The BEST episodes of The Untouchables season 3

Every episode of The Untouchables season 3, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Untouchables season 3!

The Untouchables chronicles the campaign of Eliot Ness (Robert Stack), the young U.S. Prohibition Bureau agent, to smash the beer and booze empire of Al Capone in 1920s Chicago.

Last Updated: 3/7/2024Network: ABC (US)Status: Ended
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City Without a Name
star
8.07
30 votes

#1 - City Without a Name

Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/14/1961

1933. Violence and corruption were at an all-time high in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City-- virtually every city in the U.S. The lone exception is an Eastern seaboard metropolis, referred to as City Without a Name, in which the voters had used the ballot box to vote corruption out of public office. And Federal agent Arnold Wainwright had kept organized crime out-- but on October 22, he is blasted by machine-guns while in a coffee shop. Eliot Ness and his men are called to the case. Ness goes to the hospital and talks to Wainwright's assistant, Gilbert Burke, who was injured in the attack; Gilbert tells Ness the hit was the work of Lou Mungo. Chicago. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is having a meet. Nitti decides that since Lou Mungo's done the groundwork, it's time for him to take over half of Mungo's action. Nitti sends for Sebastian, who specializes in such acquisitions without using muscle. Sebastian wins a high stakes poker game by bluffing. Nitti tells

Directors: Paul Wendkos
Writer: John Mantley
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The Death Tree
star
8.06
31 votes

#2 - The Death Tree

Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/15/1962

Early November 1931. On West Madison Street, there is a wonderfully diverse neighborhood made up of gypsies of Romanian, Hungarian and Czech descent. The area is flooded with Capone's rotgut, being distributed by Janos Colescu. There are many colorful characters, including the chestnut vendor with his singsong voice: ""Get your red-hot che-e-estnuts, the wind is cold."" When the rotgut leads to a drunken knife-fight that leaves a gypsy dead, the 8-member gypsy Senate, headed by Victor Bartok, with his brother Fedor Bartok, convenes. Eliot Ness shows up to offer his help to end the bootleg booze; they decline his help, saying they will handle matters themselves. At night, they set one of Colescu's booze trucks on fire, and give the warning to his boys Alex and Benno. Colescu decides to retaliate. November 12, late at night. There is an old, almost dead poplar tree on the street, it is called the Death Tree; the chestnut vendor, under orders from Colescu, puts a sheet of paper with

Directors: Vincent McEveety
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The Genna Brothers
star
8.03
31 votes

#3 - The Genna Brothers

Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/2/1961

In the years following WWI, there was a flood of European immigrants into the USA. In the early 1920s, the 6 Genna brothers, place of origin Sicily, were headed to Chicago. The Genna brothers are nothing but a gang of bullies, and in a few short years they are the ruling lords of Little Italy, an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. One night, as the 6 Gennas are beating up a street vendor, Agent Enrico Rossi whales into them. The leader, Mike Genna, asks if he knows who they are; Rossi says, ""Yeah, the Genna brothers-- one rat with 6 heads!"" Mike Genna says that Enrico Rossi is Italian, just like them; Rossi says he's ashamed. There are many illegal immigrants in Little Italy, and over 1,300 of them were smuggled in by the Genna brothers, who force them to make booze in small stills in their homes, to supply Capone-- over 1,300 cookers, each making a gallon a day; 40,000 gallons a month; almost half a million gallons a year for Capone. Many's the time that Eliot Ness and Rossi and L

Directors: Paul Wendkos
The Case Against Eliot Ness
star
8.03
31 votes

#4 - The Case Against Eliot Ness

Season 3 - Episode 23 - Aired 5/10/1962

March 4, 1933. The Windy City is getting ready for the Chicago World's Fair, also known as the ""Century of Progress"" Exposition. The 3 wealthy Endicott brothers, who jointly owned franchises at the upcoming Fair, are all rubbed out in short order. Restaurant owner Gus Dmytryk goes to the Licensing Committee, and it seems he will get the former Endicott franchises: 3 nightclubs at the Midway, and 5 other concessions. It will mean big bucks, since the Chicago World's Fair is expected to draw 50-million visitors. Ness knows that Dmytryk has been on the fringes of the rackets for years, and then District Attorney Beecher Asbury assigns Ness and his men to the case. Meanwhile, when ex-alderman Mitchell Grandin tells the Committee that Dmytryk is a bootlegger; it seems the Committee will give the lucrative franchise to Grandin instead. Later, Grandin gives Dmytryk some payoff money. Ness and Lee Hobson, trying to clean up the town, drop in on one of the hoods who has showed up (and is

