| DATE OF DEATH = boobies
| PLACE OF DEATH =
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
}}

Revision as of 15:13, 20 November 2012

Eliot Ness
Born(1903-04-19)April 19, 1903
Chicago, Illinois
DiedMay 16, 1957(1957-05-16) (aged 54)
Relativesnever had one
Police career
DepartmentBureau of Prohibition
Cleveland Division of Police
Service yearsnone
RankChief Investigator of the Prohibition Bureau for Chicago in 1934
Director for Public Safety for Cleveland, Ohio
Other workthe famous arrest for Al Capone

Eliot Ness (April 19, 1903 – May 16, 1957) was an American Prohibition agent, famous for his efforts to enforce Prohibition in Chicago, Illinois, and the leader of a legendary team of law enforcement agents nicknamed The Untouchables.[1]

Early life

Eliot Ness was born April 19, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the youngest of five siblings born to Norwegian immigrants, Peter and Emma Ness. Ness attended Christian Fenger High School in Chicago. He was educated at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, graduating in 1925 with a degree in economics. He began his career as an investigator for the Retail Credit Company of Atlanta. He was assigned to the Chicago territory, where he conducted background investigations for the purpose of credit information. He returned to the University to take a course in criminology, eventually earning a Master's Degree in the field.[2][3]

Career

1927–1931

In 1926, Ness' brother-in-law, Alexander Jamie, an agent of the Bureau of Investigation (which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), influenced Ness to enter law enforcement. He joined the U.S. Treasury Department in 1927, working with the 300-strong Bureau of Prohibition, in Chicago.[4]

Following the election of President Herbert Hoover, U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was specifically charged with bringing down gangster Al Capone. The federal government approached the problem from two directions: income tax evasion and the Volstead Act. Ness was chosen to head the operations under the Volstead Act, targeting the illegal breweries and supply routes of Capone.

With Chicago's corrupted law-enforcement agents endemic, Ness went through the records of all Prohibition agents to create a reliable team, initially of 50, later reduced to 15 and finally to just eleven men called, "The Untouchables". Raids against illegal stills and breweries began immediately; within six months Ness claimed to have seized breweries worth over one million dollars. The main source of information for the raids was an extensive wire-tapping operation. An attempt by Capone to bribe Ness' agents was seized on by Ness for publicity, leading to the media nickname, "The Untouchables." There were a number of assassination attempts on Ness, and one close friend of his was killed.

The efforts of Ness and his team had a serious impact on Capone's operations; the main task of the Untouchables was to deprive Capone of the income sources for the graft payments that were his greatest protection, with an ancillary concern being the maintenance of public awareness of the federal government's activity against Capone.[citation needed] However, Ness had very little to do with the IRS prosecuting Capone for income tax evasion, which led to Capone's downfall.[5] In a number of federal grand jury cases in 1931, Capone was charged with 22 counts of tax evasion and also 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act.[6] On October 17, 1931, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison, and following a failed appeal, he began his sentence in 1932.[7][8]

1931–1957

Marker at Lake View Cemetery

Ness was promoted to Chief Investigator of the Prohibition Bureau for Chicago and in 1934 for Ohio. Following the end of Prohibition in 1933, he was assigned as an alcohol tax agent in the "Moonshine Mountains" of southern Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee; and, in 1934, he was transferred to Cleveland, Ohio. In December 1935, Cleveland mayor Harold Burton hired him as the city's Safety Director, which put him in charge of both the police and fire departments. He headed a campaign to clean out police corruption and to modernize the fire department.[9]

Billboard for Eliot Ness' 1947 campaign for mayor, seen in 1973

In 1938 Ness's personal life was completely transformed while his career began to have some ups and downs. He concentrated heavily on his work, which may have contributed to the divorce that year from his first wife Edna (Staley). He declared war on the mob, and his primary targets included "Big" Angelo Lonardo, "Little" Angelo Scirrca, Moe Dalitz, John Angerola, George Angersola, and Charles Pollizi. Ness was also Safety Director at the time of several grisly murders that occurred in the Cleveland area from 1935 to 1938. Unfortunately, what was otherwise a remarkably successful career in Cleveland, withered gradually. Cleveland critics targeted his divorce, his high-profile social drinking, and his conduct in a car accident, but he continued with the next Mayor, Frank Lausche.[10]

