Elliot Ness

Born April 19, 1903, Chicago — died May 7, 1957, Coudersport, Pa.) U.S. law-enforcement official. He was 26 years old when he was hired as a special agent of the U.S. Department of Justice to head its Chicago Prohibition bureau, with the express purpose of breaking up the bootlegging network of Al Capone. He formed a nine-man team of extremely dedicated and unbribable officers, "the Untouchables"; the evidence they collected helped send Capone to prison for income-tax evasion in 1931. After Prohibition was ended in 1933, Ness headed the alcohol-tax unit of the U.S. Treasury department (1933 – 35); he was later director of public safety in Cleveland (1935 – 41) and director of a division of the Federal Security Agency (1941 – 45).