Seasons & episodes
S2 · E20The Antidote 1961-03-09 · 60 min
Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio. With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc). Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers.
S2 · E21The Lily Dallas Story 1961-03-16 · 60 min
April 11, 1932. Millionaire building contractor Thomas B. Randall is the target of a kidnapping; he is throwing a party right now. Intruding on his estate that night are: ex-bootlegger and now gang leader George ""Blackie"" Dallas, Pete Appleby (former torpedo for the Purple Gang), Marty Stoke (bank heist expert) and Jiggs (ex-heavyweight boxer and now strongarm man). The gang kills a security guard, and kidnaps Randall-- and they warn his family and guests not to call the police, or he gets it.
S2 · E22Murder Under Glass 1961-03-23 · 60 min
November 1932. FDR was moving to end Prohibition, and the crime syndicate was already shifting away from booze to narcotics. In the next few months, the narcotic supply is running low. February 20, 1933, Frank Nitti and his lieutenant Pete Konitz fly down to New Orleans, where the Mardi Gras will be taking place. Bouchard is busy having Sully fit his car with bulletproof glass. Later, Nitti is demanding a drug shipment from Bouchard.
S2 · E23Testimony of Evil 1961-03-30 · 60 min
October 11, 1932. Chicago. Less than one month before the elections, David Mantley, running for State's Attorney on the Reform ticket, is making speeches: he says the power behind his opponent, Jeremiah Down, is mobster Bryan O'Malley. At the same time, across town, O'Malley is being feted at a testimonial dinner-- even though a week from now he'll have to stand trial for murder and income tax evasion.
S2 · E24Ring of Terror 1961-04-13 · 60 min
Ring of Terror-- Boxing ring, that is. July 1931, the Chicago Sports Arena was like a hundred other boxing rings across America-- a place where young toughs from reform schools and rotting tenements, willing to sacrifice their blood, could try to rise above the oppression of poverty. But the young men with the boxing gloves only got a small amount of the money; the big payoffs went to the gangsters.
S2 · E25Mr. Moon 1961-04-20 · 60 min
Autumn 1934. An armored truck, loaded with the special paper used in printing U.S. currency, is headed for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. The truck is hijacked, and the 3 armed guards are tommy-gunned. Since counterfeiting will be on a national level, it's a federal offense, and so Eliot Ness and 5 other federal agents from around the country convene in Washington, D.C., and are briefed on the situation.
S2 · E26Death for Sale 1961-04-27 · 60 min
Chicago, last week of April 1933. Frank Nitti is offered a huge quantity of Chinese opium. Ever since the government had established the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the flow of opium from China to the USA had slowed to a trickle, and by 1932 the flow had almost ceased; now, with the end of Prohibition seeming imminent, the Syndicate is ready to deal in opium again. Late on the night of May 4, Nitti sends one of his top lieutenants, Ed Getty, to pick up some opium from Art Rele and his thug Cliff Anders. But Ness and Lee Hobson show up, too; in the shootout, only Art Rele escapes.
S2 · E27Stranglehold 1961-05-04 · 60 min
New York, 1933. Racketeers are poking their greasy fists into every corner of the nation's business. The Fulton fish market in New York supplies fish on the East Coast to as far west as the Mississippi; they supply 700-million pounds of fish a year, worth $200-million. When Captain Joe McGonigle, owner of the fishing boat the Margie Mac, won't pay protection money, 2 of Frank Mercouris' hoods, Lenny Shore and Swede Kelso, drown his deck hand, and it makes the newspapers; it's only the beginning of trouble with the Syndicate moving in-- and so Eliot Ness and his men fly to New York.
S2 · E28The Nero Rankin Story 1961-05-11 · 60 min
September 16, 1933. Although Eliot Ness had successfully destroyed The Underground Court (episode # 46), he had not smashed its parent organization, the big Syndicate, in control of over 50% of the nation's crime. With the death of Judge Foley, who was the chairman of the Syndicate, 5 top-ranking members are now assembling at a roadhouse on the outskirts of Chicago-- to vote on whether or not to appoint Nero Rankin as the new chairman; Nero had been designated by Foley to be his successor, in the event of his death.