The Maggie Storm Story
star
7.97
31 votes

#5 - The Maggie Storm Story

Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/29/1962

Chicago, after the Repeal of Prohibition; (so this would be around 1934). With booze legal, the racket czars step up their dealings in narcotics. Ness and Lee Hobson are chasing 2 dope-pushers, one of them is Benny Rivas. After the shootout, one hood is dead; Benny moans, ""Get me a priest."" Ness finds heroin on him; wanting to die with a clear conscience, Benny says, ""808"" and dies. That leads Ness to Maggie Storm's 808 Club. Maggie runs the 808 Club, and she's the featured entertainer; Ness had raided her during Prohibition. Maggie-- who bears no grudge against Ness, in fact she likes him-- tells Ness she is running the club for a Mr. Charles Banner; Maggie says soon she will be Mrs. Charles Banner. Ness points out to Lee Hobson that half of the big-time operators in town are in the crowd, and there are a lot of out-of-town bigshots, too. After Ness leaves, the waiters mingle with the customers and read off some interesting items on the menu: 10 kilos of heroin, $110,000 in co

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
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Element of Danger
star
7.19
32 votes

#6 - Element of Danger

Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/22/1962

Chicago, August 29, 1934. That night, in the Haymarket district, special agent Daniel Gosden, a policeman on loan to the Untouchables, goes through a skylight and finds an opium laboratory in the top floor of a rundown tenement hotel. Just then, drug lord Victor Rait and 4 hoods (Gus, Sully, Max, and Trapp) show up, carrying crates of supplies into the place. Rait spots Gosden and gives chase; just as Gosden phones Ness for back-up, Rait blows him away with a shotgun. Then Rait blasts 6 bullets from his gun to disperse the crowd of tenants investigating the noise. Somebody phones the cops, because within minutes Eliot Ness and his men and some policemen are on the scene. Outside, Victor Rait and his boys are calmly loading the crates of narcotics onto their truck. When a policeman asks them what they're doing, Rait shoots the cop. Ness and his men come running; Rait tells his boys to drive off in the truck, fast. Then, Rait puts on a show for Ness: Rait stays behind, and fires h

Writer: John Mantley
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Man in the Middle
star
7.16
32 votes

#7 - Man in the Middle

Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 4/5/1962

November 7, 1933.  Slot machines are big business; 2,000 of the one-armed bandits rake in $100,000 per week; ($50 per machine).  One night, ""Moose"" Tobin and 3 other Bomer hoods drop in on Porker Davis' upstairs gambling joint.  Tobin tells Davis that Bomer wants to teach him a lesson; the hoods chase everybody out of the joint.  Then they start throwing the slot machines out the 2nd story window; when one of Davis' employees tries to stop them, the hoods throw him out the window.  Ness and his men are on the case.  2 years ago, Ness had run the slot machines out of Chicago; now the slots are back. Joe Bomer, former kingpin in Capone's booze operation, now the czar of the multi-million dollar slot machine racket, calls Davis in for a meet.  Bomer gives him a ""take it or leave it"" offer: from now on, Bomer is his 50/50 partner.  Bomer also warns Davis: the machines take 30%; don't rig the machines so they take 50% or more, or the customers will stop playing.  Bomer will supply 40 of his

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The Gang War
star
7.12
32 votes

#8 - The Gang War

Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/18/1962

1932. Chicago is a thirsty town, consuming 86,000 gallons of booze a day; that's 32-million gallons a year. Almost all this booze is beer and rotgut, but 1% is the finest Canadian scotch. Nitti's boys, armed with tommy guns, shoot up a rival speak, the Blue Lion, that's serving the Canadian scotch. Ness and his men investigate; 2 people dead, 3 critically injured. Nitti's plenty sore; there are half a dozen clubs, roadhouses just outside of Cook County, serving Canadian scotch. Where are they getting it? Just then, a bomb goes off in the Montmartre Club; Nitti and his boys are unhurt, but 6 pedestrians and a taxi driver are injured. Nitti orders in 100 hitmen from Detroit. It's a Gang War! To prevent further killings, Ness arrests Nitti and confiscates his gun. Although Nitti is sprung within the hour, Ness blackmails him: Ness tells Nitti, if one more person is killed in the gang war, ""Lee Hobson's gonna put a bullet in me with your gun."" (In the arm or leg, I suppose. Thi

Directors: Paul Wendkos
Writer: John Mantley
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Silent Partner
star
7.10
30 votes

