Caption: Ray "the Fox" Renard, former gangster with Egan's Rats, enjoying a Prohibition-era swig in February 1925, shortly after testifying against his former cronies in federal court. Renard, 26, had grown up in an orphanage and was a young pickpocket when he joined the gang. Egan's Rats was formed in Kerry Patch, the Irish neighborhood northwest of downtown, and muscled into bootlegging during Prohibition. But its specialty was big-time robbery. Renard had been sent to federal prison for a freight-car robbery and, upon hearing that his fellow gangsters might want to kill him to keep him quiet, went to the prosecutors. He said he knew all about two big heists, the $2.4 million robbery of bonds and cash from a mail truck at Fourth and Locust streets on April 2, 1923, and of a $54,000 payroll robbery at the Staunton, Ill., train station the following May 26. When the picture was taken, he was soon to be returned to federal prison. (St. Louis Star)
Album ID: 1360171
Photo ID: 38804912
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