The Jewish & Redneck Gangsters that Beat the KKK: Charlie Birger w/ Jake Hanrahan
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April 19th, 1928, in Southern Illinois. 500 people are watching Charlie Berger, Russian Jewish immigrant, former soldier, cowboy, bootlegger, bank robber, and gangster warlord of Southern Illinois, walk the 100 feet or so to the gallows. He stops to shake hands with various people in the crowd, smiles at everyone. Doesn't seem like he has a care in the world.

Burger's been a beloved figure here for a decade. He kept the bars full of whiskey, tossed out money and ice cream to children. He would even slip an envelope of money under the door of a poor family's house. He had a bit of a reputation as a Robin Hood figure, and he was also charismatic as all hell, good-looking, sharp, and tough as nails. It wasn't all smiles, though. Burger had a lot of enemies. He was fond of saying, I never killed a man who didn't deserve killing. But of course, you know, that's like an opinion.

Once he killed two men in the span of four days, and he got away with it too. He had this habit of letting his rivals issue threats so that when he took them out, he could claim self-defense. It didn't hurt that he had plenty of cops and politicians on his payroll. Berger also wasn't shy about his criminal exploits. He once claimed he couldn't go to jail after an arrest because he needed to kill a rival to win a $500 bet.

His reputation for violent retribution was so powerful that sources for a book that was written 70 years after his death requested to be anonymous. It's actually quite a surprise that Berger is even here, facing the law. For a decade, he's been Teflon, untouchable,

Nothing the police or anyone else could do. The Ku Klux Klan, on the rise after the movie Birth of a Nation came out, and hyping themselves up as some sort of purity enforcers, sent the fearsome Two Guns Young to the area to wage war on the bootleggers and gangsters that had taken over during Prohibition. Young and the Klan didn't count on the war that came back from the Burger Gang shooters and their allies, the Shelton Brothers.

Then the Berger gang and Shelton gang turned on each other, turning Southern Illinois into a bloodbath with 1920-style technicals and even an air raid. Still, Berger remained unharmed, even taking to the radio to issue public death threats. Unfortunately, he ended up pushing things a little too far, and now he's been sentenced to death by Hinkins. He would be the last man to be publicly executed in Illinois, and the state is determined to go through with it.

When he gets to the top of the steps, he points to the crowd and says, quote, Beautiful world. I have not a thing in the world against anybody. I forgive everybody. I was able to do all that through this wonderful Jewish rabbi. He even told the hangman he was a wonderful boy and thanked the wife of his jailer. The headline on the paper the next day read, quote, Never unshaken, dies as he lived, smiles and does not squeal. This is the Underworld Podcast. ♪

Welcome back to the In The World Podcast. We are two journalists who have reported on crime all over the world. And every week we bring you a different story about global organized crime from the past to the future, while sharing helpful tips about smuggling exotic animals on commercial airlines. I'm your host, Danny Gold. My usual co-host, Sean Williams, is not here. He is on his monthly vacation somewhere on a boat, probably paid for with funds he embezzled from this podcast, as always.

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I'm actually joined this week today by a special guest, my friend and yours, Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front, who is a documentary filmmaker, a writer, a podcaster, everything like that. I last saw him in Ukraine about a month ago when he was making his fantastic doc about

about anti-fascist football hooligans taking the fight to Russia on the front lines. And he also bought me dinner. So if at least four of you could go subscribe to his Patreon to help him earn that money back, please do so. Thanks very much for having me, mate. But don't worry, you don't need to pay me back that money. It's all good. It was a gift. It was delicious. I think it was pizza and we got some beers too. And it was awesome. Yeah, it wasn't that good. But Jake's been doing this independent podcast thing and media company thing for longer than we have. And he's always been one of our biggest supporters.

And drove a lot of his listeners to us. So thank you for that, Jake. Of course, man. It's good stuff. You know, good stuff supports good stuff. That's what I think. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think we all we always love these stories of like mafiosos or gangsters fighting Nazis. Right. Yeah. There's a few pretty classic ones. There's Meyer Lansky and his crew just breaking up rallies in New York and being beating the crap out of Nazis. Yeah. Bugsy Siegel almost killing Hitler in some Italian villa. I think it was. And like Lucky Luciano and his goons making sure the ports didn't have any German spies. Yeah.

These are all pretty well-known stories, I think, for people who pay attention to this sort of thing. But this one about like mafioso bootleggers taking on the KKK in Illinois in the 1920s, I actually, I hadn't heard about it before. No, same, never. Like when you told me about it, I was like, all right, this is right up my alley. How have I not heard of it? Like it's a very cool story. Oh, yeah.

No, this is perfect for you. And I think that's part of the reason I wanted to get you for this. And also, I think part of it too is that like Midwest mafioso stuff doesn't get that much attention as the East Coast, New York stuff or London stuff.

And the stuff that usually does is out of Chicago with Al Capone. Right. But there's plenty of wild stuff when you look into an America, like in, in, in Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and this story too. What kind of, um, if you don't mind me asking like a very British thing to us, but like what kind of culture is like the Midwest associated with generally? I mean, I guess it's kind of like, um, I think a lot of people look at it as like American culture, right? It's like very nice, uh,

polite society sort of stuff. You know, there's like a healthy amount of like, I think Irish and Italian immigrants in some parts of it, but it's also viewed as like sort of evangelical church land, Americana state fairs, fatty foods, that sort of thing. Right. Right. So very American. Right. Very, very American in that regard, you know?

There's actually a single book out there about the Berger gang called A Night of Another Sort by Gary DeNeal. And I think a lot of the articles I read were based around it, though there are some primary sources from newspapers at the time. I unfortunately didn't have enough time to get the book and go through it. But if you want to learn more about this guy that we're going to talk about, Charlie Berger, I think that's definitely the book to get.

