John Duffy (mobster)

John Duffy (died February 1924) was a Philadelphia mobster and gunman for the North Side Mob.

A gun for hire out of Philadelphia, Duffy arrived in Chicago during the early 1920s. Finding work with the North Side Mob, Duffy participated in several jobs for Dean O'Banion becoming known as a "hanger-on" to the gang in some respects.

In mid-February 1924, after eight days of marriage, Duffy smothered his bride Maybelle Exley with a pillow while she slept following a violent drunken argument (although other sources claim Duffy shot her twice in the head). When he awoke the following morning, Duffy panicked. He called a friend asking for a car and money to get out of town. He was soon contacted by O'Banion, who agreed to help Duffy. He told Duffy to meet him at the "Four Deuces", a South Wabash club run by the Johnny "The Fox" Torrio-Al Capone organization.

At the club, several eye witnesses reported seeing Duffy being picked up around 8:00 pm in a Studebaker by O'Banion and an unidentified man. Later on, Duffy's body was found in a snowbank outside of Chicago; he had been shot three times in the head with a 38. caliber revolver. Another witness later told police that he saw O'Banion and two other men dump Duffy's body, but he later retracted his statement.

As Duffy had been last seen at the "Four Deuces", suspicion logically focused on club manager Al Capone. The subsequent investigation brought unwanted attention from law enforcement on the club as it was a source of illegal gambling, prostitution and bootlegging.

When police start to view O'Banion as a possible suspect, the gang leader told reporters, "The police don't have to look for me, I'll go and look for them. I'll be at the state's attorney's office at 2:30 PM Monday afternoon...I can tell the state's attorney anything he wants to know about me. Whatever happened to Duffy is out of my line. I don't mix with that kind of riffraff."

Police officials were never able to amass enough evidence to charge O'Banion with Duffy's murder. They theorized that O'Banion and two accomplices drove Duffy to a remote woodland area. Stopping on Nottingham Road, Duffy and O'Banion got out of the car to relieve themselves. At that point, O'Banion stood behind the unsuspecting Duffy and shot him in the back of the head. O'Bannion then shot Duffy twice more before dumping his body in the snowbank. Police think that O'Banion killed Duffy because he wanted to avoid a highly publicized investigation into the murder of Duffy's wife. By meeting Duffy at a Chicago Outfit club and taking Duffy for "a one way ride", he hoped to shift blame for Duffy's murder onto Torrio and Capone.

References

*English, T.J. "Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster". New York: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-059002-5