Charles "The Ox" Reiser (1878 – October 10, 1921) was an American

safecracker Safe-cracking is the process of opening a safe without either the combination or the key. Physical methods Safes have widely different designs, construction methods, and locking mechanisms. A safe cracker needs to know the specifics of whicheve ...

and mentor to many of the organized crime leaders of the early 20th century including

Dean O'Banion Charles Dean O'Banion (July 8, 1892 – November 10, 1924) was an American mobster who was the main rival of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone during the brutal Chicago bootlegging wars of the 1920s. The newspapers of his day made him better known ...

, George "Bugs" Moran, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, and John Mahoney.

Biography

He was born in 1878; very little is known of Reiser's early life. Reiser quickly started a rap sheet. In 1902, Reiser was arrested for safecracking. Released on bail, he reportedly killed the witness to this crime and the case was later dropped. In 1905, Reiser was again arrested and released, the witness disappeared, and the case was dropped. In 1907, he was convicted of

assault In the terminology of law, an assault is the act of causing physical harm or consent, unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may ...

with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 30 days in jail. In 1909, Reiser was arrested in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

and charged with

burglary Burglary, also called breaking and entering (B&E) or housebreaking, is a property crime involving the illegal entry into a building or other area without permission, typically with the intention of committing a further criminal offence. Usually ...

and

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

. Yet again, the witnesses in the case were killed. The murderous

soon returned to Chicago. Around 1914, Reiser met O'Banion, the future leader of the Chicago

North Side Gang The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was a primarily Irish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also ...

. O'Banion and several friends started accompanying Reiser on some safecracking jobs. During this time, living under the alias Charles Schoeps, Reiser invested most of the stolen money in real estate. He eventually became the owner of a large apartment building in the Chicago area. Around this time, Reiser remarried. His first wife had died of

asphyxiation Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body which arises from abnormal breathing. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects all the tissues and organs, some more rapidly than others. There are ...

(although Reiser allegedly bragged to friends that he had beaten her to death when she threatened to go to police). In 1920, one of Reiser's safecracking partners, Clarance White, told Reiser that the cops had questioned him about a job they committed. Reiser and White had stolen a

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...

Co. safe and taken its contents. To protect himself, Reiser murdered White and made it look like a suicide. Around April 1921, another Reiser associate, John Mahoney, was arrested while safecracking and started talking to the police. Reiser murdered him also. In 1921, while recovering in a Chicago hospital after an attempted robbery, Reiser's wife came to visit him. A staff member soon discovered her weeping over his dead body in his hospital room. Somewhat indicative of the state of Chicago law and politics at that time, the coroner's jury declared that Reiser – whose body had ten separate bullet wounds in it – had died as a result of suicide.

References

Sources

*Sifakis, Carl. ''The Mafia Encyclopedia''. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. *Sifakis, Carl. ''The Encyclopedia of American Crime''. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001.

External links

Unusual Guide to Chicago - The "Ox" Kills Pal's Wife
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reiser, Charles 1878 births 1921 deaths Criminals from Chicago 20th-century American murderers Thieves Deaths by firearm in Illinois Murdered American gangsters People murdered in Chicago People murdered in 1921

Biography

See also

References

Sources

External links