And Berger is actually a Russian Jew. He's born there in the 1880s, and his real name is Shakhna Itzig Berger. This family ends up coming to the U.S. when he's eight years old. They're following an older brother, and they settle in St. Louis, which back then is like the fourth biggest city in the U.S. So now it's not even in the top 50.

And he even ends up getting a job as a newsboy for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is a great paper that still is doing a fantastic job covering St. Louis crime. I think we've covered the story of St. Louis crime a couple times in the podcast, and I made a bunch of docs about it. The murder rate in St. Louis, it's actually considerably lower this year, so that's pretty good news on that front. That's good. And the new number one, yeah, the new number one currently in the U.S. is New Orleans, which always had that rep and I guess is back to the bad old days, unfortunately. Yeah.

And another side note, like I know our scumbag listeners who I love dearly don't come here for historical like Jewish history stuff, but more so for advice on how to, you know, sneak ketamine to sporting events or whatever. But I'm going to give it anyway. The reason a lot of Jewish families from Russia and Poland ended up settling in the Midwest and South during these times is because there was actually this divide, right? There are a lot of Jews in New York for sure, but the previous wave had included mostly German Jews who were

were more educated, professional, better off. And then these waves of Eastern European and Russian Jews started coming in, especially after all the Russian pogroms that started happening at the end of the 19th century. They were less educated. They were like rural people. They were wilder, kind of looked down on.

And the more established Jews, they were kind of worried that if you had all of them coming in, it would lead to more anti-Semitism and more immigration restriction, which is not an unfounded concern. So they encouraged and actually did help settle them elsewhere outside the Northeast in places like St. Louis. And that was one of the biggest cities in the US back then. So they already did have a small population, comparatively speaking. But yeah, they brought a lot of them in. And that's why you have these communities that got started in a place like St. Louis.

So Berger, he works as a newsboy, and then he starts working in a pool room, but eventually he joins the army in 1901, which is G Company in the newly formed 13th Cavalry, serving in South Dakota, and he becomes this pretty established horseman. He's said to have been an expert at breaking wild horses, which is kind of a badass thing to be good at. It's like basically making them rideable, right? Kind of domesticating them. Right.

That sounds fucking hard. Yeah, dude. I feel like I've seen it only in movies, like Legends of the Fall or modern westerns, like the neo-western stuff, which is awesome. Yeah, one of those dudes who touches the horse on the nose and whispers to, I don't know, man, whatever it is. Yeah, baby, that's right. He's good at that. He gets an honorable discharge from the army, and he's described as being a courageous and capable soldier.

So he leaves the army in 1904. He tries his luck as a cowboy. That doesn't work out. And according to southern.com, quote, Berger returned to the rough area of East St. Louis and for about eight years knocked about in obscure jobs. He was five feet eight and wiry, handsome and pleasant enough if he was getting his way. But if you push Charlie, you had somebody to fight. So for you non-Americans and Americans that didn't pay attention, East

East St. Louis is actually in the state of Illinois, Southern Illinois. So it's just across the river from St. Louis, which is in Missouri. And it was this huge manufacturing hub back then, just like factories everywhere. And because of that, you have a lot of roughnecks there and there's people who are real salt of the earth types. So it had its share of crime. And also when you have all these working men there, you're going to have booze, hookers, drugs, all that sort of stuff. Now it's actually a really devastated area because all that

All that manufacturing went away. So it's a vacant city. It's got a real bad rep for murder and crime and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, so he's in East St. Louis post-army. He tries a few things, including mining, which is big there. It doesn't really work. By 1913, he marries the first of his four wives that he would have, and he moves to Saline County. This is coal country, and it's also a dry county. Oh, fuck.

This is coal country, and it's also a dry area. So this is before Prohibition, but there were still areas where they didn't serve alcohol. And when you've got coal miners and no booze for them, that's a big market. So he starts running a little whiskey in a tavern, and he also runs a brothel out of that tavern as well.

And Salina is part of this area. They call it little Egypt, right? With Franklin and Williamson counties in Southern Illinois. It's known for being kind of a violent place with old school family feuds, like Hatfields versus McCoy style, real like Appalachia shit. Like blood feud type shit.

Right, right, right, right, right. Because they were, you know, people, Scots, Irish that came over, that sort of thing. They lived in the mountains. And there was also lots of clashes between coal miners and strike breakers during this time. So it was real rough and tumble. And I feel like, you know, Jake, you're from the Midlands. You can appreciate that sort of situation. I mean, let's be honest. It's a rough and ready culture. So Williamson eventually earns the nickname Bloody Williamson for all of that. And because of something called the Heron Mine Massacre in 1922, he's

when a shootout broke out at a coal mine strike and 23 people were killed, which is like, that's insane. You know, that this kind of thing was 23 people killed at like a strike. But I guess, you know, that's,

coal miners 1910s 1920s you had really rough conditions strikes violence pollution like it was yeah it was real it was real heavy well there's some excellent kind of i don't want to say forgotten history but history that's not exactly part of many curriculums in america or anywhere really um yeah where like a lot of these unions of like the miners and and people like that they would come together and yeah they would fight the state because they were like hey what the fuck is this

you know, you're taking advantage of us. It's really interesting. Kind of a lost, a lost history. You know, it's a shame. There's a, there's a really famous documentary. I think it was from the sixties and seventies about a strike to God. How can I remember? It's named after the County where the strike was, um, about the clashes involved in, in like mining and things like that. So yeah, it was still, I say 1910s, 1920s, but that stuff was still going on generations later. Yeah. Yeah. This is a quote from the Illinois state museum archive of Williamson. The County had a history of violence dating back to the 1860s and

and an acceptance of murder that resulted in a failure to convict any defendant for that crime for 100 years. So yeah, you know, murder was not uncommon in these areas. Perfect sort of territory for a gangster to get going. So Berger, I mean, he's a sharp guy. He's tough. Says the Chicago Tribune, quote, Berger forged an informal business alliance between the hill people who manufactured much of his booze in deepwood stills and the miners who consume most of it. I just...

