American Boys were also implicated in the murder of Toledo police officer George Zientara on April 16, 1928, who was shot dead in the aftermath of an American Express armored truck heist. Winkler himself enjoyed Capone's complete confidence, even after Fred Burke was publicly named as a suspect in the massacre and the discovery of the murder weapons. Winkler often told people that he worked as a 'contractor' which might have played on the undertone of the word and his career as a contract killer. Later criminal career The fallout from the Valentine's Day massacre proved to be the undoing of the American Boys as an Outfit sub-group. Fred Burke was eventually captured and imprisoned for the first degree murder of Police Officer Charles Skelly in St. Joseph, Michigan, Bob Carey was exiled from Chicago after attempting to blackmail a friend of Capone's, and Crane Neck Nugent vanished without a trace. Gus Winkler, along with St. Louis gangster John "Babs" Moran, was severely injured in a car accident in Berrien County, Michigan on August 3, 1931. While Winkler survived, the crash cost him one of his eyes. While in his hospital bed, Winkler was accused of planning and taking part in the September 1930 robbery of US$2 million from a bank in Lincoln, Nebraska. While Winkler hadn't done the robbery, he knew who did and claimed he could convince the actual thieves to turn over the loot. After this assurance, Capone reluctantly put up Winkler's $100,000 cash bond. After his release, Winkler did indeed deliver as promised. By the next year, Gus Winkler had carved out a lucrative position as the Outfit's boss of the former territory of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang, after Teddy Newberry requested his assistance. Under Frank Nitti The beginning of the end for Gus Winkler began upon Capone's 1931 imprisonment for tax evasion. With Frank Nitti now in charge of the Outfit, Winkler was left taking orders from Italian-American gangsters who didn't trust him. Nitti and other more old school Outfit mobsters had never agreed with Capone's decision to assign positions of trust and authority to non-Italian gangsters like Gus Winkler. After Teddy Newberry paid for Nitti to be shot and nearly killed by Chicago Police Department Detective Harry Lang in December 1932, fellow gangster Ralph Pierce plied Newberry with alcohol until he admitted the truth about his own involvement. In response, Nitti ordered Newberry's