Edward J. O'Hare

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E.J. O'Hare in 1933.

Edgar Joseph O'Hare (he used "Edward" later in life), aka "Easy Eddie" (* September 5, 1893 – † November 8, 1939), was a lawyer in St. Louis and later in Chicago, where he began working with Al Capone, and later helped federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion. In 1939, a week before Capone was released from Alcatraz, O'Hare was shot to death while driving.

1 Early Life in St. Louis
2 Chicago
3 Assassination
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early Life in St. Louis

Edward Joseph O'Hare, known to friends and family as EJ, was born on 5 September 1893 in St. Louis to first-generation Irish-American parents Patrick Joseph O’Hare and Cecelia Ellen Malloy O’Hare. The Irish name "O'Hare" meant, in Gaelic, "sharp, bitter, angry." On 4 June 1912, E.J. O'Hare married Selma Anna Lauth, a native of St. Louis, born on 13 November 1890. She traced her heritage to Germany. E.J. and Selma started their family in an apartment above Selma's father's Soulard grocery store. They had three children: Edward ("Butch"), born in 1914; Patricia, born in 1919 and Marilyn, born in 1924.

E.J. passed the Missouri bar exam in 1923 and joined a law firm. From 1925 O'Hare operated dog tracks in Chicago, Boston and Miami. Edward J. O'Hare, as a lawyer, represented the inventor Owen P. Smith, high commissioner of the International Greyhound Racing Association, who patented a mechanical running rabbit for use in dog racing. As a result of this lucrative cooperation with Smith, O'Hare moved his family in 1930 into a new house--with a swimming pool and a skating rink--in Holly Hills. During summers, the O'Hare family had escaped the St. Louis heat to river camps on the Meramec and Gasconade rivers. E.J. had given Butch a .22-caliber rifle. Plinking at cans and bottles tossed in the river, Butch became quite a marksman. It was also during this time that E.J. became fascinated with flying, even hitching a ride in Charles Lindbergh's mail plane. Lindbergh took his first job as lead pilot of an airmail route operated by Robertson Aircraft Co. of Lambert Field in St. Louis. E.J. then flew commercially whenever possible, and he found chances for his teenage son to briefly take the controls. As a result, his son Butch, the later Medal of Honor recipient, best known for his extreme bravery as a U.S. naval aviator in World War II, became quite a marksman and familiar with planes.

When Owen Patrick Smith died, O'Hare represented the administratrix of Smith's estate, Hannah M. Smith. E.J. began to expand his business interests from the St. Louis levee to Chicago.

By 1927, E.J. once came home, when he saw his son sprawled on the couch reading books and munching banana layer cake and doughnuts. EJ then decided that his son was showing some signs of laziness and enrolled him at Western Military Academy in Alton.

[edit] Chicago

Divorced from his wife Selma in 1927, O'Hare moved to Chicago. Selma stayed in St. Louis with her two daughters Patricia and Marilyn, while Butch went to the Military Academy.

In Chicago, O'Hare met Al Capone. The man who ran Chicago during Prohibition was Capone. When Charles Lindbergh performed his famous trans-atlantic flight in 1927, Capone was among the first to push forward and shake his hand upon his arrival in Chicago. Capone's gang was the dominant gang in the city. An entrepreneur new in town, as E.J. was, had to choose a gang, just as today he would have to choose a business insurer. E.J. later fell in love with secretary Ursula Sue Granata, the sister of a State Representative with ties to the Mob. The engagement went on for seven years because, as Catholics, O'Hare's divorce from his wife Selma made it impossible for the couple to have a church wedding. However, O'Hare was hopeful that a request for a dispensation from the Vatican would come through by 1940.

O'Hare and Capone began collaborating in business and in law. O'Hare made a second fortune through his ties to Capone, but he grew tired of working with thugs. In 1930, E.J. asked John Rogers, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to arrange a meeting with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). John Rogers organized a meeting with IRS agent Frank J. Wilson. After lunch, E.J. agreed to turn over key financial records of Capone's. The IRS's overall goal was to wreck Capone financially by destroying his bootlegging business, Agent Frank J. Wilson's job was to convict Al Capone of tax evasion.

E.J. O'Hare played a key role in Capone's prosecution for tax evasion. Frank J. Wilson, then government investigator of the Internal Revenue Service (and later Chief of the U.S. Secret Service between 1937 and 1946) revealed in the 26 April 1947 issue of Collier's magazine how Capone was convicted: "On the inside of the gang I had one of the best undercover men I have ever known: Eddie O'Hare." By 1930, E.J. O'Hare was working undercover for the Internal Revenue Service of the Treasury Department. It is believed O'Hare directed investigator Wilson to the Capone bookkeeper who would become a key witness at the 1931 trial, and he also helped break the code with which Capone's bookkeepers kept ledgers at various gambling houses throughout the 1920s. During the Capone trial, O'Hare tipped the government that Capone had fixed the original jury that was to hear the case in the court of Judge James Wilkerson. Thus alerted, Judge Wilkerson switched juries with another federal judge just as the Capone tax trial was set to begin (depicted in the 1987 film "The Untouchables").

Al Capone was found guilty on five of twenty-two counts and sentenced to eleven years in a federal prison. Al Capone arrived at Alcatraz in August 1933.

There was always speculation E.J. O'Hare went undercover to ensure his son Butch a place at Annapolis, which required the approval of a Congressional representative. However, the possible existence of such a deal is indeed speculation, not fact: No documentation has ever surfaced linking the two events. O'Hare did not need help to obtain a Naval Academy appointment for Butch. Well acquainted with all local politicians in St. Louis, Irish E.J. O'Hare was close to Irish Congressman John J. Cochran, who later appointed Butch from his Eleventh Congressional District. O'Hare had also already lined up two other congressman prepared to appoint Butch. What is more likely is that O'Hare got an agreement that his involvement with Capone would not be used against his son's appointment.

[edit] Assassination

Al Capone's mental state began to deteriorate during his imprisonment in Alcatraz. As a result, at the end of 1939, Capone was due for release from federal prison any day.

Edward Joseph O'Hare was shot and killed on Wednesday, November 8, 1939, while driving in his car. On that gray autumn day, O'Hare was 46. That afternoon he reportedly left his office at Sportsman's Park in Cicero with a cleaned and oiled Spanish-made .32-caliber semi-automatic pistol, something unusual for him. O'Hare got into his black 1939 Lincoln Zephyr coupe, and drove away from the track. As he approached the intersection of Ogden and Rockwell, a dark sedan roared up beside him and two shotgun-wielding henchmen opened up on him with a volley of big-game slugs. Edward Joseph O'Hare was killed instantly. As his Lincoln crashed into a post at the side of the roadway, the killers continued east on Ogden, where they soon became lost in other traffic. Several months after O'Hare was gunned down, Frank Nitti, Capone's second in command, married Ursula Sue Granata, O'Hare's fiancée.

It is said that O'Hare's body was found with a poem from a magazine in one pocket, which read:

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.

NOTE: The poem cited above was written by Robert H. Smith. Titled "The Clock of Life," the poem was written and copyrighted in 1932 and in 1982. Here is the correct version of this poem:

The Clock of Life
by Robert H. Smith, copyright 1932, 1982

The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.

To lose one's wealth is sad indeed,
To lose one's health is more,
To lose one's soul is such a loss
That no man can restore.

The present only is our own,
So live, love, toil with a will,
Place no faith in "Tomorrow,"
For the Clock may then be still.