Criminal Career
Fred Burke had migrated to St. Louis, Missouri by 1915 where he became a member of the citys' top gang, Egan's Rats. In these early years his crime activity was mostly devoid of the violence that so permeated his life in the 1920s and early 1930s. Burke, described as tall, well-built and honest-looking, acted as a "front man" for the Egan gang in various forgery and fraud schemes. In 1917 Fred Burke chose to enlist in the U.S. Army after being indicted in St. Louis for forgery. America had recently entered World War I, and Burke served as a tank sergeant in France. After his return from overseas duty and discharge, Fred Burke was soon arrested for land fraud in Michigan and spent a year imprisoned there, followed by another year in the Missouri state prison for the pre-war St. Louis charges.
By 1922, Burke was back with Egan's Rats and working with a crew of three fellow war vets in various robberies around the Gateway City, including a "take" of $80,000 dollars from a St. Louis distillery. However, things began to change in 1924 as the top bosses of the Egan gang were jailed. Fred Burke returned to Michigan with his crew where they became associates of the notorious Detroit Purple Gang. Burke, Gus Winkler and the other Egan's Rats refugees, working on behalf of the Purple Gang, were the prime suspects in the March 1927 Milaflores Massacre. However just a few months later a falling out with the Purple Gang led Burke and his associates to relocate to Chicago. Their reputation preceding them, Burke's crew were eagerly welcomed by Al Capone, who referred to them as his "American Boys". Working out of Chicago, Fred Burke and his cohorts were involved in a series of murders and armed robberies as far east at Brooklyn, New York and Patterson, New Jersey and as far south as Louisville, Kentucky. Among them was the murder of a police officer in Toledo, Ohio following a bank robbery in 1928. It would not be Burke's last "cop killing".
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