S2 · E29The Seventh Vote 1961-05-18 · 60 min
Chicago, April 25, 1932. With Capone in prison doing his rap for income tax evasion, his 8 lieutenants are running things; their HQ is the Montmartre Club, in Cicero, 4 miles west of Chicago. Capone's booze trucks are being hijacked, his speaks are tommy-gunned; Capone's breweries are being smashed, and not just by Eliot Ness, but by rival gangs.
S2 · E30The King of Champagne 1961-05-25 · 60 min
Chicago, the 3rd week of November 1932. Working on an anonymous tip, Eliot Ness and his men raid a warehouse; all the crates are filled with champagne bottles, it was a shipment for the New Year's celebrations. Ness has the landlord who owns the warehouse, Michel (french for Michael) Viton, arrested; but he's released. Birdie, a deaf-mute, takes Viton to his boss, Edmund Wald, a bottle manufacturer (he's also the one who tipped Ness, to get rid of the competition).
S2 · E31The Nick Acropolis Story 1961-06-01 · 60 min
Chicago, Summer 1931. Nick Acropolis is the new bookmaker in town, his territory is Illinois and the 6 surrounding states; he covers bets on horse racing, boxing matches, ball games, everything. By August, his operation is $2-million per month. And so Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are on the case; Enrico Rossi has a wiretap on one of Nick's betting parlors, run by Sully Hinds. Nick and his boys pay a visit to their bookkeeper, Louis Manzak, who is Nick's brother-in-law. Louis embezzled 200 grand of Nick's money, to make a side-bet on a boxing match, and lost.
S2 · E3290-Proof Dame 1961-06-08 · 60 min
Chicago, April 1932. The city is ruled by underworld czars, one of the toughest of which is Nate Kester, former henchman for the Capone mob. To put up a pretense of legality, he owns and runs the Odeon Theatre, which specializes in Burlesque, but his real operation is bootleg booze. Kester has his boys drag in Henry Bogar, who has a 5-6 state territory selling imported brandy. Kester tells him that from now on he will carry his stuff-- cheap rotgut with forged ""de Bouverais"" cognac labels. Bogar tastes the stuff, and calls it slop; he says brandy drinkers will never buy it as long as the real stuff is available.
S3 · E1The Troubleshooter 1961-10-12 · 60 min
In the summer of 1934, a new gambling device was sweeping the nation: the punchboards. Even though they were nickel-and-dime games, it added up-- they made more money for the mob than the numbers racket. After Ness and his men smash some of the punchboard manufacturing sites, the 5 members of the syndicate running the punchboards hold a meet at a building by the freight yards: the top mobsters from Chicago (Jake ""Joe"" Petrie), Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit and New York (Max Riegel). Petrie says he can sum up all their problems in 2 words: Eliot Ness.
S3 · E2Power Play 1961-10-19 · 60 min
By the Summer of 1933, a new wave of crime has engulfed Chicago. Due to a public outcry for action, Willard Thornton is appointed as a new commissioner to clean up the town. At a press conference, Thornton arrogantly says his office does not publicly constitute criticism of any law enforcement agency-- while his tone of voice implies he privately does criticize them. Eliot Ness is standing right next to him, looking more dour than usual. Ness and his men go on a raid, they find a shipment of heroin in a hideout.
S3 · E3Tunnel of Horrors 1961-10-26 · 60 min
August 28, 1933. That night, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, and some undercover plainclothes police, are staking out an amusement pier on the Chicago lakefront; they are tailing Alexander Raeder-- owner of the pier, and the source of the new narcotics flooding the Windy City. Ness had received an anonymous tip that Raeder was delivering 15 pounds of heroin, half a million dollars' worth, to a syndicate contact.
