Fred “Killer” Burke
During his criminal career, Fred Burke gained a reputation as one of the most feared hitmen in the United States. He was born Thomas A. Camp in Mapleton, Kansas in 1893. He got in trouble with the law when he was still a teenager, and he fled to Kansas City and changed his name to Fred Burke. The man who now called himself Fred Burke then ventured to St. Louis, where he fell in with a notorious gang known as Egan’s Rats.
To avoid jail time in 1917, Burke enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a tank sergeant in France during World War I. He spent some time in prison in Michigan and in Missouri after the war, and ended up back in St. Louis with his old gangster buddies after his time behind bars. Burke then floated around the Midwest, committing robberies in St. Louis and Detroit, before landing in Chicago in 1927.
Chicago kingpin Al Capone welcomed Burke and his crew to Chicago, and immediately put them to work. Using Chicago as a home base, Burke and his men committed robberies and murders all over the eastern half of the United States, from New York to Kentucky to Ohio. Burke became a seasoned killer during this time, including a police officer in Toledo, Ohio in 1928.
Burke’s main claim to fame, however, was being the main suspect in the notorious St. Valentine’s Massacre that took place in Chicago on February 14, 1929. Seven men belonging to a rival gang of Capone’s were executed that day, and the crime shocked the nation and receive extensive press coverage. No one was ever charged with the murders, but Chicago police named Burke as the main suspect in the massacre.
Burke continued his reign of robberies and murders after the famous Chicago killings. He murdered a police officer in Michigan in December 1929 and went underground, living under a variety of assumed names in Missouri until he was captured in Green City, Missouri on March 26, 1931. Burke was returned to Michigan to stand trial for the murder of the police officer. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Burke died of a heart attack behind bars in 1940 at the age of 47.