#9 - Silent Partner

Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/1/1962

Chicago, March 2, 1932. The hottest nightspot in town is the Club Tunisian, owned by gangster Pete Kalik, who built it up from a small speak. Ness and Lee Hobson show up, but not to see gorgeous singer Mavis Carroll-- they had gotten an anonymous phone tip earlier. Lee Hobson is tired, he is due to take his vacation leave starting Friday. Ness and Hobson get contacted by the club comedian Eddie Paris, he is the one who phoned them. After his show, he meets with Ness and Hobson at the Denton Street wharf; Eddie wants Pete Kalik put away behind bars, he says Kalik is working out a big alcohol deal with the Partner, the mysterious man who had backed Torrio and Capone. That's all that Ness and Hobson find out; later, Eddie is taken for the infamous ""one way ride"" by one of Kalik's boys, Woody Lubek. In the wee hours of March 6 (Walter Winchell means March 3), a caravan of 16 trucks, carrying 8,000 gallons of whiskey, paid for by the Partner, head from the Midwest to Pete Kalik's club

Directors: Abner Biberman
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Hammerlock
star
7.07
30 votes

#10 - Hammerlock

Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/21/1961

New York, middle of 1932. The Syndicate-- headed by Joe Kulak, Louis ""Lepke"" Buchalter and Dutch Schultz-- has the city's huge garment industry organized and under control. Now they are setting their sights on bakeries; there are 500 independent wholesale bakers in the city. They give Bull Hanlon the word: get the biggest independent baker, Adam Stone, to sign up and all the rest will fall in line. Hanlon is to use any means at his disposal. And so Eliot Ness and his Untouchables arrive in New York. Ness wants to fight fire with fire: just as the Syndicate is trying to force all the truck drivers to join their crooked United Bakers Trucking Association, Ness wants honest Adam Stone to organize all the independent bakers into a legit union. Mr. Stone wants no part of it, he is independent, and says he can fight the hoods on his own; he's been fighting to keep his business going for 30 years, just him and his business partner, his life-long friend Max Turkin. When Ness says they m

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
Writer: Mel Goldberg
The Whitey Steele Story
star
7.07
30 votes

#11 - The Whitey Steele Story

Season 3 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/8/1962

New York City. July 23, 1934. The Underworld, which had long made big money by covering bets on horse races, wants to get their hands on a new invention-- the racewire, which can speed the results of horse races to bookmakers everywhere.  That rainy night, Michael Barrigan and Frederic Withers (who, along with their partner Douglas Barrows, own and run the Trans-Pacific News Service) receive an urgent call from Barrows-- but Barrigan finds Barrows dead in a bookie joint (the back room of Hayes florists) when he gets there. Joker takes Barrigan to Joe Kulak's car; they all take a short ride.  Kulak makes it simple: he wants Barrigan's racewire.  Barrigan has until tomorrow at midnight.  3 hours later,  Barrigan goes to his office; the names Barrigan, Withers and Barrows are on the door, but the bottom name has been ominously crossed out.  Barrigan notices someone is inside, and he pulls out his gun; but the surprise intruder is Eliot Ness-- who already knows about Barrows' murder, and

Directors: Abner Biberman
The Canada Run
star
7.06
31 votes

#12 - The Canada Run

Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/4/1962

November 1932. Big-time gangster Joe Palakopolous is playing a dangerous game-- he just had his hitman rub out Danny Kugan, the biggest supplier of Canadian whiskey that Frank Nitti had. And Nitti's plenty sore. Kugan was the only guy who could import Canadian Gold for Nitti. The phony stuff is no good; Nitti quips that bottled rotgut is so bad, ""it peels off the labels from the inside."" Eliot Ness and his men investigate Kugan's killing, and try to find out who will take over the operation. Joe Palakopolous personally settles into a small village of fishermen by Lake Michigan, about a 2 hours' drive from Chicago; it's a perfect spot for having his Canadian supplier delivery booze by boat. He even comes across as a benefactor to the small community, giving the parish priest, Fr. Francis Gregory, money to set up a soup kitchen.

