Itching for vengeance, Heitler began ''ratting" on the mob and many of Capone's affairs. He informed Judge John H. Lyle about the doings in a Capone resort called the Four Deuces. As Lyle recounted in his book
The Dry and Lawless Years
, de Pike related: "They snatch guys they want information from and take them to the cellar. They're tortured until they talk. Then they're rubbed out. The bodies are hauled through a tunnel into a trap door opening in the back of the building. Capone and his boys put the bodies in cars and then they're dumped out on a country road, or maybe in a clay hole or rock quarry."
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Heitler was not being imprudent informing Judge Lyle, who was a Capone hater and an honest judge, a rather rare breed for the era. However, Heitler was a little less selective at other times. He wrote an anonymous letter to the state attorney's office, outlining many facets of the Capone brothel operations. De Pike's anger had clearly got the best of him if he believed that affairs in the state attorney's office were secret from Capone. Within a short time, Capone ordered de Pike to appear before him at his office in the Lexington Hotel. The letter Heitler had written was on Capone's desk. Capone correctly deduced that the information in it could only have come from Heitler. He told him, "You're through."
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Undoubtedly de Pike was marked right then for execution, but a certain etiquette was followed by the mob when they received information from their own informers inside official agencies. These sources generally emphasized they would not be a party to homicide, and thus it was not doneat least not for months.
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Heitler might even have lasted a half year longer than he did had he not continued his troublesome letter-writing. In one, he named eight Capone figures as having been involved in the plot to murder
Chicago Tribune
reporter Jake Lingle. He gave a copy of that letter to his daughter. Unfortunately, he passed another copy to the wrong parties. On April 30, 1931, two boys found de Pike's charred torso in the smoldering wreckage of a house in a Chicago suburb.
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Hijacking
Ever since the advent of Prohibition, hijacking has been a regular activity of organized crime. Hijacking existed before Prohibition, but the lure of a liquor-laden truck attracted gangster activity at a level never before witnessed in the United States. The crime continued almost as a force of habit after Prohibition ended and today still constitutes an important source of revenue for organized crime. Crime families remain especially active in hijacking cigarette shipments, especially because they have the wherewithal to dispose of such loot through gangland enterprises of various sorts.
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Syndicate hijacking is not haphazard. Even if the actual hijackers are freelancers, the crime family functions as their patron, guaranteeing to handle the merchandise, as well as providing protection and "squaring" an arrest if operations go awry. The organized crime functionary tells the hijackers the specific items to be stolensuch as color television sets, electronic equipment, clothing. Usually the hijackers do not pick a truck to loot at random, but intelligence is supplied them by the mob when particularly valuable shipment can be hit. Often such information comes from "inside men," sometimes planted in key jobs or else recruited through other mob activities. For instance, through the mob's gambling and loan shark operations, the gangsters can put pressure on men owing them money and order them to supply information on shipments. If the victim happens to own the business, it makes matters all the more simple as the mobsters inform the businessman that insurance will cover his losses. Under such circumstances, the businessman can become an eager accomplice and is induced to make a targeted shipment all the more valuable.
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Equally important to major syndicate hijackings is the fact that they tend to be perpetrated with police protection in one form or another. Because of good rapport with many police officers who accept "clean-graft"payoffs for allowing such activities as gambling to operateorganized crime has little trouble inducing police officers to stay away from certain areas when a hijacking is scheduled. The Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption in New York City, reported that this was standard operating procedure.
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Generally recognized as the foremost hijacking mob in American history is Detroit's fabled Purple Gang, probably the most feared bootleg hijackers of Prohibition days. Many members kept on hijacking other types of goods after the dry era. In fact, it is stated by law enforcement officials that some Purple Gang oldtimers, now in their 70s and 80s, still mastermind a large number of hijackings in Michigan and surrounding states.
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Hill, Virginia (19181966): Syndicate bagwoman
There have been many women in American criminal history, but none quite like Virginia Hill. The newspapers insisted on calling her the Queen of the Mob. It wasn't that accurate. Mistress of the Mob, perhaps. She paraded around with money to burnwith $100 bills that filled her purse and her pocketspaying for a champagne party in a nightclub or for barefoot rumba dancing. In 1951 in executive session before the Kefauver Committee Virginia Hill was asked by that self-proclaimed moralist of the panel, Senator Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire: "Young lady, what makes
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