"Most Dangerous Man Alive"

When a big car driven by a droop-cheeked, mild-eyed man bunted another last week in St. Joseph, Mich., Patrolman Charles Skelly told the guilty driver to come along to the police station to pay the few dollars damage. The driver yanked out an automatic, shot Officer Skelly dead, sped away. When he smashed up his car, he used his gun to persuade motorists to give him lifts. Officers traced the police-killer closely for an hour, then lost him. The wrecked car was registered in the name of Frederick Dane, owner of a commodious home on St. Joe's Lake Shore Drive.

Police searched the Dane house. It was a residential fortress. Its arsenal contained two machine guns, numerous rifles, automatics, tear gas bombs, bottles of nitroglycerin. A trapdoor under a rug led to a hidden room with an emergency exit. In a closet were found bonds worth $319,850, part of which were identified as loot from a recent Jefferson, Wis., bank robbery. Questioning "Mrs. Dane," officers learned that Dane was none other than Fred Burke, alias Thomas Brook, alias "Cornbread" Burchell, alias Camp, Kemp, Kemper, deadliest of Alphonse ("Scarface Al") Capone's Chicago gangsters.

Chicago crime investigators rushed to St. Joseph. A microscopic comparison of scratched bullets from one of the machine guns with those found in the bodies of seven gangsters slain in the Moran whiskey depot last winter strengthened their conviction that Burke had led Chicago's famed St. Valentine's Day massacre (TIME, Feb. 25). To him are attributed at least four other murders, among them the killing of Brooklyn Gang King Frank Uale (TIME, July 9, 1928). The Federal government and six States want him for shootings or bank banditry. Rewards between $60,000 and $75,000 (depending on the number of convictions obtained) are set on his head. The underworld "grapevine" reported that potent underworldlings would pay double that amount for his delivery to them. In full cry detectives and gangsters deployed for a mid-continent man hunt.

Searchers moved carefully, mindful of official warnings: "Burke is a very dangerous murderer. . . . Advise police caution in approaching him. . . . One of the most infamous ex-convicts in the U. S. . . . The most dangerous man alive."

The underworld calls Badman Burke "professor." He is a scientific felon, a specialist in safe door melting, wire tapping, hijacking, disguises. In his St. Joseph hideout were found chemistry and metallurgy textbooks, also 200 thumb-greyed detective novels, with criminals' blunders underlined.

In St. Joseph he was known as a retired businessman, an obliging fellow who visited sick neighbors and courted the esteem of established citizens. One neighbor recalled that "Dane" once borrowed a shotgun from him to go rabbit hunting.

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