S3 · E4The Genna Brothers 1961-11-02 · 60 min
In the years following WWI, there was a flood of European immigrants into the USA. In the early 1920s, the 6 Genna brothers, place of origin Sicily, were headed to Chicago. The Genna brothers are nothing but a gang of bullies, and in a few short years they are the ruling lords of Little Italy, an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. One night, as the 6 Gennas are beating up a street vendor, Agent Enrico Rossi whales into them. The leader, Mike Genna, asks if he knows who they are; Rossi says, ""Yeah, the Genna brothers-- one rat with 6 heads!"" Mike Genna says that Enrico Rossi is Italian, just like them; Rossi says he's ashamed.
S3 · E5The Matt Bass Scheme 1961-11-09 · 60 min
In mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness, having compiled a list of Frank Nitti's breweries & distilleries, began a series of raids designed to break the back of the Capone empire. This puts the pressure on Frank Nitti, Capone's lieutenant. Nitti calls a meet with Seth Otis and Phil Grier, who jointly own the biggest speakeasy in Chicago, the Hotsy Totsy Club.
S3 · E6Loophole 1961-11-16 · 60 min
Chicago, January 1933. Ness and his men raid a speakeasy owned by gangster Mikhail ""Red Mike"" Probich, and run by Connie LaVerne. At the trial, Probich is represented by his crooked lawyer Morton Halas, who grew up in poverty. The trial drags on for 5 days. Finally, Ness is ready to call the last prosecution witness, Connie LaVerne, who ""is 80% of their case."" Morton Halas objects, on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband.
S3 · E7Jigsaw 1961-11-23 · 60 min
September 14, 1932. At 11:30 p.m., Eliot Ness goes to the Odeon movie theatre (not the Odeon Burlesque theatre used in several episodes); he gives stoolie Marty Wilger an envelope with cash for his tips. Those tips had led to successful raids by Ness against Nitti's speaks: booze, girls, gambling tables; also 2 warehouses and a distillery in the last week. Nitti's plenty sore.
S3 · E8Man Killer 1961-12-07 · 60 min
Chicago, July 1934. Anonymous phone calls have been tipping off Ness and his men to narcotics activities; they do a bunch of raids. On August 4, even though sales have fallen off, Frank Nitti is ordering 15 kilos of heroin*, the biggest single shipment ever. That night, one of Nitti's boys makes the trade: dough for the H. He gets into a car driven by another of Nitti's boys, Manny Kravitz.
S3 · E9City Without a Name 1961-12-14 · 60 min
1933. Violence and corruption were at an all-time high in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City-- virtually every city in the U.S. The lone exception is an Eastern seaboard metropolis, referred to as City Without a Name, in which the voters had used the ballot box to vote corruption out of public office. And Federal agent Arnold Wainwright had kept organized crime out-- but on October 22, he is blasted by machine-guns while in a coffee shop.
S3 · E10Hammerlock 1961-12-21 · 60 min
New York, middle of 1932. The Syndicate-- headed by Joe Kulak, Louis ""Lepke"" Buchalter and Dutch Schultz-- has the city's huge garment industry organized and under control. Now they are setting their sights on bakeries; there are 500 independent wholesale bakers in the city. They give Bull Hanlon the word: get the biggest independent baker, Adam Stone, to sign up and all the rest will fall in line.
S3 · E11Canada Run 1962-01-04 · 60 min
November 1932. Big-time gangster Joe Palakopolous is playing a dangerous game-- he just had his hitman rub out Danny Kugan, the biggest supplier of Canadian whiskey that Frank Nitti had. And Nitti's plenty sore. Kugan was the only guy who could import Canadian Gold for Nitti. The phony stuff is no good; Nitti quips that bottled rotgut is so bad, ""it peels off the labels from the inside."" Eliot Ness and his men investigate Kugan's killing, and try to find out who will take over the operation.