Another fascinating true crime story. The man in the middle of that photomontage is John Wilkie, chief of the United States Secret Service from 1898 – 1911. This article tells the story of how he finally caught an international gang of criminals known as the Black Hand. The website GangRule.com is all about organized crime during the turn of the last century, and they have a lot of background information about the Black Hand including biographies of all the members. This article describes the detective work that brought them down.

BLACK HAND MANACLED AT LAST: How Chief Wilkie’s Secret Service Men Drew a Net Around the Leaders of the Most Dangerous Band of Foreign Criminals Ever Known in This Country (PDF)

From April 3, 1910