Norm Kelly, The Designated Gangsters

I wrote about a lot of villains, good guys, killers, crooks, thieves, and scalawags, mixed in with some admirable, civic minded men and women that shaped and molded our city and its people. I centered eventually on the seedy side of Peoria, the corruption, the crime, the murder and of course the gambling and vice. Local folks were always fascinated with our gangster element, so I wrote and lectured about them as well. I set out to identify and write about these gangsters, but I never really found any. Oh, we had our share of hoodlums, robbers, thugs, killers, gangster wannabes and a pretty long list of police characters. However, if you wanted to see a real live gangster you would have had to head for Al Capone territory, and a few other much larger cities than Peoria, Illinois. During Prohibition we had a lot of ordinary citizens get into the ‘bootlegging’ business and illegal selling of alcohol, but believe me it was all penny-ante activity when compared to what was going on in the larger cities in America; especially allaround Chicago. Our booze market was small and of course all of our taverns and saloons, along with the distilleries and breweries were shut down.

Mayor Woodruff allowed things to flourish during Prohibition with something called Soft Drink Parlors, but it was mild around here to say the least. I often confronted some of our gangster fans who came to my lectures by asking them what they really knew about our local bad guys. I often asked them who it was that they were talking about by asking them not only to give me some names, but what they really knew about them. It turns out that not once did I really learn anything from them except that they were just passing on the myths and stories they had been told by their uncles and grandfathers. Most of these myths began after our pet gangster, Bernie Shelton, came to Peoria to live in the later part of the 1930s. I thought that I would give you the briefest version of some of our local so-called gangsters, a small group of men that I began to refer to as ‘Peoria’s Designated Gangsters.’

1920…1930…1940

It was January 16, 1920 when The Eighteenth Amendment, better known as Prohibition actually began. It was going to be doomsday for the folks in Peoria so they tried to prepare for the black days to come. It was 1920 and our local population was 76,100 people within the confines of our 9.18 square miles we called our city limits. In 1917 all the distilleries and breweries were shut down by something called the Lever Act and the local jobs began to disappear.

WW1 began in April of 1917 and some of our jobs came back to us by way of manufacturing war products, added to the fact that 5,500 of our local men went off to “Fight the Hun.” The taverns stayed open until January 16, 1920, so by then folks in town were well prepared for the onslaught of Prohibition. Hoarding was the number one defense in the beginning, and the booze that came into the city by way of Canada was really all we needed. Mayor Woodruff allowed the taverns to open up and call themselves Soft Drink Parlors, and believe me, Peoria had a pretty, bawdy, wide-open gambling town and things went along rather smoothly.

The Vaudevillians came to Peoria and it was the beginning of the ‘Jazz Age. Our Crime was kept in check, and Peorians had a lot of fun during that period, and believe it or not during that first decade of Prohibition 28,848 people moved into our city limits as well as hundreds out in the County and it looked like Peoria was not going to disappear after all. We took on Prohibition and The Great Depression and survived all that turmoil.

By 1930 things got a bit tumultuous and gambling, crime and vice had a pretty solid grip on Peoria. Now I am speaking of the downtown area, of course; that is

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THE DESIGNATED GANGSTERS

By Norman V. Kelly

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where the action was. Our tavern owners became casino owners, well, not all of them, and gambling although illegal, was allowed. Woodruff imposed what Peorians called a ‘Sin Tax,’ or ‘Funny Money’ on the tavern owners who paid for the privilege of having gambling of all sorts in their establishments.

We had a few scare-bombings, along with a few kidnappings, and a shooting or two. However, there was no organized crime, no solid gangster elements, just a bunch of hoodlums, and gangster wannabes walking around in dark suits trying to make local folks think they knew Al Capone personally. As I said Peoria was a small booze and gambling market so the competition for the almighty dollar was fierce.

The local police called all those guys ‘police characters,’ and rounded them up whenever some crime upset the local folks; but life was good here in the good old river city of Peoria, Illinois. I will give you some very short profiles of some of those Designated Gangsters.

Clyde Garrison: He was one of the 1930’s ‘kingpins’ or ‘member of the local rackets.’ as the local newspapers liked to call him. Of course, he was into slot machines and gambling but he was virtually harmless. He was also in the wholesale liquor business after Prohibition. He was given ‘credit’ for inviting the Shelton brothers to Peoria and eventually was a target of a kidnapping plot from his house over on McClure. He was shot in the leg by gunmen and his wife Cora was killed. He of course is one of the designated gangsters but in my opinion, he was never even close to the likes of the members of the Al Capone gang.

Bill Urban was among the wealthiest business men in town and from his saloon he sold a daily numbers game. My dad certainly bought one every day and rumor was that Bill made “Over $10,000.00 a week on that racket.” He was kidnapped, and the local papers gave us all the sordid details, including his payment of $80,000.00. Myth and sensationalism was the name of the game and local folks ate it up. Bill Urban was most certainly not a gangster.

Eli Cupi was a ‘police character’ and controlled a couple of strip joints and was arrested under the Mann Act, or White Slavery Act. Calling him a gangster would have been a great compliment to him. Jack Adams had his hand and body into gambling in Peoria and owned the Clover Club. He was a well-known Peoria business man and calling him a gangster was a definite insult.

Frank Kramer was owner of two saloons in town and was among the very first to stop gambling activity in his businesses. He was shot and killed by an assassin in his home on Farmington Road in 1946. He at one time had gambling in his places and was of course designated a gangster. He definitely was not a gangster.

Phillip Stumpf was a small-town petty thief, a gangster wannabe and a locksmith. He got in trouble by selling master keys to local slot machines and was killed in a sensational gangland style shooting in 1946. Calling him a gangster would be a mighty big promotion to him.

Dwight “Snooks” Gordon was a tough guy, top notch boxer and a local home builder. He was a flashy guy and most definitely was into gambling and a few slot machines. Snooks was tried for murder after a fist fight with a man near the Peoria zoo. He was exonerated by a jury and certainly was not a gangster. He, like a lot of men that made a living during the gambling era carried a gun. So what? Calling him a gangster to his face would result in your nose being broken.

Jack Glazebrook was supposed to be the right-hand gangster to Bernie Shelton. But he was a local ‘tough guy’ who liked people thinking he was really a ‘gangster’ He was just basically a ‘bouncer’ in some of the clubs and was shot in the stomach by Al Capone… that is a joke son…it was his girlfriend that shot him with a .25 caliber pistol. We called them ‘women’s guns’ in those days. Just another thug trying to make a living in downtown Peoria trying to stay as close to the Sheltons as he possibly could.

Joel ‘Joe’ Nyberg. He was as close to a gangster that we ever had except he had no connections, no mob, and no machine gun. He liked to stab people and when he was killed in October of 1946, he was out on bail for manslaughter. They found his body on a Lacon, Illinois golf course killed by a ball bat and two .38 slugs to the chest. He was arrested numerous times and police called him a punk and a police character.

Sorry I have to stop there but in all we had around 36 men during that 30 years that local folks thought, in fact knew for sure that they were indeed gangsters. Truth is they only knew what they read in out of town, sensational crime stories and what their uncles and granddads’ told them. The FBI for years indicated that Peoria was as safe as any other city its size in the United States. I was here during the 1940’s and I can tell you it was a fun, great place to live and grow up in. Funny, once we became an All American City in 1953, we began to erase our downtown area. What are we today? You tell me.

Editor’s Note: Norm is a true crime writer, author and monthly contributor to

ADVENTURE SPORTS OUTDOORS. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net

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