Murder at Lunt and Clark, Part 3

Click here to read Part 1
Click here to read Part 2

November 29, 1945

Cecil "Red" Smith

"Guys, where are we going?" asked Red Smith.  What's the plan tonight?" Everyone maintained an icy silence.  "Is this a suburban job?"  Silence.  He didn't ask again.

It was a cold, drizzly night in Chicago. Tiny Mazzanars was driving, and Red Smith was riding shotgun.  In the back were Renoro Lolli and Christ Perres.  All four were members of a gang specializing in handbook robberies, preferring to rob payroll and receipts of the gambling syndicate.  They weren't above a random armed robbery, which Red assumed was the plan for this evening. Tiny kept driving west along Irving Park.  The stores, apartments, and city street lights soon gave way to a dark road, made even darker by a thickening fog. Tiny turned north onto a narrow dirt road. Although it was just past Chicago's city limits, it felt a world away from the streets of Rogers Park.

Lawrence "Tiny" Mazzanars

Tiny Mazzanars and Red Smith had been working together when Tiny was invited to join the handbook robbery gang.  He vouched for his friend Red and brought him in, too. It turned out that Red already knew one other member of the group--James Kelley.  The men got acquainted in the Joliet Penitentiary, where Red had served 5 sentences since 1916.  Kelley knew Red was not above acting as an informant if it was in his best interests.  But that didn't matter too much until September 2nd, when Red shot two Chicago detectives on the corner of Lunt and Clark.

James Kelley

Red and Tiny had cased the drug store at the southeast corner of Lunt and Clark on Saturday, September 1st. It was a busy location, and the manager had a predictable schedule. He tallied the week's receipts on Sunday night, and, then, come Monday morning, he took all of the cash to the local bank. If they could catch him on Sunday night, just as he was locking up, they could escort him back into the store and leave with a week's worth of earnings. It was a perfect plan.

On September 2nd at 11 p.m. they parked their car on Lunt Avenue.  Tiny stood on the northeast corner, while Red waited across the street right in front of the drugstore.  Just as their setup was complete, Detectives Brady and Hellstern walked by looking for their Peeping Tom.  They immediately noticed Red acting suspiciously and identified themselves as police officers. Recognizing trouble, Tiny began to walk west on Lunt.  He was less than a block away when he heard the gun shots. Red had shot and killed both detectives. As a crowd began to gather, Tiny got into his car unobserved and drove away.

North Avenue Bridge, where they tossed the gun.

Tiny visited several bars in the area looking for Red, but he didn't find him until the next day.  Red had hidden the murder weapon in a backyard.  A week later, they both went to retrieve it. They dismantled the weapon and dropped the barrel and some other pieces into the Chicago River at the North Avenue Bridge.  Tiny took some parts with him as spares, and stashed them in the basement rafters of his apartment building on Lyndale.

Renoro Lolli

In the meantime, the police kicked their investigation into high gear.  Renoro Lolli and James Kelley were pulled in and questioned on unrelated charges.  Kelly knew that if Red were picked up there was a good chance he would confess to the shooting and "squeal" about his involvement in the handbook robbery gang, endangering Lolli, Kelley, and the other members of the group. It wasn't long before Red Smith saw Kelley, Lolli, and his good friend Tiny huddled together, talking quietly.  They fell silent when they saw him watching. As a joke, Kelley started to refer to him as "Squealer." Red pretended to find it funny, but he became increasingly nervous around the other members of the gang.

What Red didn't know that night in the car--but may have suspected--was that the location of his grave had already been chosen.  Shovels and pick axes were in the trunk. James Kelley, who had suggested the murder, decided not to get his hands dirty. "Three of you is plenty to murder one man," he said. "There's no need for me to go along."

Extrapolated Route, using 1939 Aerial Photo

As the car drove north along River Road, Christ Perres leaned forward from the back seat and placed the muzzle of his gun against Red Smith's head.  His gun jammed.  Renorro Lolli was ready.  Before he fired he said, "You're a rat and a stool pigeon, and we're going to let you have it."  Then he shot twice.  One bullet struck the back of Red's head behind his left ear, and the other went into the rear of the seat.

They continued to drive north, then turned west onto Lawrence Avenue.  After the explosion of bullets, the car seemed deathly quiet.  Red Smith slumped forward. They drove a block west on Lawrence and then pulled off into a corn field.  Tiny dug the grave, deep enough so that Red wouldn't be caught in the plow.  It was the least he could do.

