On Oct. 11, 1925, FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan and two Chicago police officers set a trap for a trigger-happy car thief. Shanahan had received a tip that Martin Durkin was driving a stolen car from New Mexico to a garage at 6231 S. Princeton Ave. in Chicago.
But when Durkin showed up, the police weren’t in position. The Tribune reported at the time that one was in the back of the garage and the other was on the phone in the garage office, asking the station for reinforcements.
A garage employee had warned the officer that Durkin wouldn’t go quietly. The fugitive was already being sought for shooting several police officers in Chicago and California.
Edwin Shanahan was fatally shot on Oct. 11, 1925, while trying to arrest Martin Durkin at a Chicago garage. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
The FBI, on its website, says the two officers had stepped out to seek their replacements after hours on duty. Regardless, Shanahan was left to confront Durkin alone.
“When Durkin drove in, in a large blue Packard car, Shanahan drew his revolver and approached him. ‘Get out; I want you,’ he said,” according to the Tribune story.
“Durkin, still seated, drew his revolver and fired five times. One bullet struck Shanahan in the abdomen and another near the heart. He fired several times, but is believed to have missed the driver. Then, without delay, Durkin backed out of the garage and drove away.”
Shanahan was rushed to St. Bernard’s Hospital, where he died shortly afterward. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty.
Pallbearers carry the body of Edwin Shanahan out of St. Leo’s Roman Catholic Church at 78th Street and Emerald Avenue on Oct. 14, 1925. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director, reportedly thought Shanahan’s killing posed an existential threat to the agency — that if the killer of a federal agent got away with it, other agents would never be safe. The agency launched a national manhunt.
Durkin’s mother, Hattie, told the Tribune she would send him away if he turned up at her front door asking: “Ma, can I stay here all night?”
She was tortured by the thought that officers, with shoot-to-kill orders, were tailing him. On Oct. 14, a Tribune headline announced: “2 Rifle Squads Hunt Durkin in Indiana Towns.”
“Six men were in each car and so were six rifles,” the accompanying story noted. “A plentiful supply of car bombs were taken by the detectives as they left.”
Radio stations were broadcasting appeals to northwest Indiana residents who might have seen Durkin, as he had lived there for many years.
At 21, the Tribune reported, Durkin “took up burglary as a side line.” But he had since refined his skills. Another thief might furtively steal a parked car. Durkin would boldly walk into a car dealer’s showroom, ask a salesperson about the virtues of various luxury models, pick one and say he would pay cash for it the following morning. He’d request that the car have a full gas tank and be appropriately lubricated.
Martin Durkin, left, appears in court with his lawyer, Eugene McGarry, in the summer of 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
Lee Porter, who owned the garage where Edwin Shanahan was slain, shows bullet holes to Judge Harry B. Miller and jurors during Martin Durkin’s trial in June 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
That night, he’d break into the dealership and steal the car. Then Durkin would sell it in a distant city, reaping a handsome profit for zero financial investment. It was the reason the FBI was created: to connect the dots when a crime began in one locality and finished in another.
As the authorities continued to search for Durkin, his mother told reporters she attributed his problems to physical causes.
“He’s always been a wonderful son to me,” she said. “He was a fine little boy.” But during World War I, he enlisted at age 16, saying “he’d rather get shot than be a slacker.”
He served in the Army and saw action in France. “All the cannons roaring in his ears must have done something to him,” she said. “He has been so funny lately.”
On Oct. 28, police Sgt. Harry Gray and three officers went to Lloyd Ervin Austin’s apartment, having been advised that Durkin and his girlfriend, Austin’s niece, would come there. They asked if they could wait inside for Durkin.
Hattie Durkin kisses her son, Martin, around the time he was on trial in the shooting death of FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
When Durkin arrived with the girlfriend — Elizabeth “Betty” Andrews Werner — Gray tried to arrest him, and a gun battle ensued.
Sgt. Michael Naughton fired a shotgun at Durkin, but the blast killed Austin, who was hiding in a closet.
