Eliot Ness

Eliot P. Ness
Bureau of Prohibition
Eliot Ness
April 19, 1903–May 16 1957 (aged 54)
Place of birth	- Chicago, USA
Rank	Chief Investigator of the Prohibition Bureau for Chicago in 1934

Eliot P. Ness (April 19, 1903 – May 16, 1957) was an American Prohibition agent, famous for his efforts to enforce Prohibition in Chicago, Illinois, as the leader of a legendary team nicknamed The Untouchables. He is associated with Chicago gangster Al Capone in the 1930s. While Ness didn't catch Capone (who was jailed on tax violations) he and his agents routinely disrupted Capone's illegal alcohol industry from 1929 until 1932. Ironically once he resigned his from his federal law enforcement career, his personal life unraveled due to his own problems with alcohol.

Early life

Ness was born in Chicago, the youngest of five, to Norwegian bakers Peter and Emma Ness. As a boy, Ness was interested in reading, especially Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. He was educated at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1925 with a degree in business and law. Ness was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. 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 masters degree in the field.

Career

In 1926, his sister's husband, Alexander Jamie, a Bureau of Investigation agent (this became the FBI in 1935), influenced him to enter law enforcement. He joined the United States Treasury Department in 1927 during a time when bootlegging was rampant throughout the nation. He headed a Federal enforcement unit which covered Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Following the election of President Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury was specifically charged with bringing down Al Capone. The federal government approached the problem of enforcing prohibition 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 the ganster Al Capone.

Because of his familiarity with the endemic corruption in Chicago law-enforcement, Ness went through the records of all the treasury agents to create a reliable team, initially of fifty, later reduced to fifteen and finally to just ten men. Raids against stills and breweries began immediately; within six months Ness claimed to have seized breweries collectively worth more than one million dollars. The main source of information for the raids was an extensive wire-tapping operation.

An attempt by Capone to bribe Ness's agents was seized upon by Ness for publicity, leading to the media nickname "The Untouchables." There were a number of assassination attempts on Ness, and one close friend was killed.

The efforts of Ness and his team had a serious impact on Capone's operations, but it was the income tax evasion which was the government's key weapon. 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. On October 17, 1931, Capone was sentenced to eleven years, and following a failed appeal, he began his sentence in 1932.

Later life and Legacy

Ness was promoted to Chief Investigator of the Prohibition Bureau for Chicago and in 1934 for Ohio. Following the end of Prohibition in 1935, he resigned his position as a federal agent and took a job with the local government of Cleveland, as Director of Public Safety. He headed up a campaign to clean out the corrupt police and fire departments, and also tackle illegal gambling and other criminal activity. Ness's inability to capture the Cleveland Torso Murderer, a vicious serial killer operating in the Cleveland area during the mid-1930s, may have also contributed to his exit from what was otherwise a successful criminal justice career in Cleveland. He resigned abruptly in 1942 after his involvement in an early morning auto collision — he had been drinking, hit another car and then left the scene of the accident.

Ness then moved to Washington, D.C., and worked again for the federal government. In 1944, he left to become chairman of the Diebold Corporation, a security safe company based in Ohio. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Cleveland in 1947 and Ness had a few business failures and was forced from his job at Diebold in April 1951. He eventually came to work for North Ridge Industrial in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. His book, The Untouchables, was published in 1957 shortly after his death at the age of 54 years old following a heart attack.

He was married three times, divorced twice, and had only one child (by adoption). He was married to illustrator Evaline Ness from 1938 to 1946. His ashes were scattered in one of the small ponds on the grounds of Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Badal, James Jessen. In the Wake of the Butcher Cleveland's Torso Murders. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001. ISBN 9780873386890
• Rasmussen, William T. Corroborating Evidence. Santa Fe, N.M.: Sunstone Press, 2004. ISBN 9780865344402
• Stone, Mark Wade. The Fourteenth Victim Eliot Ness and the Torso Murders. Cleveland, Ohio: Storytellers Media Group, 2006. ISBN 9780974957531

External links

All links retrieved December 7, 2007.

• FBI data on Eliot Ness
• The Untouchables
• The Untouchables
• Ask Yahoo!: Whatever happened to Eliot Ness after the trial of Al Capone?

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