I love the term hill people, man. It's just real, real like Scots Irish mountain shit. And I, I, I, I like learning about that sort of part of immigration. Why there's a really good book called American nations. I just read and it kind of delves into, I think there's a few of them that delves into these immigration patterns and they call them the borderlanders because there was the people who came from the borderlands of,

of the UK that were used to like this, um, you know, history of violence dealing with like the, the, the, the state and all that sort of stuff. And they sort of brought that culture with them to the U S and just wanted to be left alone and do operate their own thing. But if people cross them, you know, they got very violent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we had it even in actually in England, it wasn't just Ireland and Scotland, like even in England, we had, um, a group that I I'm particularly interested in called the new levelers, or sometimes they were known as the diggers.

And they were like, you know, like kind of farm people, hill people, I guess, if you like. And they actually kind of, they actually led an uprising from the place where I'm from in the Midlands in like the 1600s. And they would just take land from the time. It wasn't really the, I mean, it was the state, but it was the monarchy right from the king. And they would just take the land back and they would start growing crops on it, you know, illegally illegally.

and just give out the food to like you know like they would set up a co-op with people in the area that were completely fucking broke starving and you know obviously the monarchy didn't give a shit about them the government didn't give a shit about them so yeah so the the levelers would um yeah they would do it themselves and they got into like you know open combat with with the state with the king with the whatever with the monarchy um obviously they got like massacred and whatever and it's not even taught in our history books in school or anything but it's a really cool bit of like radical you know history from britain

And yeah, they were just people that were like, hey, we want to be left alone, but you keep taking our land to ride your horses on it. So we're going to grow crops on it because we're starving. So it's so cool when you see that that stuff has a legacy somewhere else as well. Yeah, it's really fascinating. And the way it sort of forged this culture in Appalachia and how that worked out. And the thing to understand back then too, this is like a perfect lead in. A lot of the people coming into work, the mines were,

There was this big immigration thing happening, right? And you had, you know, you had a few Jews, but you had lots of Catholics coming in. And there was a lot of fear and a hatred of these new immigrants in this changing rural America, which, you know, obviously sounds familiar. So you had, you know, Catholics, few Jews, but these like European, English, whatever it was, immigrants coming in.

And they were going into these strict Protestant communities that weren't so fond of them. And they weren't fond of their taste for booze either. And that's going to lead to some things that we'll talk about in a little bit. Says the Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal, quote, alcohol was viewed as an un-American vice practiced by immigrants, many of whom belonged to the Catholic Church and other religions. Many immigrants worked in the coal mines of Southern Illinois, living mainly in very small towns with a strong ethnic identity. Alcohol was a part of their life and bootlegging came naturally to them.

So in 1919, the Volstead Act comes along and bans alcohol and prohibition starts. And as we've talked about in other episodes and everywhere else I think has dived into this, this is like the boon for organized crime that is just the greatest thing that they've ever dreamed of, right? And Charlie, he's already running booze in the dry county. He was kind of small time, but he's well suited to take advantage of the situation, and he does.

He had a saloon by then called the Near Bar, which also had a casino and a brothel. And you got to understand, though, this isn't like, you know, Boardwalk Empire or Chicago style with like Capone and all that. This is like rural folk, moonshine, hollows, winter's bone, like not fancy speakeasies. Think more roadside taverns, barns and all that. And Berger just starts expanding all over the county.

He's said to be this good-looking guy, charismatic, a charmer, a showman. He kind of dressed like the cowboy part of his background. And he lived in Harrisburg where he had a family, two daughters. And there he kind of played this role of respectable businessman, family man, all that. I think at this point, that's kind of like a gangster cliche. The guy who pretends like he's just got like

legal interests but back then i think it was kind of revolutionary well yeah aspiration political right like it wasn't just about like you know okay let's just do crime to make more money and buy a lamborghini it was like a political not to say that like obviously they weren't benefiting but there was i think the people would certainly would appreciate that kind of gangster you know quote unquote gangster than the kind we have today

Right, right. He had these aspirations of respectability. Like he wanted to hang out with the elites and all that. He wasn't like a thug over there. He didn't play that role. He let, you know, he had cars and phones back then, which was not a normal thing people to have, you know, and he would lend them out to people. He would toss dimes to kids, which,

I think sounds like a dickhead move nowadays, but back then it was probably like tossing out $20 bills to them. I don't know. I mean, Google inflation, who the hell knows? He gave money to the poor. He had this reputation as being like a Robin Hood gangster. And according to Daniil's book, quote, one of his wives said when he found out there was a family in need, he didn't make it known. He went and he bought this stuff and he set it on the porch. He would leave money in envelopes under their doors. So, you know, good dude in that regard, I guess.

And I'm actually quoting an NPR article now by Tara McKellen McAndrew, which I use a bit. And she's quoting the book. So it's kind of like quote Inception with that quote right there. But Berger, he kept this town of Harrisburg crime free, right? When a shop was robbed there, he very publicly paid the shop owner the money he had lost. And then a few days later, the thief turns up dead.

So he kept a, yeah, he wanted to keep things on the straight and narrow where he was. But in neighboring counties, right, he's building a bootlegging empire and he's ruthless. Early on in his rise, he personally kills two small timers who try to get in his way. And it's only a few days apart and he always claims self-defense. And he had this thing he would push and he would aggravate his rivals and he would get them to publicly threaten him.

