Roger Touhy

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Roger Touhy

American crime boss

Also known as: Touhy the Terrible

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 13, 2024 • Article History

Quick Facts

Byname:: The Terrible

Born:: 1898, Chicago

Died:: Dec. 17, 1959, Chicago (aged 61)

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Roger Touhy (born 1898, Chicago—died Dec. 17, 1959, Chicago) was a Chicago-area bootlegger, brewer, and gambling boss during the Prohibition era.

In 1934 Touhy was convicted, on perjured testimony, of kidnapping one John “Jake the Barber” Factor in June–July 1933, a period when Factor, as it was later proved, had been hiding out to avoid extradition to England on a swindling charge. Allegedly, the Al Capone mob (then headed by Frank Nitti) had framed Touhy in order to take over his rackets.

Touhy, sentenced to 199 years, spent the years 1934–59 in Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Ill. (he escaped in a jailbreak in October 1942 but was caught 12 weeks later). After lengthy appeals, the federal courts deemed the kidnapping a hoax, and on Nov. 25, 1959, he was released. A few weeks later he was killed outside his sister’s home in Chicago, felled by shotgun blasts from unknown gunmen in the street. An autobiography, The Stolen Years, was published in 1959.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.