The 1926 Orland Park Murder Mystery

By Matthew T Galik

The true story behind a Jazz Age crime that shook the Chicago region and shaped the fates of three very different men. 

On the morning of April 14, 1926, the Inland Steel payroll delivery was hijacked in Indiana Harbor. Later that afternoon, Will County deputy sheriff and Mokena resident Walter Fisher died in a hail of gunfire just outside Orland Park. That night, the bullet-riddled body of Santo Calabrese turned up on a Broadview road. The exact sequence of events remains uncertain, but a jury was able to trace enough of the day’s violent trajectory to send Daniel Hesly on the path to Alcatraz. Matthew Galik leaps into a drama of high-speed pursuit and mistaken identity that shocked the jaded sensibilities of Prohibition-era Chicago and plunged the town of Mokena into mourning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781439665619

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The night of April 14, 1926, found Al Hruby tending to business at the Airdrome Tavern in Broadview, Illinois. The village was a quiet one, located twelve miles west of Chicago’s Loop, and until a few years prior had been known for being the Windy City’s airmail hub. Hruby owned his place; in the following days, he would call it a restaurant, while the press would come to derisively refer to it as a roadhouse, which, according to the jargon of the era, meant that illegal booze could have secretly flowed there. With the daily comings and goings likely winding down that Wednesday evening, Hruby was surprised to see a man and two women who had just left his place come bursting back through the Airdrome’s doors around 11:15 p.m.

Theirs was frantic, jumbled talk of something in the middle of Twenty-Second Street, just a short distance down the road and to the east. Was it a body? Al Hruby would later state that his first instinct was that the man was the victim of an accident, perhaps brought on by illegal, rotgut alcohol that could be easily had in and around Chicago. Hruby soon found himself driving down Twenty-Second Street with two buddies, trailing behind the people who had let him know. As the brightness of the auto’s headlights cut a swath through the inky April darkness, their car slowed when Hruby caught something in their glow—something out of the ordinary.

The auto idled, and Hruby emerged to get a closer look at the figure sprawled in this desolate stretch of road. His eyes were filled with the unforgettable sight of carnage; this was much more serious than a bad hangover. With the hum of his car droning behind him, Hruby saw the crimson streak of a bloody tire print leading away from the man. As his eyes slowly came into focus, he recognized that the man before him was motionless and gory, his body punctured with bullet holes.

In time, the swarthy, neatly dressed man discovered in Twenty-Second Street by Hruby and his customers would prove to be a corpse. To investigators, it was business as usual, just another one of the 729 unsolved murders that occurred in and around Chicago during the Prohibition era. Images of pearl-bedecked flappers doing the Charleston, the great silent film stars Harold Lloyd and Colleen Moore and the burgeoning Art Deco style fill our minds with the mention of the Roaring Twenties. To the majority of us in the early twenty-first century, the events of this decade are far removed yet still clear in our collective psyche. It was a decade of excess and heady exuberance, one in which the United States’ victory in World War I was still fresh, the American economy expanded at a dizzying rate and exciting new technology such as the radio, automobile and airplane flourished.

The Jazz Age also was an era that bred a wave of crime and bloodshed, particularly in and around Chicago. Having faced increased pressure from the strong anti-liquor lobby, the federal government’s passage of the Volstead Act in 1919 led to previously unheard-of levels of crime. Despite the nationwide prohibition of the manufacturing and selling of alcoholic beverages, speakeasies could be found in nearly every American city of consequence. Brutal gang wars between rival factions of bootleggers were commonplace, especially in Chicago, which in the particularly bloody year of 1924 was thrust into the Bootleg Battle of the Marne.

Al Hruby’s grisly discovery of Santo Calabrese’s corpse on that April evening in 1926 was the link to two now long-forgotten crimes that shook the Chicago region. A multi-thousand-dollar mail heist and the subsequent brutal shooting of a Will County sheriff’s deputy the same day would, in time, come to be woven together as one by law enforcement and the media. The events would shape the fates of three men of diverse backgrounds and change the lives of all those involved, although to this day, many questions surrounding them remain unanswered.

CHAPTER 1

THE HEART

OF A COMMUNITY

As every story has its end, every tale also has a beginning. Ours takes us to the sleepy, rural village of Mokena, Illinois. Comprising the northern half of Frankfort Township in eastern Will County, Mokena and the surrounding region were composed mostly of hearty second- and third-generation German Americans who gained their livelihoods through the fertile earth or the herds of dairy cows that grazed the land. The residents of Mokena proper lived here and there in modern bungalows but mostly in simple nineteenth-century wood-frame houses whose walls occasionally could be found caked in soot from passing locomotives. Wolf Road, a dirt path that led to and from the village, became impassable in anything less than perfect weather. The number of Mokena’s inhabitants hovered around 475 for the first half of the 1920s, up more than twofold from the turn of the twentieth century.

Although Mokena was a country village, it didn’t lack for fun. Various social groups organized by the four town churches (three Protestant and one Catholic) entertained area youth, as did the vastness of the surrounding countryside, with woods ideal for hunting and placid Hickory Creek perfect for fishing. A large, wooden dance pavilion located in the shade of Cappel’s Grove off Wolf Road drew crowds from miles around. Joliet, the hub of Will County, with its new Rialto Theater and myriad stores and restaurants, was but a short trip west down the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.

The only industry to be spoken of in Mokena was a milk bottling plant run by the Bowman Dairy Company of Chicago. Due to a recent dispute between health authorities and area farmers regarding cattle vaccinations, the plant was shuttered by the company in 1926. Houses of business lined Front Street in 1926 as they had for decades in Mokena’s past. A large, rambling building housed the blacksmith shop of Al Braun, where the sparks flew on a daily basis. The small yet respected Mokena State Bank stood proudly with a colonnaded façade of Bedford stone, and the pharmacy of Richard Hensel dispensed not only medicine but also sweet treats from its soda fountain. Iron goods were supplied by Milton and Roy Krapp, proprietors of the Mokena Hardware Company. Automotive needs were seen to by Elmer Cooper and Barney Hostert in their large and centrally located garage, which in turn also served as a kind of informal city hall, a place where Mokena’s men would gather to cuss and discuss issues of the day.

An old landmark in town, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad depot at Mokena, is seen in this circa 1920 view. Courtesy Richard Quinn.

Current events were recorded in a small yet lively newspaper called the News-Bulletin. Editor William Semmler published the paper from a historic Front Street building, passionately boosting Mokena and promoting local thought. A prime example of reportage from the young newsman’s publication would be the story of wreaths of smoke discovered emanating from an abandoned Front Street structure by the local fire marshal. Upon quick investigation, it was found that a gang of boys had used the cellar for a dugout. Straw, papers, oil and gasoline were found. With stern admonition not to repeat the practice, the boys were turned loose by the marshal to face their parents.

The picturesque Hensel Pharmacy is seen around 1925 in this eastward-facing postcard of Mokena’s Front Street. Courtesy Richard Quinn.