So when he killed them, it was really easy to get off and be like, hey, it was self-defense. You heard what they said about me. That's crazy. That's like, I don't like him. Stay on your ground, right? Right. But it's like, I don't like him. I'll get him to hate me so that I can murder him. That's wild. And now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp.com.

When you have something like your car, you take it in for updates all the time, for checkups, for all that when things aren't working right. Imagine you had the same car for your entire life. This is how our brains work. So why don't we treat them that way? Get them... I mean, the strategy that seems to work. And also he's buying off all the local politicians and the police, just like bootleggers did in big cities like New York and Atlantic City and all that. And he

And he's ruling it as his own little kingdom. He's putting the fear of God into anyone who even thinks about crossing him, building his army of shooters that came to be known as burgers boys. And there's an extremely bad-ass photo of them that I'll put on the Patreon and on the IG, which is just like, yeah, I mean, they, they had a look, you know, to these guys had style, man, that 1920s gangster cowboy style. So,

We're in the early 1920s now, but it's not just Berger that's on the rise getting powerful, right? That's getting an army behind him. There's two other groups on the rise in this area. And the first is another group of gangsters led by the Shelton brothers called the Shelton gang. So very original. Carl, Earl, and Bernie Shelton, they're born poor in southeastern Illinois in nearby Wayne County. And a lot of this info is from an interview with this guy, Taylor Pensano, who was the author of a book called The Brothers Notorious About Them.

There's 10 Shelton brothers in total. Their parents had a tough time putting food on the table. They grew up in sort of like a ramshackle house. You know, so you're typical in that time, like American type of, you know, hillbilly, redneck, whatever you want to call it, good old boys. They learned to shoot at a young age and they start out low level, just getting into trouble. Earl and Carl are jailed in 1915 for robbery. And then once prohibition gets going, of course, like any aspiring criminal, they're going to get into that. Carl is the leader.

He's this handsome, smooth ladies man. Big Earl is the businessman and Bernie is the killer. It's kind of interesting too how all these early gangs, I guess even gangs now like the Supreme Team, they have the role. There's always the main guy who's the brains and the main guy who's the enforcer. I guess it makes sense, but I always kind of found that cliche, but also I guess reality. So

They get their start making good old-fashioned, you know, hail people moonshine. Then they open a bar in East St. Louis and they quickly start selling their booze to other bars. And they get into big-time bootlegging and running gambling ops all over Southern Illinois. Like expanding rapidly. They're also bribing all the officials and cops just running criminal rackets. Gambling, brothels, auto thefts, robbing banks. You know, they're tough, violent guys.

Says that NPR article quoting a 1926 Washington, D.C. Evening Star paper, throughout Williamson, Franklin, and Saline counties, the Shelton gang ran a dozen big roadhouses, some of them 24 hours a day. It goes on, poker and dice joints operated openly,

They were raking in a goodly portion of Williamson and Franklin County's $2 million monthly payroll, which means that they were getting the state and county employees. They were all going over there, which also, 24 hours in a rural area, that's

It's pretty, I think, I feel like the only place that happens in the States now is New Orleans during Mardi Gras. But that's, uh, sounds like prohibition always sounds like a good time to me. Yeah. Like I, when I was a kid, actually, I was really interested in Al Capone. I was really young. I don't know if you have them in America, but in Britain we have, we had this series of books called horrible histories. Um, and I don't know, my mom like bought me the Al Capone one instead of like Vikings or Romans or whatever the fuck. I guess she was like, yeah, got me the Al Capone one.

And I was just, I used to draw, this is kind of weird, but I used to like draw these, I was good at drawing as a kid and I would always draw like pictures of Al Capone because he had this big scar on his face, like from the images in the book. And I thought he was cool. Um, I know like he was a piece of shit, like really he did a lot of bad shit, but you know, as a kid I was just reading it and I remember even then just think like, wow,

That sounded like a cool time to be around, you know? This is just the Jake origin story that we always knew existed but never got out. Yeah, but I just never became a gangster. No, not even the gangster stuff. Just getting all these horrible history books and reading them. But yeah, no. Absolutely. Capone, I mean...

Chicago is Illinois. Like Capone is the one who got all the attention and you had the St. Valentine's day massacre and all that. But these guys were probably even more violent. They were a little before, well, I guess the same time as Capone. Although I think the Valentine's day massacre was 1929, but yeah, these guys get no attention. And I think it's even a better story than Capone, but Capone got a Chicago big city, a lot of newspapers there. So, you know, that's, that's what it was. Yeah.

So the Berger gang and the Shelton gang, they basically got along during this time period. You know, they each had their early years prohibition. They each had their own little kingdoms and all that. And for all intents and purposes, they were able to coexist. Some reports said they even worked together a lot.

But unfortunately, there's another group of thugs in Southern Illinois gathering soldiers and territory at this time too. And they're a real bunch of dickheads. KKK is on the rise. Remember what I said about the changing face of these rural parts of America, the immigrants coming in, bringing their wacky customs and traditions like drinking booze, right? And then you have these bootlegging mafiosos too, many of whom are immigrants as well and Catholics. And they basically ran things now.

So you have this quote from the Digital Research Library of Illinois, History Journal again, in the spring of 1923.

The Klan began organizing in Williamson County, holding meetings attended by more than 5,000 people. The Klan drew its support from both the farming community and people in the larger towns, the latter mainly of Southern origin and belonging to the Baptist and other traditional Protestant churches. There's a lot to unpack here, right? This is the second iteration of KKK that is on the rise here. So it's not like what's happening now, which is I think the third or fourth iteration. The first came about, it really, the origin story is the late 1860s

And it's made up of former Confederate Army officers that were focused on reinstalling white supremacy, slavery, and all that sort of stuff, targeting black citizens and black leaders and like the sort of northern people that were trying to spread civil rights down there. So they actually got stomped out during Reconstruction by the federal government in the 1870s.