Christ Perres

The unpleasant work done, they returned to their car, only to find that it was stuck in the cold, late November mud.  After trying to push their car out they flagged down a bus and rented a tow truck to retrieve their car.  A homicide, a corn field burial, a city bus ride, and a middle-of-the-night tow truck rental, and, somehow, no farmers, neighbors, bus drivers, or Schiller Park police officers became suspicious. Once their car was freed from the mud, they all headed back to Chicago. Perhaps they wondered whether the gang was truly safer now.  Or maybe they didn't think about it at all.  Soon, snow began to fall, covering Red Smith's grave.  He had outlived Detectives Hellstern and Brady by less than 3 months.

Part 4 will detail how the police solved the case and broke the gang.  And there's a shootout!

As usual, information was taken from historic Chicago Tribune articles.  Some literary license has been taken...

Murder at Lunt and Clark, Part 2

Click here to read Part 1

September 3, 1945

Brady Residence                 Hellstern Residence

The investigation of the double-murder at Lunt and Clark was immediately underway.  Based on the dying description of his victim, the murderer was 30 or 35 years old, about 5 feet 10 inches in height, with a dirty complexion, a slouch hat, blue shirt, and dark trousers.  He wore a single black rubber glove on his left hand, suggesting that he may have had an artificial or injured hand.

Three people claimed to have seen the killer.  Elmer Leitner, 22, of 1772 W. Estes, Paul Piro, 18, of 1908 W. Estes, and Opal Hamann, of 6959 N. Clark. They corroborated Detective Brady's description, but didn't add much new information.

Mrs. Brady                             Mrs. Hellstern

Police Commissioner Allman swore that the department would not rest until the killer was captured.  Five suspects were rounded up, two of whom wore gloves over artificial left hands.

As the police investigated, the families grieved. At that time, widows of police killed in the line of duty received $10,000, along with $1,800 per year until their youngest child reached the age of 18.  Converted into today's values that would translate to a lump sum of $132,000 and $24,000 per year. Of course, no amount of money could replace the loss of a husband or father.

September 4

Location of Inquest

At the request of Captain Michael Ahern, an inquest into the murders was held at the John E. Maloney Funeral Home at 1359 W. Devon.  The inquest was an opportunity for the police to explain their lines of investigation and discuss additional evidence, including a ballistics report.  Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Hellstern both attended this session, hoping to learn more about what had happened to their husbands.

The inquest pointed to a potential motive. At the time of his death, Detective Hellstern had over $3,000 in cash in his pocket.  His fellow officers noted that he distrusted banks.  Could his murder have been a hold-up that went bad?  Did the man with the black rubber glove know that Detective Hellstern would be carrying a large sum of money that night? What was he planning to buy? It wasn't clear, and his wife never gave an explanation of why he was carrying the modern day equivalent of $39,000 as he was walking down Clark Street.

Boundaries of the Search

September 5

In an effort to gather additional evidence, the police began a systematic interview of every individual in the Rogers Park community. Officers swarmed through the streets, the local Rogers Park force augmented by squads from the detective bureau, the homicide bureau, and even the park district.  All told there were 127 uniformed policeman and 10 plainclothes detectives working on this case.  These officers were sent on a house-by-house investigation throughout the neighborhood, interviewing local community members about the crime. Their search turned up Mel Ogren, who had been bowling that night at the corner of Lunt and Ravenswood, and witnessed the exchange of gunfire on his walk home.  He was positive there had been no glove, contradicting several eye witness accounts.

September 8

Sherwood Wolf, 19

A few days later, Sherwood J. Wolf, 19, of 7006 N. Paulina was arrested.  Mr. Wolf was supposedly the Peeping Tom that the detectives had been on their way to investigate.  Maybe he was a little creepy, but the police quickly discovered that he had nothing to do with the murders. It was a dead end. To share the killer's description more widely, the police generated a sketch based upon the statements given by witnesses. Since forensic artists were still rather uncommon, the portrait was drawn by an artist friend of Captain Ahern.  It
was displayed at the Rogers Park police station.

September 9

Eight additional witnesses identified in the canvassing of the neighborhood were interviewed by police. Paul McMahon of 1648 W. Lunt confirmed that the shooter had a glove on his left hand.

By the end of September, the police had little to show for their community-wide manhunt. After hundreds of interviews, the arrest of Sherwood Wolf, and some new eye witness testimony, all they had was an amateur sketch of the perpetrator, a half-baked theory about a robbery, and a fruitless search for a man with a glove on his left hand.  But the case would come roaring back into the headlines on December 14th when the events of that evening would finally be revealed, along with the identity of the murderer. 

Part 3 to follow.

Information above is taken from a series of Chicago Tribune articles accessed through the Chicago Public Library.