Directors: Bernard McEveety
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Fall Guy
star
7.06
31 votes

#13 - Fall Guy

Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/11/1962

October 1932, Chicago.  With Capone in the slammer, other bosses are biting off chunks of Capone's empire.  One boss is Frankie Gruder, head of a group that is the forerunner of Murder, Inc.; Gruder wants control of all the Canadian imports and exports.  Gruder and his boys go to a warehouse, Gruder shoots a longshoreman.  Ness and his men show up and start blasting.  There's a shoot-out.  Gruder manages to escape. Another gangster is using a different approach: Julius Vernon, the bookkeeper, is trying to beat the stock market; he keeps long hours, working well after midnight.  Around 1 a.m., Vernon gets a surprise visit from Gruder; since Vernon owes him one for a hit Gruder did 4 years ago, Vernon gives him 10-grand for on-the-lam money.  Then Vernon goes to Janos ""Willie"" Willinski; he's a fixer, a contact man.  His office hours are 12 midnight till 3 a.m.; his ""office"" is a table in an all-night diner.  Willinski fixes an arsonist up with a 5-grand torch job, for $500.  Vernon's tu

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Downfall
star
7.06
31 votes

#14 - Downfall

Season 3 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/3/1962

Chicago. Pete ""The Persuader"" Kalmisky, former bodyguard of Al Capone, accompanied by Syndicate business manager Alan Sitkin, have a meeting with Joey December, president of the debt-ridden Great Lakes Pacific Railroad. They form a crooked alliance; Joey agrees to transport their illegal liquor on his trains, in exchange for ""20% off the top."" After Kalmisky leaves, Sitkin talks privately with Joey. Sitkin gives Joey $100,000 for 10,000 shares of Canada Central stock, now worth $10 a share; Joey says they will be worth $50 a share in 3 weeks. Sitkin says he has incriminating evidence against Kalmisky, to ""keep him in line""; Sitkin carries a key to a safety deposit box with him wherever he goes. And so, within 2 weeks, Canadian whiskey (the good stuff) is loaded into boxcars in Manitoba, where it's later shunted onto the main routes by Lake Superior, to be distributed throughout 5 states; the boxcars are labeled Retail Milk Co. February 16, 1930. An elderly railroad man stumbles

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
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Jigsaw
star
7.06
32 votes

#15 - Jigsaw

Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/23/1961

September 14, 1932. At 11:30 p.m., Eliot Ness goes to the Odeon movie theatre (not the Odeon Burlesque theatre used in several episodes); he gives stoolie Marty Wilger an envelope with cash for his tips. Those tips had led to successful raids by Ness against Nitti's speaks: booze, girls, gambling tables; also 2 warehouses and a distillery in the last week. Nitti's plenty sore. At an Organization meet at the club Montmartre, Nitti grouses, ""The boys in New York are screamin', Cleveland's screamin', and I'm screamin'! Those raids cost us 200,000 bucks in the last 3 months."" A lieutenant, Charlie Banion, brings up that Capone used to have Walter Trager to keep an eye on everything, he even had a tap on the feds. Council member Harry Mailer points out that his wife Billie is married to Trager. And so, later, Trager has a meet with Nitti in his private office; Nitti's getting a rubdown from his masseur and Nitti quips, ""Hey, take it easy-- I wanna get knocked around, I don't hafta pa

Directors: Paul Wendkos
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Tunnel of Horrors
star
7.03
32 votes

#16 - Tunnel of Horrors

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/26/1961

August 28, 1933. That night, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, and some undercover plainclothes police, are staking out an amusement pier on the Chicago lakefront; they are tailing Alexander Raeder-- owner of the pier, and the source of the new narcotics flooding the Windy City. Ness had received an anonymous tip that Raeder was delivering 15 pounds of heroin, half a million dollars' worth, to a syndicate contact. The drop-off point being the Tunnel of Horrors, a carnival ride which sends small boats through dark tunnels, operated by Johnny Selkirk, who works for Raeder. On the Midway, Ness spots a hood named Marty Mattern along with Arnold Justin, former cop, who now handles the graft for Nitti; if Justin sees the undercover cops (his former colleagues), he'll recognize them and their cover will be blown. Justin does; Mattern panics and makes a run for it, then fires at Ness' men, and Enrico Rossi shoots him. Ness and his men storm into the Tunnel, and find a back room. While Rae

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
Writer: John Mantley
The Contract
star
7.00
30 votes