The second iteration, it gets going in 1915, and a big part of that is that the silent movie Birth of a Nation comes out, which depicts and romanticizes the first iteration of the Klan. That's that pure Nazi shit, right? Right. You have a bunch of dickheads who see this movie about these other dickheads, and they have the bright idea to give it a go again. Wow. And this new iteration, they're a bit smarter than the last one, right? They really stress law and order, and when prohibition comes around and a sort of lawlessness pervades, it's

It's perfect for the Klan to focus on. They can appeal to the God-fearing Protestant Americans who want prohibition, right? And they blame the lawlessness on the blacks, on the Jews, on the Catholics, the immigrants, the boozers, all those who are ruining the American way of life. But it's interesting. I think the view of the KKK now, right, is like toothless rednecks and all that. But back then it was kind of like,

you know, elite parts of society, you know, established people. I remember reading into the lynching stuff as a teenager. I like, there was a lot of fucking wealthy people doing that shit. Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that was, that was the first iteration, but the second iteration that comes back, it's the same thing again, right? It's kind of like the elites that have been established in these towns forever. It's not, you know,

your regular... It's not led by dudes in the mountains who can't read and have no teeth. It's not that stereotype that we have now. I guess now definitely seems like it's a lot more like that. But yeah, it's led by the elite of these societies. By the 1920s, it's estimated that the Klan has millions of members. Millions, right? And I actually learned a lot about this from a YouTuber called The History Guy, which I know, shameful YouTuber, but he's a great source. And he talks about how

There's a lot of people in Southern Illinois, Little Egypt, this area they call, who want their towns clean and law-abiding, right? There's a reason prohibition passed, and they see booze and the industries that go with it as this un-American way of life. It's the kind of thing that Jews and Catholics and other undesirables do, and this is a perfect time to pay homage to Pauly Walnuts here, so RIP.

Dale put that quote in. I got to move some cash around. If I'm going to lamb it, I'm going with a fucking package. I'm not going to be like Mickey Masuko. That poor prick, he had five fucking minutes to run. He ended up in some rat infested motel down in Elvis country. What is that? Anywhere there are no Jews or Italians. I don't get it. It's starting. It's fucking starting. This is a thing that like booze, hookers and gambling, they see that as un-American, which I don't know. That strikes me as a

as the opposite of reality, but what can you do? So,

The Klan, they're smart about this, right? They're ranting and raving about law and order, saying they're going to clean up the towns, get rid of the gangsters, make everything law-abiding. And this is a quote from a paper called Morality in an Era of Lawlessness, which sounds kind of familiar if you think about what's going on right now. Quote, the Klan attributed the rampant government corruption of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to an American economy taken over by strangers. The KKK worked to combat the forces of corruption by obliging

by operating as a national political lobby, one that sought to reform government in much the same way as the grassroots activists who enacted municipal government reforms. The movement fought for purity reform measures, which kept with the Klan values of Americanism and tradition by supporting immigration restriction laws that would restore the American economy in addition to lobbying for prohibition in defense of Christian values.

So, yeah, you know, things change, but they also stay the same. It's always so fucking ironic when they're like, yeah, let's murder people in Jesus' name. Like, what the fuck? Right, yeah. And prohibition had passed, though, because people wanted it and had support. So the Klan did have support, and the local police, they were mostly on the take.

or they were scared of the gangsters. They had support from like total fucking squares. Right, yeah, exactly. And people who were like, you know, they wanted the police to do stuff, but they couldn't. They weren't about to do anything. So I'm going to jump a little ahead of myself here. So when the Berger and Shelton gangs were actually fighting each other after the KKK, but this is just a really good story that's illustrative of how much these gangs ran things at the time. In 1926, a reporter from D.C.,

from the Evening Star newspaper. He comes to town and he rides along with the local sheriff to see what's going on because all the gang wars and violence in Illinois, it's getting national attention, right? It's making national news. So it must have been heavy, though, to be a reporter covering this stuff because you can just get access to anyone. But the local sheriff, he brings him to the Red Onion, which is one of the burgers speakeasies. And he sees shady looking men out front. And he asked the sheriff, question,

Questions about like, you know, who are those guys? What's going on? And the sheriff is like, yeah, those are burgers, man. They're definitely armed. They're gangsters. But like a typical DC reporter who doesn't understand shit when it's not on some printed statement from an official, he's like, well, why don't you arrest them? And the guy says, quote, you don't know much about Heron, do you? You see, I don't arrest them because I can never convict them of anything. And anyway, I don't want to die.

So, I mean, there it is, you know? Yeah, serious. But it kind of shows why there were some people who backed the KKK talking about how they're going to clean up the town and do all that stuff. So they're on the rise, and they need to find a man who's willing to go into these towns and take matters into his own hands. And for that, they turn to Glenn Tugun Young, who turns up in Williamson County in 1924. So the previous Klan guy in charge over there, a guy named Cesar Cagle, he's killed.

