The Press: The Battle of Peoria

As a crack crime reporter, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's husky Theodore C. Link, 43, knew plenty of crooks—and how to use them. For 22 years, off & on, he had tapped many of them for crime tips, notably the Midwest's ill-famed Shelton brothers. On their part, brothers Carl, Bernie and Earl Shelton, who had terrorized southern Illinois before "retiring" as gentlemen farmers on bootleg and slot-machine fortunes, had a soft spot for the Post-Dispatch. It had once found out about a frame-up plot against them in 1926, and they never forgot it. That was fine with the Post-Dispatch. It suspected a...