#17 - The Contract

Season 3 - Episode 25 - Aired 5/31/1962

New York City; February 4, 1934.  3 months of intensive investigation is paying off for Ness and his Untouchables; they have ""Smiley"" Barris cornered in an upper floor of an Eastside tenement.  With the aid of local police, and some tear gas, Smiley is apprehended.  But somebody wants Smiley dead; a sniper with a high-powered rifle, on the roof of a building, shoots at Smiley-- he accidentally kills the cop beside Smiley.  Ness shoots and kills the sniper.  When the sniper is identified as Marco Robles, it is obvious who wants Smiley dead: N.Y. Syndicate overlord Joe Kulak. Joe Kulak is ruthless; on the phone he says, ""Robles got what he deserved.  If the cops wouldn't have got him, I would have got him.  Sorry -- no tears.""  So now Kulak turns The Contract over to his Enforcer: Ray Quist.  (a Contract means: kill the guy who's been fingered, or get rubbed out yourself.)  Smiley was just a schlep, an errand boy, in the Organization; but what he knows could put Kulak in the electric cha

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Pressure
star
7.00
30 votes

#18 - Pressure

Season 3 - Episode 26 - Aired 6/14/1962

Chicago, April 16, 1934. Prohibition is over, the main racket is now narcotics. The New York Syndicate, the ""Big 6"" send their representative Wally Corbin to Chicago, to pick up a shipment of heroin from Louie ""The Bear"" Madikoff-- he's the top dealer in the Midwest and the chief supplier of the NY Syndicate. Ness has already picked off 2 of Madikoff's runners. Wally picks up 1-1/2 kilos of the junk, worth $200,000. But Wally gets picked off too, he gets gunned down in a shootout with Ness and Lee Hobson and Enrico Rossi. And so Charles ""Lucky"" Luciano, the big boss in New York, phones Madikoff. Luciano says maybe this deal is too big for Madikoff, and he might have to deal with Mike Pavanos instead. Madikoff says he'll run Pavanos into the lake if he tries to take over; he also suspects Pavanos has been tipping Ness. Madikoff sets up a meet with Ness one night; Ness is riding in Madikoff's car, with Hobson and Rossi following behind in their car. Madikoff blatantly tells Ness

Directors: Vincent McEveety
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Arsenal
star
7.00
31 votes

#19 - Arsenal

Season 3 - Episode 27 - Aired 6/28/1962

January 1929. Gangster Matt Malloy walks into a sporting goods store; he can't buy an automatic pistol without a police permit, however anyone with $150 can buy a machine-gun. Later, at the Club Montmartre, half a dozen choppers are laid out on Nitti's table. The Council says that now they can move in on the Northside and Bugs Moran. Nitti picks up a chopper and says, ""You got 'em-- use 'em!"" Gang war! The following weeks are the bloodiest in Chicago history; Nitti's gang strikes again and again with choppers at the Bugs Moran mob. The climax is the St. Valentine's Day massacre, Feb. 14, 1929. An immediate ban on machine-guns goes into effect. Feb. 16, Enrico Rossi and Jack Rossman are confiscating choppers from the sporting goods store; Ness and Lee Hobson, with a search-and-seizure warrant, raid Nitti's Montmartre club. Nitti tells Ness he'll get more choppers; Ness tells him there won't be a single one left in town. Nitti sneers, ""A lot of punks have tried to buck the Orga

Directors: Paul Wendkos
Writer: John Mantley
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The Monkey Wrench
star
7.00
30 votes

#20 - The Monkey Wrench

Season 3 - Episode 28 - Aired 7/5/1962

March 2, 1933. The remote section of the northern Michigan Lake front, 180 miles northeast of Chicago. The Chicago Syndicate, to improve the quality of their booze, is now smuggling in master brewers from Germany; the illegal immigrants had come 6,000 miles to the new country. Tonight, 8 new immigrants are brought in. One of them looks at the sign: ""Welcome to Chippewa Landing, Michigan""-- Bernd asks, ""Chippewa? What does that mean? But this is America, yes?"" Max Kerner tells him to move on. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are using their armored truck with the V-wedge on the grill to smash through the large metal doors of a brewery; they shut down yet another bootleg operation. March 22. Another raid by Ness and the police. No one is killed since the brewers surrender peacefully, but then one of the mobsters shoots Bernd in the back, fatally wounding him. Lee Hobson and the police chase the hitman, but he gets away. They find out Bernd was the maste

Loophole
star
6.97
31 votes

#21 - Loophole

Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/16/1961

Chicago, January 1933. Ness and his men raid a speakeasy owned by gangster Mikhail ""Red Mike"" Probich, and run by Connie LaVerne. At the trial, Probich is represented by his crooked lawyer Morton Halas, who grew up in poverty. The trial drags on for 5 days. Finally, Ness is ready to call the last prosecution witness, Connie LaVerne, who ""is 80% of their case."" Morton Halas objects, on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband. How long have Probich and Connie been married? About a week. Morton Halas specialized in getting crooks off on a legal technicality, a loophole-- chalk another one up for the shyster. Ness tells Halas he'll lock him up someday. Just then Whitey Metz tells Halas that bootlegger Larry Coombs wants to see him, pronto. Over at his place, Coombs shows Halas a bottle of Gray Stag booze, the Capone label; Coombs is building a plant to supply Nitti with all he needs. Coombs wants Halas to work for him exclusively; Halas says he al