And Young is just like, he's a shooter. You know, he's well known for being like a quick draw guy, known for being violent. He had been a prohibition agent. And this is a quote from Southern.com. Young often appeared in public in riding pants and boots, pearl handled six shooters strapped to his thighs and a submachine gun cradled in his arms. He was a former prohibition agent who was fired and prosecuted for various abuses, including killing a man. In 1923, Young was looking for a cause and the respectables of the bloody Williamson counties were

We're looking for a crusader. And do you know what kind of like, just,

Overall scumbag you have to be to get fired from being a fed for abuse in the 1920s Yeah, like you you know like the king of evil just so many abuses, right? You've got I just have like gunned down like innocence for no reason just you know real real dirtbag scumbag stuff So I I always think like you you gotta really be really dumb or really fucking really bad to get caught for anything in a time before CCTV and phones and

So this guy was a real piece of shit, I'm sure. And as a law enforcement agent, right? Like that's, it's insane. So it should give you the kind of, the idea of the kind of person that, that, that he is. Yeah.

And what happens is young in the KKK, they start up being vigilantes, right? They start doing night raids. They're going after citizens. They're going after moonshiners. They're going after innocents. They're breaking down doors, arresting. And I say arresting kind of like not accurately because they had no real authority. They're just locking up offenders, like detaining them on like basements. And they're just on the warpath. And of course, as you can imagine, they're going after the immigrants, the Catholics, the Jews, the blacks, the minors who had come to work from elsewhere.

And they're also kicking out and arresting law enforcement, installing their own politicians and sheriffs and cops. They're creating their own little kingdom run by like martial law. Like they were the law and they locked up all these people in their unofficial prisons and they're fighting the bootleggers in the streets. They lay siege to a local hospital when some injured bootleggers are there being treated. It is martial law. Like he's killing bootleggers as well. You even need a password to tell the clan if you wanted to go in or out of Heron.

And the coal miners are protesting, saying he's a dictator. But he definitely, like I said, he had a lot of supporters. So that paper on morality I mentioned earlier, it says, quote, one of the most widely praised raiders from Southern Illinois was Sheriff S. Glenn Young. As one resident commented, there was hardly a nook or corner of the entire United States where the name of S. Glenn Young is not known.

And a book written right about that time by a bishop called The Real Story of the Southern Gang Wars. I found it online, which is kind of cool because it's like, you know, wasn't typed out, right? It's like a 1920s book written in his handwriting. It says, quote, S. Glenn Young, to his admirers, was a dauntless crusader who feared neither man nor the devil in fighting sin such as he found it and around Heron. To those who hated him, he was a swashbuckling interloper whose own violence were greater than the crimes he attempted to correct.

Sounds like a really interesting character anyway. Yeah, I mean, he's that quintessential 1920s, 1930s cop who was going to clean up the town. People were so tough back then, man. Just so fucking tough. I'm out here like, oh, it's so hot in England. I might cry. These guys are just tough out there, man. Dude, I mean, it was lawlessness. Gangsters or vigilantes. Think about it. There weren't a lot of people who could stand up to these guys when they had all the guns.

So interesting side note, that book also claimed, and I found this nowhere else, that Berger had lived in a neighborhood called Hell's Half Acre in New York City, which I assumed he meant Hell's Kitchen, but I looked it up and it was the name of Brooklyn's red light district then, which is, they claim that that's how Berger learned about operating in the underworld. So that's the area real close to the Navy Yard in the East River, I think.

Sand Street, which is just south of Vinegar Hill. I'm not sure if it's true, but when some producer ultimately rips off this episode to make a movie about this story, definitely include a scene like that for Berger's formative years of him, this hillbilly going to New York, or I guess Russian, Jewish, but also country boy going to New York and learning all about it.

And also for the YouTubers and podcasters and producers who listen to our ideas and take them anyway, if you join the $15 tier on Patreon, we put up the scripts and the sources. It'll make your lives a lot easier. So definitely patreon.com slash the Underworld podcast. Definitely do it that way. It'll save you time. I would definitely advise Hollywood producers to sign up to that. It just makes their stealing so much easier. You know what I mean? They just steal it straight from the page.

It's going to be a lot. Yeah. It'll save you time. So Young is on the war path with the Klan, but Berger and his soldiers, they're not going to take this lying down and neither is the Shelton gang. So they joined forces and they go to war against Young and the KKK. And they're both just stocking up. They're getting guns. They're recruiting soldiers and shooters. Now there's gunfights breaking out on the streets. People are getting killed. I think 18 alone from 1924 to 1925, I think there was...

about a year, maybe a year and a half of this war, says that paper on morality, quote, there remained a sizable portion of the population that objected to the KKK's activities. When the Shelton and Berger gangs came together in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, they were supported by many people who, while normally law-abiding, objected to the Klan on general principles. The support of the gangs by the citizens of Williamsburg County, in conjunction with the backing of a few law enforcement officials,

gave the gangs a backing to wage war against the Klan. So, yeah, I mean, I don't want to give the impression, too, that, like, everyone loved the Klan there except for the bootleggers, right? There were also, like they say, you know, like average citizens who were like, fuck the Klan, fuck what they stand for, we support the gangsters. Yeah. Straight up. Sounds good. Yeah. If they're against the Klan, fuck it, right? Choose your weapon wisely, isn't it? Right. So, Summer Burger's boys, they even ambush Young, they shoot up his car, they injure him and his wife.

And Young, he has some papers calling him like the toughest man in America, the bravest man in America. You can kind of see how easily, you know, he'd be portrayed by his supporters taking on these gangs. You know, he kills some bootleggers too. But his reign of terror is very short-lived.

In January of 1925, Young's at the European Hotel in Haran with some of his boys, right? This is his territory. He's with his shooters. He's comfortable. But there's a lawman by the name of Or Thomas who walks in and he runs with Berger. A big gunfight ensues. He kills two of Young's bodyguards and Young, but he also is critically wounded. So he takes on these guys and shoots them down and Young dies. His funeral is huge.

There's tens of thousands of people there, though eventually his enemies use his tombstone for target practice. But that's how much support the Klan has and how much support he had. And the war keeps going because the Klan still has people. In April of 1926, though, there's this big contentious election going on.

