The poverty that hung over the Irish ghettos of New York continued to spew out a whole array of gunmen
well into the twentieth century including the sad case of Francis "Two Gun" Crowley.

Crowley had been abandoned as a child and was raised in foster homes since infancy. At age 12, one of
these foster families farmed him out to work as a day laborer and factory worker.

From that point on, Crowley, who may have been mildly retarded according to some Police sources, grew
into a small time neighborhood thief and pickpocket.

A timid young man, he never drank nor smoked, unusual for a New York neighborhood wise guy.

Crowley broke into his short-lived criminal career in his late teens as an armed robber and eventually
hooked up with another small time crook named Rudolf Durunger.

One evening, Crowley and Durunger meet a dance hall hostess named Virginia Banner, whom the pair
eventually kidnapped and raped. Afterwards Crowley shot the girl through the head.

Police ballistics experts matched the bullets from the young woman's body from those Crowley had fired
at a recent stick-up but left them without any clues as to who the gun belonged to.

They found out several months later when Police officers patrolling a lover's lane stumbled on to
Crowley and his girlfriend parked along the road.

At first, the officers politely told the couple to move along, but Crowley decided to argue the point.
When one of the officers demanded to see Crowley's drivers license, Crowley pulled out a revolver and
shot the cop dead on the spot.

The cops match Crowley's bullets again, but thist ime they had his name and description. Police put
out a shoot-to-kill order on Crowley, who had managed to escape into the city with his new girlfriend,
16-year-old Helen Walsh and Durunger.

Tracked down to an apartment on West 90th Street by an army of policemen, the area was roped off for
two square blocks after an all-out, daylight fun battle erupted between Crowley and the cops who fired
700 shots in the general direction of the apartment where Crowley and company were shooting from, all
the while with Crowley, a gun in each hand, screaming out the window: "You ain't gonna take me alive,
coppers."

That probably would have been fine with the police, except by now the whole gun battle had taken on a
circus atmosphere with hundreds of spectators leaning out of apartment windows or on roof tops cheering
Crowley on. Police responded with tear gas, which Crowley quickly tossed back at them, to the wild
cheers from crowds. Finally, enough tear gas was used and a squad of policemen rushed the apartment
to find Crowley, Walsh and Durunger hiding under a bed.

At the trial Walsh testified against Crowley, claiming to have been kidnapped and Durunger, who was
facing a rape/murder charge, blamed every crime he had ever committed on Crowley as well.

It didn't matter; both young men were sentenced to death in the electric chair. They were executed in
November of 1933.

A few year later came Elmer "The Trigger" Burke (he detested the name Elmer and insisted on being called
trigger), who was raised in New York by his brother Charlie, who took over care of the family upon
the death of their parents. Soon the two brothers were committing petty robberies. Burke was sent to
reform school in 1941 but had his sentence cut for joining the service where he served in the Italian
campaign.

He returned to New York and throughout the late forties rented himself out as a hit man for hire,
specializing in machine gun killings. He was arrested for robbing a liquor store in 1946, while sitting
in his car outside the store, counting his loot, and sentenced to only two years in Sing Sing Prison.

During Burke's stay in the big house, his idol and brother, Charlie was gunned down in an underworld
shoot-out. Burke swore vengeance on his brother's death, even though it was never completely clear who
the killer was.

It didn't matter to Burke. Upon his release from Sing, Burke hunted down the man he suspected of being
his brother's killer and blew off the back of his head with a double-barreled shotgun. With personal
business finished, Burke went back into the killer-for-hire business, but now upping his fee to $1,000
for a standard syndicate hit.

Burke was renowned for his fierce and uncontrollable temper. He once shot and killed a bartender named
Edward "Poochy" Walsh, who dared interfere in a fistfight Burke got into with a local hoodlum.
Walsh's exact mistake was, protested Burke, kicking his already half-dead victim in the head. Burke
left the bar, throughout Walsh's interference, and came back into the bar and shot Walsh in the face
until he was dead and then just as calmly strolled back out of the tavern.

In 1954, the mob hired Burke to go up to boston and kill Joseph Specs O'Keefe, one of brains behind
the million-dollar Brinks robbery, because the Mob figured that O'Keefe would cave in to Police pressure
once they figured out that it was O'Keefe who was behind the robbery.

Burke took the job and went to Boston. He found O'Keefe in a Dorchester housing project and calmly
chased him around the complex for half an hour, letting off dozens of rounds while he ran. After thirty-
five minutes of this, Burke finally shot O'Keefe in the leg.

Thinking he had killed O'Keefe, Burke calmly got into his car and drove off. Remarkably, Burke never
left Boston and spent several days touring the city's landmarks.

Even more remarkably, O'Keefe filed a complaint against Burke for attempted murder. Patrolman Frank
Crawford in the Back Bay section of Boston arrested Burke without incident eight days later.

Confined to the Charles Street jail, Burke easily escaped and was recaptured a year later while waiting
for a bus in Charleston. He was convicted of murdering bartender Edward Walsh, sentenced to death, and
electrocuted on January 9, 1958.