Rise and Fall of Rock Island Gangster John Looney

John Looney

John Looney ran Rock Island like a man conducting an orchestra of crooks, cops, and terrified politicians who couldn’t tell whether to bribe him, arrest him, or beg for a job. He wasn’t one to hide in the shadows—he built his pulpit and screamed into the microphone. In 1912, the Rock Island Argus said, “Mr. Looney has taken leave of his senses,” but they were wrong. He hadn’t lost them. He’d sold them to the highest bidder.

He was born in 1865 or 1866, the son of Irish immigrants who believed America rewarded hard work. It didn’t. It rewarded nerve, and Looney had a surplus of that. He studied law, passed the bar, and by 1889 was prowling the Rock Island courthouse in a cheap suit that somehow made him look dangerous. People remembered the eyes—too bright, too still. You could tell he was thinking of angles, leverage, a thousand and one ways to make a buck.

The newspapers described him as “ambitious and fearless,” which was code for ruthless. He practiced law for a while, but law was just another racket. He wanted something bigger, something that could make or break reputations. So he created the Rock Island News, a scandal sheet dressed up as journalism. It was a blackmail factory disguised as a printing press. For a fee, your name stayed out of the paper. Refuse, and the next morning your sins were spread across the front page. “The people of this city are being held hostage by a madman with a printing press,” the Argus wrote, and they weren’t wrong.

Looney’s operation ran like a disease. He sent his men to collect gossip, photographs, and whispered confessions. If he couldn’t find scandal, he invented it. Politicians who didn’t play ball found their faces above headlines like “Public Official in Shameful Affair.” Businessmen who refused to pay suddenly faced “Police Investigation Pending.” The words “as reported by the News” became a local punchline, a warning, a curse.

John Connor Looney died in a 
street duel in Rock Island

By 1910, Looney was the city’s hidden mayor. He owned the cops, half the aldermen, and a good portion of the vice district that crawled along the river. Brothels, gambling halls, after-hours saloons—each one paid a share to the Looney machine. Even his enemies admitted he ran things efficiently. “He has a system,” a Rock Island councilman said, “and if you live here, you’re part of it whether you like it or not.”

His mansion in Highland Park was a fortress of whiskey, women, and fear. The neighbors pretended not to hear the laughter drifting across the lawns. Rumors said he kept a pet lion chained in the basement. Others said he built tunnels under the property for smuggling liquor. The truth didn’t matter. The more people whispered, the stronger he got.

In March 1912, the Argus ran an editorial calling his paper “a menace to honest government.” Looney struck back by printing an issue accusing Mayor Harry Schriver of corruption and “personal misconduct unfit for publication.” When police arrested his editor, Looney stormed the station demanding his release. They laughed at him and threw him out. Four days later, a mob appeared downtown—mostly Looney’s men, some drunk, some just bored. Bricks flew. Gunfire cracked. By nightfall, the city looked like a war zone. “The blood of citizens stains the streets of Rock Island,” screamed an Argus headline. The National Guard arrived the next morning. Two men were dead, dozens wounded. Looney disappeared.

The Argus called him “a fugitive from justice and from decency.” They said his newspaper “has poisoned the public mind and corrupted the weak.” Yet some locals still admired him. One shopkeeper told a reporter, “Looney keeps the roughs in line. He’s bad, but the other kind of bad stays away when he’s in charge.” That was his paradox—half tyrant, half folk hero.

He turned up in New Mexico for a while, licking his wounds, running cattle, pretending to be a rancher. The Argus called him “a shadow in exile.” But by 1921 he was back in Illinois, older, meaner, and ready for the new game—Prohibition. The liquor trade was a money-machine, and filled with desperate men. He used his old newspaper contacts to shake down speakeasies, then built a new empire on beer, whiskey, and gambling. “Every drop of liquor in this town,” one bartender said, “has passed through Looney’s fingers.”

Lawrence Pedigo, John Looney's
chief enforcer

He ruled with fear and publicity. When someone crossed him, he didn’t send a warning—he sent a story. A front-page hit piece could ruin a man faster than a bullet. He called it “the civil way of doing business.” If they resisted, they learned there was nothing civil about Looney’s justice. Bodies started turning up in alleys, dumped in the river, shot in their cars. The Argus ran a daily count under the headline “Gang War Continues.”

In 1922, William Gabel refused to pay protection money. He’d been careful and saved the cancelled checks he’d written to Looney, planning to turn them over to the feds. He told friends he’d had enough of Looney’s racket. “I’ll see that bastard behind bars,” he said. Two weeks later, he was dead on the road are you, his car riddled with bullets. The Argus called it “a declaration of war.”

The streets turned red that summer. Looney’s men and rival gangs hunted each other in broad daylight. Witnesses told reporters that Rock Island “sounded like France during the war.” The Argus described “nervous citizens flinging themselves to the ground as bullets whined past Main Street windows.” By autumn, twelve men were dead, including Connor Looney, John’s only son. Connor was shot down outside the Sherman Hotel while returning fire at ambushers in four cars. John escaped through a side door. “Looney Flees Scene of Son’s Slaying!” shouted the Argus.

Something broke in him after that. The empire began to crumble. The cops he’d bought turned on him. The News stopped printing. The houses of vice went dark. The same reporters who once feared him now wrote his obituary in installments. “The king without a kingdom,” one piece said, “wanders a hunted man.” He hid out in New Mexico again, but this time the law followed. In 1924 they dragged him back to Illinois to stand trial. The Argus covered every day, every testimony, every grim photograph. “The once-powerful ruler of Rock Island now sits in silence,” one reporter wrote, “his face drawn, his eyes vacant.”

He was convicted in 1925 of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to prison. The Argus crowed, “Justice at Last for Rock Island’s King of Crime.” He served about eight years before getting out—old, sick, half-blind. The machine was gone. The mansion gone. He died of tuberculosis Texas in 1942. There were no headlines this time, just a single line in the wire report: “John Looney, former Rock Island political boss, dies in El Paso.”

Decades later, people still whisper his name. Some remember him as a monster. Others say he was just ahead of his time—a gangster before Capone made it fashionable. He had the instincts of a predator and the discipline of a lawyer. His tools weren’t tommy guns and getaways but words and money.

The Argus kept his ghost alive. Years after his death, editorials mentioned him whenever a local politician got caught doing something stupid. “The spirit of Looney still haunts Rock Island,” they said, “reminding us how easy it is for corruption to wear a human face.”

Maybe that’s the real story—Looney wasn’t just a bad man. He was the rot that seeps in when everyone looks the other way. He understood that fear sells faster than truth, and newspapers could bleed a city dry. You didn’t have to shoot people, just print their sins in ink large enough to ruin them.