One of the biggest myths in Chicago history relates to Eliot Ness, who is often credited with being the man who took down the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone. The public perception of Ness is largely based on fictional accounts of her life and perpetrated by various television shows, as well as films based on Oscar Fraley’s book The Untouchables. The truth of the matter is that Ness faded into darkness and poverty when he met Fraley, in a New York bar, and was using what we often refer to today as a fish story to draw attention to himself.

Eliot Ness grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the youngest of five siblings. He was adored by his mother, Emma, ​​and his sisters, although he sought the attention of his father, who was often absent. According to Lawrence Bregman’s biography of Capone, the handsome six-footer Ness received inordinate feminine attention throughout his life. As his needs grew more intimate, he sought out girlfriends and settled on Edna Staley, who became his first wife in 1929.

None of his three marriages produced biological children for Eliot Ness, although he and his third wife adopted a son in 1948. Although he gained some fame in Chicago during the Capone days, he made a name for himself in Cleveland as the youngest security director. . in the city. In 1938, his marriage to Edna ended in divorce. He submitted his application out of neglect and extreme cruelty. Ness got negative publicity due to her high profile dating prior to the divorce announcement. He soon married Evaline McAndrews, who worked in Cleveland, although Ness claimed, according to his biography, that he met her on a train going to Minneapolis.

Ness’s friends cited in biographical accounts speak of him flirting when he drank and it has been speculated that this may have contributed to the downfall of their marriages. He divorced his second wife in 1945 after she left him and moved to New York on the grounds of extreme cruelty and neglect. Shortly after the divorce was final, he married his third wife, Betty Anderson.

Ness ran for mayor of Cleveland in 1947, but was miserably defeated. At the time, he was a heavy drinker and spent much of his time in bars reminiscing about his life and his mistakes. It was at this point that he started talking about Al Capone.

What began as a way for Ness to draw attention to himself in women’s bars ended in a book written by Oscar Fraley. Fraley was a reporter for the Associated Press and believed in Ness, who now gave himself the lead role in taking down Capone. Fraley persuaded Ness, who was homeless at the time, to sell her story, giving her more embellishments to sell the story.

Ness died six months before the book The Untouchables was published. The television series starring Robert Stack came out two years later and shocked his team members who were still alive. Most likely, those who were most surprised by the book and series were his first two wives, whom Ness never mentioned to Fraley and who were erased from his life in his autobiography, The Untouchables.

None of the evidence Ness presented brought down Al Capone. Frank Wilson, an accountant for the Treasury Department, was the man who went through the books and caught the gangster with tax evasion. The myth of Eliot Ness, who according to her biography often violated the Volstead Act while active, as the model of virtue, is most likely the result of what began as a phrase in the bars of a man who still needed female attention. . even though his good looks had faded and middle age had been established.