Ness remarried in 1939, to illustrator Evaline Michelow. The Nesses moved to Washington, D.C. in 1942 where he worked for the federal government, directing the battle against prostitution in communities surrounding military bases, where venereal disease was a serious problem. Later he made a number of forays into the corporate world, all of which failed from his lack of business acumen. In 1944, he left to become chairman of the Diebold Corporation, a security safe company based in Ohio. After his second divorce and third marriage, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Cleveland in 1947,[10] after which he was expelled from Diebold. In the aftermath, Ness began drinking more heavily and spending his free time in bars telling (often exaggerated) stories of his law enforcement career. He also spent himself into debt. Ness was forced into taking various odd jobs to earn a living, including as an electronics parts wholesaler, a clerk in a bookstore, and selling frozen hamburger patties to restaurants. By 1953, he came to work for an upstart company called Guaranty Paper Corporation, which specialized in watermarking legal and official documents to prevent counterfeiting. Ness was offered a job because of his expertise in law enforcement. The company soon moved from Cleveland to the quiet rural town of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, where operating costs were lower. He made a decent income from GPC and moved with his wife and adopted son into a modest rental house. Once again, he enjoyed going to local bars and regaling amazed audiences with his tales of crime fighting. He collapsed and died at his home of a massive heart attack on May 16, 1957, at the age of 54. Collaborating with Oscar Fraley in his last years, he co-wrote the book The Untouchables, which was published a month after his death.[11] This book, among others about the Untouchables by Oscar Fraley, was heavily spiced with fiction including fictional characters and events to make the books more appealing to a general audience. The 21 page manuscript that Ness himself wrote for the book was a more reliable source and only included the real events that Ness experienced during his career. His manuscript is housed in the archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.[12]

Personal life

Ness was married to Edna Staley (1900–1988) from 1929 to 1938, illustrator Evaline Ness (1911–1986) from 1939 to 1945, and artist Elisabeth Andersen Seaver (1906–1977) from 1946 until his death. He also had an adopted son Robert (1946–1976).[10] Ness's ashes were scattered in one of the small ponds on the grounds of Lake View Cemetery, in Cleveland.[13][14]

Legacy

Television programs and feature films have been made based on the life of Eliot Ness, and the legend surrounding his work in Chicago. The three best-known of these include the 1950s/1960s TV series titled The Untouchables, which starred Robert Stack as Ness and which Walter Winchell narrated, and Brian De Palma's Oscar-winning film of the same title, The Untouchables, which starred Kevin Costner as Ness and also featured Sean Connery and Robert De Niro. These two fictionalized portrayals, more than actual history, have inspired numerous novels, a second, short-lived TV series, comic books, and references in animated cartoons and rap lyrics. In 2011, Ness was portrayed as a monster-hunter in the CW series "Supernatural," in which he helps track down a time-traveling monster.

References

  1. ^ FBI data on Eliot Ness through the Freedom of Information Act
  2. ^ Eliot Ness: The Real Story (Paul W. Heimel, author. Knox Books)
  3. ^ Eliot Ness(Ohio Historical Society)
  4. ^ Biography of Eliot Ness (Essortment)
  5. ^ Okrent, Daniel (2010). Last Call : The rise and fall of prohibition. New York: Scribner. pp. 136 &345. ISBN 978-0-7432-7704-4.
  6. ^ Searching for Eliot Ness (Fedora Chronicles)
  7. ^ Eliot Ness Biography (Who2, LLC)
  8. ^ Eliot Ness 1902-1957 The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.gov web site)
  9. ^ Eliot Ness: The Man Behind the Myth, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
  10. ^ a b c Eliot Ness Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
  11. ^ Whatever happened to Eliot Ness after the trial of Al Capone? (Ask Yahoo!)
  12. ^ Tucker, Kenneth (2012). Eliot Ness and the Untouchables. NC, USA: McFarland. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-7864-4996-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id= ignored (help)
  13. ^ findagrave
  14. ^ Vigil, Vicki Blum (2007). Cemeteries of Northeast Ohio: Stones, Symbols & Stories. Cleveland, OH: Gray & Company, Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59851-025-6

Further reading

  • Ness, Eliot; Fraley, Oscar (1957). The Untouchables. Julian Messner.
  • Rasmussen, William T. (2006). Corroborating Evidence. Sunstone Press. ISBN 0-86534-536-8.
  • Badal, James Jessen (2001). In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders. The Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-689-2.

Supernatural- season 7 episode 12, Time After Time

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eliot Ness.

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