14 JULY 1961, Page 5

FO RTY years ago this month a group of Children playing

in a Chicago street watched a frightened man being hustled by four others into a car. His body was found the next day beside a country road, and he Was identified as Steve Wisiewski, a small- time racketeer, insignificant then, and for- gotten now. His only importance is that he IS officially registered as the first of the 783 gangland fatalities of Chicago's fourteen Years • of Prohibition warfare; the first victim of the technique of murder that came to be known as being 'taken for a one-way ride.' Kenneth Allsop—novelist, literary editor of the Daily Mail and member of the Tonight team—went to America last year to research on Chicago as symbolic of the Prohibition era; and his book The Boot- leggers Will be published by Hutchinson's in the autumn. Starting on July 21 the S„Pecfafor will print five extracts from it. In the first he sets the scene as it was forty years ago. In the next three he discusses the Influences that made Chicago 'the only L.Lompletely corrupt city in America': Prohibition; gangsterdom—in the person of Al Capone; and conspiracy—the Mafia. ,,oci in the final article, `Anatomy of a .i'angster,' Mr. Allsop presents some of his conclusions. NEXT WEEK

The Face of Violence