And it's the Klan and the churchgoers versus the bootleggers, their allies, and the anti-KKK people. And there's a Klan leader by the name of John Smith, and he's at one of the polling areas, you know, just kind of watching a poll enforcer. So again, this just sounds very familiar. He's surveilling things, and he goes after some Catholic voters, including a nun. So a fight breaks out, a couple of shots are fired, word starts to spread around town, and gangsters go looking for him.

There's chaos all over. Gunfights are breaking out in the streets and they're hunting each other. Tommy guns, shotguns, all that. Even the National Guard is eventually called in. But a bunch of high-level KKK members are killed in gunfights with the Burger Gang. Some of the gangsters die too. But the KKK, they just look weak. They end up looking weaker than the gangsters. They lose steam and eventually they get kind of stamped out from Southern Illinois.

And by 1930, this iteration of the Klan is basically kind of finished. You know, they just get, I think they get down to like 30,000 members from upwards of 5 million at one point. But this gang, like the Berger gang and the Shelton gang, they basically ran the Klan out of Southern Illinois, which is, you know,

It's kind of awesome. And again, the movie writes itself. I'm surprised there hasn't been one made already. Genuinely, though, jokes aside, it would be such a sick movie as well. What a cool piece of American history that you just don't hear about. Yeah. I forgot where I read about this. It might have been a month or two ago. And I was genuinely shocked that I made a note. I was like, this is an episode right here. Yeah, yeah. So...

By this point, the Shelton gang and the Berger gang, they're running joint operations and bootlegging. They're getting liquor from Florida. They're bringing a lot of it to Chicago. They're splitting up gambling territory and all that. But of course, the partnership soon sours. Only shortly after the Klan is beaten, this is in the summer of 1926.

And with a story this old, right, it's impossible almost to separate lore from reality. Just about this and in general, you know, and I've seen, you know, I'll see stuff quoted from like a, like a newspaper in 1919 or the 1990s or 2000 that says, you know, there were 5,000 people at burgers hanging. But then you read the original source and it says 500. So all that is to say that we don't really know what the truth is, but some sources, most of them seem to think it started over a woman that both Carl Shelton and Charlie Berger were going after.

Others say it was over a robbery the Shelton's did against one of Charlie's friends. And either way, soon enough, there's war all over Bloody Williamson once again between the Shelton's and the Burgers. Both sides have a ton of soldiers and guns. Both have their local allies of politicians and police, and both have their, like, country hideouts. And...

You know, the police and politicians that weren't allies, they were too scared and powerless to do anything. And according to the history guy I mentioned earlier, the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime and Interstate Commerce in the 1950s said this gang war in Southern Illinois, quote, reached a peak in bloodiness unparalleled in United States crime history. So in six months, 24 people were killed.

And these guys are innovative, right? See, Berger, he had his headquarters at this rural roadside building called the Shady Rest. It's a barbecue, speakeasy, gas station hideout all in one with music. Called the Shady Rest? Shady Rest, yeah. That's awesome. That's so cool. With music and gambling and cockfights and all that. And the Shelton brothers, they go to an airfield. Their soldiers go to an airfield. They find a guy who's repairing a plane.

And they threaten him, slash pay him, to fly the plane over the shady rest and drop a bomb or stick a dynamite on the hideout. And I think a lot of places refer to this as the only ever aerial assault organized crime attack in U.S. history. Though, I mean, I guess it's kind of a bootleg version of you're just like flying over and dropping dynamite, but it still is. It's like a makeshift airstrike or something. Right. It's pretty innovative, man. You know, you got to give them respect.

So I found this, I found this Time Magazine story from February 1927 that's kind of written in a really fun way and it describes it like this, quote, in November, some of the Shelton gang, progressive, modern-minded, bought an airplane, dropped bombs, scarred the landscape, missed shady rest. Undiscouraged, they

So yeah, both gangs had, um...

They did all sorts of crazy shit like this. And they had what the media actually referred to back then as tanks, which don't kill me like tank people. It was basically trucks. They kind of built up with armor and fortified and stuck machine guns on.

Which I guess, you know, hadn't been done before either. And it's kind of like, you know, this is like Mad Max serious stuff that they were doing in the 1920s. So more power to them. Meanwhile, Berger goes on the radio, right? He has a message read over it where he says the general public doesn't need to worry. They have nothing to fear. The only people that are going to be killed are other gangsters. And he'll protect everyone against the Shelton brothers.

Berger also openly threatens to kill Mayor Joe Adams of West City, Illinois, unless he leaves town. So Adams was in bed with the Shelton gang. And at one point, Berger got word that a garage that Adams owned was servicing the Shelton gang's tank. But Adams, he wouldn't give it up. Berger ends up burning it down. But, you know, after that, Adams is a target. And he was also said to have been involved with the airstrike planning.

So at what's gonna happen Danny, you know what's gonna happen some motherfucker is gonna go back in the history books and be like Actually, it wasn't a tank. You know what I mean? They can they can go I mean it wasn't all right. It didn't have tread but that's how they called it a tank, you know, it's funny or like I love like misidentifying APC's on purpose as a tank on Twitter I remember stage of doing it so much tonight as like now I go stop this shit staring all around and

Um, Berger, he, you know, they, they fire a bomb and they shoot up this, the mayor's porch. And when that fails to get them, he sends two teenage brothers who are orphans and also gang members. He pays them $50 each to go shoot Adams. They knock on his door. They hand him a letter. They say it's from the Shelton brothers and they shoot him and kill him. This actually goes a little too far, you know, and it warrants are issued for his arrest, but Berger still wasn't too worried about consequences. Um,

Says the newspaper, the New Britain Herald, quote, Berger believed his machine gun rule was so strong that the law could not touch him. For weeks after the warrant was issued for his arrest for the Adams murder charge, he defied authorities to arrest him. He said he was too busy hunting Carl Shelton, having bet $500 that he would kill him.

