The 1926 Orland Park Murder Mystery

by Matthew T. Galik

On the morning of April 14, 1926, the Inland Steel payroll delivery was hijacked in Indiana Harbor. Later that afternoon, Will County deputy sheriff and Mokena resident Walter Fisher died in a hail of gunfire just outside Orland Park. That night, the bullet-riddled body of Santo Calabrese turned up on a Broadview road. The exact sequence of events remains uncertain, but a jury was able to trace enough of the day's violent trajectory to send Daniel Hesly on the path to Alcatraz. Matthew Galik leaps into a drama of high-speed pursuit and mistaken identity that shocked the jaded sensibilities of Prohibition-era Chicago and plunged the town of Mokena into mourning.

96 pages, Paperback

Published October 22, 2018

About the author

Join author and local historian Matthew T. Galik as he takes the reader on a journey through yesteryear in the photographs of the Robert Horras Collection. In this culmination of years of research through crumbling documents and musty archives, people will learn about Mokena as a rural Midwestern farm town, a place where everyone knew each other and that families and friends still call home.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

In April 1926, a body was found riddled with bullets on Broadview road. The body was later identified as Santo Calabrese, but the truth of what happened to him remains murky. Earlier that day, deputy police sheriff Walter Fisher died by gunfire outside of Orland Park.

With the dawning of the next day, will Santo Calabrese be identified as Fisher's killer, or was it local truant Daniel Hesly?

Interesting book. I thought the most interesting parts were how Daniel Hesly was sent from a Kentucky prison to Alcatraz for an incident where Dan rubbed a baseball player down with liniment in his cell, to which Dan vehemently denies any inappropriate behavior.

I think people in Orland or Mokena history would be interested.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just meh for me. I picked it up because I was interested in something based in the town I grew up in but the story wasn't really that interesting to me and the writing was a little pretentious seeming at times. About the only things I really liked were the photos that showed the Mokena/Orland area in the early 1900s. At least it's a short read.

[Melissa Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m being generous with the three stars. The premise of this book is interesting, especially if you’re familiar with the area or live around the suburbs of Chicago. I was unfamiliar with this story, and seeing photos from that time helped put you in that time and place.

The writing style, however, was distracting. It felt like there must have been a word count that the author was given, so he just kept adding unnecessary words to make it longer. “Born” becoming “entered into the world.” “Died” becoming, “lost his life.” As someone who used to be an editor and also was a writing tutor in college, I had a difficult time ignoring the purple prose and unnecessary language. I had to resist the urge to grab a red pen. It began to really bother me, to the point that I had to reread some factual information because I was so distracted by the sentence structure.

“…at the tender age of thirty-one, he moved to Mokena, where he set up his practice, coming to be known affectionately by the townspeople as Doc.” One of the most wordy sentences I came across. It simply could have been: “the townspeople knew him as Doc.” Why add all the unnecessary words? It was filler. It was word count. I couldn’t get over it.

The story itself is interesting, but it definitely got a little lost for me with the way it was written.

[Linda Atkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding research well presented! Mokena was a stomping ground of mine in the 70s. The train depot, bank and bar shared a lonely street even then.