Shelton Brothers Gang
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The Shelton Brothers Gang was an early Prohibition era bootlegging gang based in southern Illinois. They were the main rivals of the famous bootlegger Charles Birger. In 1950 the Saturday Evening Post described the Sheltons as "America's Bloodiest Gang".
Formed by Earl, Carl, and Bernie Shelton of Wayne County, Illinois shortly after Prohibition came into effect in 1920, the gang operated in Williamson County, Illinois, making moonshine and other illegal liquor. They eventually dominated both gambling and liquor distribution in Little Egypt until former ally, gangster Charles Birger, attempted to take over the Sheltons' bootlegging operations in 1926. This began a violent gang war, which saw both sides using homemade armored trucks and included one incident of an aerial bombing raid by the Sheltons on Birger's Shady Rest headquarters. The war was fought for control of bootlegging in all of southern Illinois.
Despite having over fifty gunmen, the Shelton Brothers were unable to defeat Birger. Based on the testimony of Birger and Art Newman, the Shelton Brothers were convicted of an unsolved 1925 mail carrier robbery of $15,000 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The gang slowly faded, as Birger dominated bootlegging in southern Illinois, until he himself was hanged in 1928 for allegedly ordering the murder of West City, Illinois Mayor Joe Adams, a Shelton partisan.
After their eventual release from prison, Carl and Bernie Shelton would be murdered (in 1947 and 1948 respectively) on orders from former gang member Frank "Buster" Wortman, who would take over the Sheltons operations and dominate St. Louis's illegal gambling and other criminal activities until his death in 1968. Earl was also ambushed and shot, but survived. After another attempt on his life the following year, Earl Shelton and his family left Illinois for Florida. Earl died there in 1986 at age 96, the last member of the Shelton Brothers Gang.
[edit] Further reading
- Paul M. Angle, Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1952. ISBN 0-252-06233-7
- Pensoneau, Taylor. Brothers Notorious: The Sheltons - Southern Illinois' Legendary Gangsters. New Berlin, Illinois: Downstate Publications, 2002.
- Theising, Andrew J. Made in USA: East St. Louis, the Rise and Fall of an Industrial River Town. St. Louis: Virginia Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1-891442-21-X
- United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce: Hearings before a Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. 1950. [1]
[edit] References
- Fox, Stephen. Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989. ISBN 0-688-04350-X
- Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
- Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
