George "Bugs" Moran was the last of Chicago's spectacular North Side gang leaders, a colorful and violent dynasty that began with Dean O'Banion in 1920. In The Man That Got Away, author Rose Keefe provides the first in-depth look at the enigmatic gangster's charmed and wacky life from his Minnesota childhood to his early years as a horse thief. She chronicles his two marriages, his rise and fall in Chicago's Prohibition-era underworld, his life as an independent outlaw in the 1930s and '40s, and his last days in Leavenworth Penitentiary.


In the process of telling Moran's story, some of the twentieth century's most fascinating and bewildering gangland figures are revisited: Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dean O'Banion, Vincent "the Schemer" Drucci, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, showboating Chicago Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, the gang-hating but oddly pro-Moran Judge John H. Lyle, Virgil Summers, and Albert Fouts.


History did not record the details of Moran's Last confession, but the public record and Rose Keefe's interviews with Moran's former associates now allow us to form an educated guess.