And this is from that Time article, quote, law officers, for the most part, life-loving, peace-seeking, have shut eyes, stopped ears, waited for dog to eat dog. I mean, if you guys, I'll put this up on the Patreon, but the writing on this is just so fun, and these guys are really good. What a great line, right? What a great piece of writing. Yeah, yeah. Peace-loving, peace-seeking, life-loving law enforcement doing nothing. I mean, that's, yeah. Yeah.

It's 1927 Time Magazine. So it just kind of shows how fun journalism used to be. Yeah, right. We'll save that rant for another day. That's for the...

Berger, he does finally end up in jail, but he's treated like a celebrity. In previous jail stunts, he had done stuff like bought donkeys for the police chief's kids. And when he first went in, he's allowed to take in a machine gun and a pistol, ostensibly to protect himself against the Sheltons. But there are women coming by the jail. They're bringing him pies and food. Kids come by to just talk to him. And there's eight armed deputies patrolling the jail outside Berger's cell just to make sure that he doesn't get busted out.

At the same time, all the Sheldon brothers, they're being held in a jail too because some of Berger's men had testified against them for a 1925 mail carrier robbery. And they're facing sentences of 25 years and are in Leavenworth, which is a federal prison, I think, in Kansas.

And that's a lesson for you guys. It's not just don't Instagram your crimes. Never fuck with a mailman because that's actually a federal offense. Also, it's like one of the most important jobs ever. Yeah, no, we respect mailmen here, but also if you do fuck with them or the mail in general, like not just the mailman, the mail, it's considered a federal offense and the penalties are really, really big. I think there's also something with bus drivers too, but whatever. Eventually, the Sheltons would get off. What happens is

Berger isn't so lucky. First, the teens he hired to kill the mayor, they turn on him and testify against him.

Then the general public starts to turn on him when he goes too far. Him and his men, they kidnap a state police officer and his rumored to be pregnant school teacher wife. One theory goes the cop used to be allied with him, but turned on him and was going to try to collect a reward for info related to a bank robbery he was going to implicate the burger gang in. Another involves a car theft ring, and another is that the cop had been cozying up with the Shelton brothers. Whatever it was, the cop is killed, his

His body's found. And then months later, his wife's body is found. One of the shooters involved, who's Berger's man, turns against Berger as well, dimes him out. And the shooter also happens to be one of the witnesses in the Shelton brothers' male robbery case. And he recants his testimony. So the Shelton brothers get out of jail. And the murdered wife thing, you know, this is when public opinion kind of sours on Berger. He's still on trial. Yeah. Like that school teacher, pregnant women, you know, it's just not.

not going to fly. So he's still on trial only for the mayor's killing. And his lawyers, they're trying everything. You know, they apparently are going hard for an insanity plea, but Berger makes this joke about how he should be buried in a Catholic cemetery because the devil wouldn't look for a Jew there. And that apparently ruins his, it's too good. And it ruins his chances. And then, and then they send him to the gallows. So he's the last person, you know, that's when the cold open happens. He's the last person to be publicly hanged in the

in the great state of Illinois. And the Shelton brothers, they actually keep bootlegging and just gangbanging for a while, even after Prohibition ends.

They get involved with the labor racket. At one point, they actually had snatched Peoria, Illinois, which is, I guess, mid-level between Southern Illinois and Chicago, from the Chicago office. So they ended up being pretty serious. But yeah, that is the story of how a Jewish and redneck mafia fought off the KKK in Illinois and then fought each other. So yeah, Jake, thanks as always, man, for supporting us and for joining us. Tell people where they can find you.

Well, yeah, man. Thanks very much for educating me. Not just now, but what? Like how long have I known you? Like over 10 years, like definitely over 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's fucking fascinating, man. You're still finding these like really intricate stories. Honestly, like your work really inspired me to do the work I do years back. So it's really cool, man. Thanks for having me on again, man. Thank you, dude. No, serious. And I hope fucking, you know,

genuinely hope Hollywood producers actually fucking work with you guys. There's so many good stories here, you know, rather than just fucking stealing shit, but I doubt it. But yeah, man, if people want to, if people want to just follow my stuff, I mean, just look up popular front. That's my platform. I'm independent conflict journalism. Um,

um you can the best place really is if you go to popularfront.co and there's just links to everything there like our social media our podcast our patreon please subscribe um all of that our documentaries everything so yeah man if people just popularfront.co uh and they'll find me and if you want to look me up it's just go to my website jakehanrahan.com it's h-a-n-r-a-h-a-n

Yeah, and for us, it's patreon.com sasnatorialpodcast. As always, rate, subscribe, do all that other shit. And I want to say too, Jake's recent documentary is about anti-fascist football hooligans who are linking up and fighting against Russians in Ukraine. I mean, like,

Like, how do you not go immediately right now and watch that documentary? I don't understand. Like, if you don't want to do that, I don't, I just, I can't understand. Yeah. That for me, it's like one of like, not to be cocky, but I was like, that's a popular front classic right there. Like what a fucking story, you know? Like, yeah, it's up there with, uh, with plastic defense for me. I think it's fucking cool. YouTube hates it though, because they, uh, fucking age restricted it and demonetized everything. So yeah, if people can go to, uh, just youtube.com slash popular front, uh,

It's the first doc on there if you look on the page. Yeah, watch it, share it, all of that. Awesome. Thanks so much, Jake. Thanks, bro.