murder. Angered by Winkler's insistence on subtracting pensions for his deceased crew members families from North Side Outfit street taxes, Nitti demoted Winkler and put Ralph Pierce in charge of the North Side instead. Assassination In the summer of 1933, Gus Winkler was observed making visits to the Bankers Building office of FBI Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis. When the news reached him, Nitti was enraged. In reality, Winkler, who had been infuriated by the unnecessary violence of the Kansas City Massacre, was helping the FBI's manhunt for fugitive perpetrator Verne Miller. To Nitti, however, talking to the Feds about anything at all was a death penalty offense. On the afternoon of October 9, 1933, while entering the beer distribution office of Charles Weber at 1414 Roscoe Street, Winkler was hit by a number of shotgun blasts fired by unknown assailants hidden in the back of a green delivery truck. Winkler died a half-an-hour later after arriving at a local hospital. He was buried at Park Lawn Cemetery in St. Louis. Winkler was one of the first casualties of a half-year-long purge where Frank Nitti eliminated the last of the so-called American Boys; including one of Winkler's alleged killers, Fred Goetz. Gus's wife, the former 'Georgette Bence' (1898-1962), later wrote her memoirs in which she detailed her life with the notorious gangster. Other On February 29, 1960, while at his home in Florence, South Carolina, former FBI agent Melvin Purvis died from a gunshot wound to the head fired from a .45 automatic given to him by fellow agents when he resigned from the Bureau. The FBI investigated his death and declared it a suicide, although the official coroner's report did not label the cause of death as such. A later investigation suggested that Purvis may have shot himself accidentally while trying to extract a tracer bullet jammed in the pistol. Later investigation revealed that the pistol that had taken Purvis's life had once belonged to none other than gangster Gus Winkler; the gun is believed to have been confiscated from Winkler during his debriefing at the Bankers Building in the summer of 1933. References Further reading External links Taking Care Of Winkler: The Last of the Independents by John William Tuohy 1901 births 1933 deaths Al Capone associates American gangsters of German descent American people of German descent Gangsters from St. Louis Chicago Outfit mobsters People murdered by