Louis "Two Gun" Alterie

October 2007

Louis "Two Gun' Alterie, a California street cowboy moved to Chi-town as a young hoodlum. His first action was to join the infamous Irish North Side Gang bossed by Dion O'Banion. This dude got his nickname because he holstered (and was never without) a pair of Colt 45's.
"Two Gun" soon earned the reputation of being a very reliable hitman with the added talent of a strong-armed extortionist. O'Banion liked his style of doing business and gave him the clear way to "do what it takes' to officials of several unions, so he could get control of them. It seems a baseball bat served as a great persuader.
It didn't take long, after a few changes in the operations of the unions, before Louis's skim reached $50,000 a month, not including the money he passed on to his boss, O'Banion. Two Gun's appetite for the finer things in life grew as fast as the money poured into his pockets.
The first "big buy" this would be cowboy did was to purchase a 3000 acre ranch outside of Gypsum, Colorado. He was determine to learn to ride a horse (too many Cowboy and Indian pictures when he was a boy). He figured it would make a great "hideout", which it did a little later in his life.
His thrist for material things included: a big yen for "great looking dolls", to supp;y that itch, he opened fancy speakeasies, bought old movie theaters (to show westerns) and purchased a few apartment buildings (probably to stash his dames).
Prohibition provided (besides the thrist for illegal booze) the thrist for enormous greed for money and power, which led gangs to infringe upon other gang's territories for their booze business.
It's a known fact that during Two Gun's "shoot them-up days" he whacked over twenty rival gang members.
When his boss, O'Banion was gunned down (the famous "handshake murder") in his flower shop by two of Al Capone's boys and Big Mike Genna (of the Taylor Street mob), he reportedly boasted to the newspaper guys, "if those cowardly rats have the guts, they'll meet me at noon at State and Madison and we'll shoot it out." Louis wanted to go at it, Wyatt Earp style.
"Two Gun", also had a very bad temper and regarded his mobster pals highly. When his pal "Nails" Morton got accidentally kicked to death by a horse (while doing Two Gun a favor by going horseback riding), he got so upset that, after the funeral, he went back to the stable, punched the horse in the snout and shot him using both Colts. To top that, later that day after a few drinks, he called the horse's owner to say, "I taught that damn horse of yours a lesson. If you want the saddle, go and git it."
Well, his "bravado" was too much. It caused quite a stir between gangs, so he was told by the new boss of the O'Banion gang, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, to leave town until things quieted down (this is where his ranch served as a hideout). O'Banion's killing started one hell of a gang war between the three gangs (Capone's and the Genna's) that lasted five years.
In 1933, homesick for the bright lights, Alterie returned to Chicago. Not wanting to stir-up trouble, he lept a low profile. However, his luck ran out in 1935, when the Feds (who had kept an eye on his movements) arrested him on a trumphed-up vagrancy charge and forced him to tesify against Al Capone's brother "Bottles" (a nickname, he picked-up because he was Capone's head booze deliveryman) in a tax evasion case the government had made against him.
This proved to be very bad for "Two Gun", on July 18th, that year, while trying to get out of town, he and his wife were leaving their north side apartment (fortunately, she was behind him) a sniper's bullet ended this hitman's career.
Ironically, he was shot by his own favorite technique of killing. Throughout the gangster world he was known as the "ambush killer". His murder, as many others, during the bootleg days in Chicago was never solved.
He's laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California. Plot: Whispering Pines L-912--grave # 6. Some say he was buried under the name of Leland Verain.

Chicago Gangsters--Genesis

FLASH!!--The Gangsters are coming!!

Chicago, "The Gangster City" is known throughout the world for its exploits of crime bosses and gangs.

This blog will tell the stories behind the names of the famous and not so famous crime figures, introduce the Chicago gangs and their bosses, their hired killers, bootleggers, crooked politicans and those who used the "Chicago Typewriter" or "Tommy Gun" to write their names on the walls of Chicago's history.

This blog will reveal little known facts about the Chicago crime gangs, Such as; where they lived, their wives and molls and why they got six feet under and in some cases the location of that little plot of ground.

So, get comfortable, put your moll on your lap and load your gat, your about to take the ride of your life into Chicago's gangster history. Now, go softly into the night. mgf

P.S. Join the "Merry Gangsters", a club of story tellers and made men.