The girlfriend then fired a revolver, fatally wounding Gray. His wife would sit beside his hospital bed until he died five days later. His last words were, reportedly: “Oh, if Naughton had only known how to use a shotgun, or if he had let me take it.”
Durkin was wounded but again escaped. Between these two bloody episodes, frustrated law enforcement agencies launched umpteen raids and searched every which way.
Durkin became a celebrity, a desperado folk hero like Jesse James or Al Capone, Durkin’s contemporary. The Tribune dubbed him a “dapper sheik,” a reference to his movie star looks and suave manner.
Some of his female admirers became accomplices. Werner, whom the Tribune pronounced “just about the prettiest girl who ever protested innocence from behind the bars,” told reporters at the West Chicago Avenue police station: “Why, Marty wouldn’t kill a dog.”
The remark, the Oct. 13 story noted, echoed “all those statements which lovely ladies, for many a year, have been making in defense of their man when he gets in a jam.”
The Tribune described Martin Durkin’s wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, shown in 1926, as someone who Durkin “wooed hurriedly, wed hastily and promised, at the time of his arrest, to love long.” He also had a “sweetheart” named Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Andrews Werner. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
In November, the Tribune reported that “a man resembling Durkin” visited a barbershop at 1443 Fullerton Ave. Ora F. Croucher, the barber, said the man carried a newspaper, held it over his face during the haircut and occasionally glanced at the front door. When the barber brushed against the customer’s right side, he felt a pistol.
By December, there were rumors that Durkin was negotiating his return from a distant location. He planned to plead self-defense, claiming the FBI agent had fired first.
The following month, the FBI got a critical break. On Jan. 17, 1926, a sheriff in Pecos, Texas, had noticed a green Cadillac and asked the driver to see the ownership papers. The sheriff observed the man had a pistol and there was a .44-caliber Winchester rifle in the back seat.
The driver said he was a sheriff and the papers were in his hotel room. His looks and dignified manner were convincing, so the Texas sheriff allowed him to leave to fetch them.
When he didn’t return, the sheriff went to the hotel and was told that a “Mr. Conley” and a female companion had hastily departed. When he reported the incident, the FBI agent in El Paso recognized the man’s resemblance to Durkin’s image on a wanted poster.
After a three-month manhunt, Martin Durkin, center, was in the custody of detectives in early 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
The car, with a broken wheel, was found abandoned near Girvin, Texas. A ticket agent said a strange man and woman had boarded a Southern Pacific train for San Antonio. The conductor of that train was interviewed at his home in El Paso and verified that the man seemed to be Durkin and had inquired about a connecting train to St. Louis.
The St. Louis police stopped the train in an open field near that city. Durkin was dragged from the train and clapped in irons.
As Durkin awaited trial, his girlfriend, Betty Werner, and his wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, announced they’d joined forces to save him from the death penalty.
“I’m awfully glad Betty’s going to stick to Mart,” the wife said of the girlfriend’s fidelity. “But why shouldn’t she stick? I don’t see how any woman could try to send a man to the gallows, no matter what she thought of him.”
“Gee, this love business is something funny,” Durkin said.
By the time of the trial, Werner had a change of heart and told a prosecutor she would tell “the whole truth,” the Tribune reported in April 1926.
“And if I tell the truth I surely can’t testify for Marty,” she said.
She added: “I’m going to work hard after it’s all over.” Some people, the Tribune noted, thought she meant working in the movies.
Martin Durkin leaves for state prison in 1926, having been convicted of killing FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. At the time, such an act was not a federal crime. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
Because it wasn’t a federal offense to kill an FBI agent, Durkin was tried in a state court. A jury didn’t buy Durkin’s self-defense argument, and he was sentenced to serve 35 years in the Joliet penitentiary.
He was subsequently transferred to the federal prison in Leavenworth to serve time for transporting stolen vehicles across state lines.
Durkin was released on July 28, 1954, when he was 53. He died in 1981.
Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of “Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.”
Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at grossmanron34@gmail.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com
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