Directors: Paul Wendkos
The Stryker Brothers
star
6.97
31 votes

#22 - The Stryker Brothers

Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/8/1962

March 3, 1932. It's the great train robbery, on the southbound express headed for Chicago. The Stryker brothers steal mail sacks containing 750 grand in payroll money. During the robbery, a baggage man and Lippy Carson (an associate of the Stryker brothers, who had worked as a mail clerk) are killed, and thrown from the speeding train. Since mail robbery is a federal offense, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are called in. Morton Stryker is the eldest, and leader of the 4 brothers; then there's Alvin and Nate, and Benny Stryker, the youngest. Benny Stryker is an arsonist (former student of Mr. Jaeger), and their file keeper. When the 4 brothers were released from Leavenworth, Al Capone gave them permission to rebuild their empire-- if they had the cash to pay his tab. They are all going through the stolen money. Benny Stryker finds some registered mail; they tell him to keep the dough and burn the rest. They can't even keep the checks, even one letter traced back to them would

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
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The Troubleshooter
star
6.22
32 votes

#23 - The Troubleshooter

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/12/1961

In the summer of 1934, a new gambling device was sweeping the nation: the punchboards. Even though they were nickel-and-dime games, it added up-- they made more money for the mob than the numbers racket. After Ness and his men smash some of the punchboard manufacturing sites, the 5 members of the syndicate running the punchboards hold a meet at a building by the freight yards: the top mobsters from Chicago (Jake ""Joe"" Petrie), Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit and New York (Max Riegel). Petrie says he can sum up all their problems in 2 words: Eliot Ness. Max says in New York, they aren't losing so much-- they have Nate Selko the Trouble Shooter to make sure money goes to all the right places: police, judges, the legislature. Nate Selko walks into the room, to offer his services to the Chicago boss. Later, in a private room at a restaurant, Selko tries to bribe Ness, with a Swiss bank account with $500,000 in it (the deposit in the bank book is dated Feb. 26).* Selko says it would ta

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
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The Matt Bass Scheme
star
6.19
32 votes

#24 - The Matt Bass Scheme

Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/9/1961

In mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness, having compiled a list of Frank Nitti's breweries & distilleries, began a series of raids designed to break the back of the Capone empire. This puts the pressure on Frank Nitti, Capone's lieutenant. Nitti calls a meet with Seth Otis and Phil Grier, who jointly own the biggest speakeasy in Chicago, the Hotsy Totsy Club. Nitti tells them he's going to build new breweries and distilleries outside of town, where Ness can't find them, and have the liquor delivered by trucks. It'll take about a month, maybe 6 weeks. The speak owners are shocked, they can't go that long without beer and booze. Nitti tells them nobody better buy booze from out of state and have it hustled in-- and he's going to make sure the 2 speak owners ""set a good example"" for everybody else to obey his orders. In the meantime, at the State Pen, 2 cons cook up a scheme: the brains is Jason Fiddler, an engineer who will be sprung in a month, and his partner is Matt Bass, who is being paro

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
Man Killer
star
6.13
30 votes

#25 - Man Killer

Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/7/1961

Chicago, July 1934. Anonymous phone calls have been tipping off Ness and his men to narcotics activities; they do a bunch of raids. On August 4, even though sales have fallen off, Frank Nitti is ordering 15 kilos of heroin*, the biggest single shipment ever. That night, one of Nitti's boys makes the trade: dough for the H. He gets into a car driven by another of Nitti's boys, Manny Kravitz. But next to him in the back-seat is Maxie, who pumps him full of lead. They dump his body from a speeding car. Next morning, Ness gets another of the regular anonymous tips; on another line, Enrico and an operator are slowly tracing it. (no Caller I.D. back then.) Ness doesn't know it yet, but the call was made from a phone booth by Nick Dolov; he walks to the Windy City Cab Co., which he owns along with his estranged wife, Georgiana Drake (around age 40, she could be attractive but has a harsh facial expression). In Dolov's office, there is a suitcase with the 15 kilos of heroin on his des

Directors: Stuart Rosenberg
Writer: Sy Salkowitz
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