The Female of the Species

When Al Capone was public enemy No. 1, an estimated 4,000 Chicagoans died in gang wars in the 15 years from 1920 to 1935. Such niceties as the bulletproof car, the sawed-off shotgun, and the one-way ride* were either inaugurated or raised to their ultimate refinement in Chicago. Such blood-spattered tableaux as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the killing of Gangster Dion O'Banion in a fern bank in his florist shop, glamoured up in Chicago's Front Page newspaper tradition, shocked and thrilled a generation of Americans and Europeans.

Chicago still has an active criminal record, but times have changed. Last week, just a block from the alley where, on a memorable night in 1934, John Dillinger, was shot to death, two detectives quietly arrested the city's most-wanted fugitive.

Their quarry was no blue-chinned hood in a bulletproof vest, but a woman of 29 with dyed black hair and five telltale moles on her face. She was Mrs. Margaret O'Connor, and she was wanted in connection with 100 armed robberies.

Earrings & High Life. Margaret was born in Georgia, and when she was a little girl her family moved to Chicago's Near North Side. At 13 Maggie stole a car. She liked nice, big, dangle earrings and convertibles. Draft beer wasn't good enough for her: Maggie's taste demanded Miller High Life by the chilled case.

In 1943, when she was 17, Maggie married Benny Tomasello, whose greatest virtue (in Maggie's eyes) was his modest record as a petty criminal. In 1944, after she had a baby girl, Maggie divorced Benny. Four years later she married Bobby O'Connor. While hanging out the wash, she used to boast to neighbors about what a good provider Bobby was. Bobby hardly ever had to work more than a couple of nights a month. For her part, Maggie was as dutiful a wife as a man could ask for: she usually drove the getaway car for Bobby and his gang. But Bobby was often violently jealous of his wife, and the O'Connors' home life was less than tranquil. Once, after he saw Maggie talking to a man in a bar, Bobby rushed home, grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut all Maggie's and the children's clothes to shreds. In retaliation, the kids took the scissors and cut all the sleeves from Bobby's snappy (and stolen) wardrobe of 20 suits. Not to be outdone, Bobby heaved the children's TV set out of a second-story window. When Bobby went off to the Illinois State Penitentiary last June to serve a stretch for armed robbery, Maggie and her three children -- two girls by Bob by -- moved out.

A Tongue-Tied Date. Since Bobby would not be coming home for a long, long time (on top of his five-to-1 5-year sentence at Stateville, he was extradited to Milwaukee last week to stand trial on charges of robbery and murder). Maggie had to go back to work.

Unlike her husband, Maggie O'Connor went in for petty capers. Whenever the cupboard was bare, she would call two or three of Bobby's cronies to a garage owned by her brother-in-law (who also has a record), and they would go off to rob a drugstore or some small, out-of-the-way shop. Since last June, according to Chicago police, Maggie has probably had a hand in some 100 holdups, has been positively linked to 30. Her working clothes usually included a babushka and, oftentimes, adhesive tape over the five moles.

(Once, during a narcotics haul from a drugstore, she wore toreador pants; another time, during the simmering heat of Lnst July, she wore shorts and a halter.) Always it was Maggie who gave the orders: "Put up your hands--I'll kill ya." Then, she would give instructions to her jittery confederates in a calm, soft voice: "Take him to the back room and make him lie down . . . You get the money." Police marked Maggie as one of the coolest dames on the books.

By the end of summer, police had Maggie O'Connor tagged as the bandit queen, and the most-wanted criminal in Chicago.

In the best Dragnet fashion. Detectives Charles Fitzgerald and Herbert Wilk got her picture identified, discovered her modus operandi, and put a stakeout on her neighborhood. Maggie, meanwhile, decided to lie low, after a $500 score in an A. & P. market last August. She went to Miami for a while, then to Las Vegas, finally settled down as a waitress in Galveston's redlight district. She got a little nervous there, mostly because she had to serve a lot of big Texas cops. Once she even went out on a date with a cop: "I wasn't much of a date; I didn't have anything to talk about." Moles & Flophouse. Two weeks ago Fitzgerald and Wilk got a tip that Magrie was on her way back to Chicago. She outfoxed them for a while, but her maternal instinct was her undoing. Late one night last week the detectives spotted her getting out of a cab a block from her sister's house, where her two younger daughters are staying. "She had put on about 25 Ibs., and her hair was dyed black and cut very short," said Fitzgerald. "I said, 'Hello, Maggie.' She turned to me and said, 'You talking to me?' We said, 'Sure, Maggie, we know you from the moles on your face.' Well, she didn't put up a fight or anything. She was more surprised that we recognized her. Kinda hurt.

She said, 'Don't you think I look different? Even my own sister didn't recognize me at first.' Then we put her in the car and took her in and booked her."

* Made famous by Frank McElhone on Sept. 17, 1923. His victims, George Butcher and George Meeghan, hands tied behind their backs and bodies filled with shotgun slugs, were found the next morning in a ditch.

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