Page 11 - November 2019 proof 7 Castle Pines Connection

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Chicago hit man brings rodeo to Sedalia
By Joe Gschwendtner: photos courtesy of Denver Public Library
The Roaring ‘20s in the Wildcat Mountains did not lack excitement. Bootlegging and gambling were rampant, especially in Larkspur, where the Feds found and busted the two largest moonshine stills in the county. Their proprietors would do 3-5 years in the pen.
Perhaps the headline event of the decade was the return to Colorado
of Louis “Two Gun” Alterie from Chicago. Born Leland Varaine
Alterie, he grifted to Denver in the early ‘20s and married. He became
an amateur boxer with the stage name, Kid Hayes. His early capacity for violence proved foundational and he resurfaced in Chicago as a mobster with the Northside Gang. He rose quickly to hitman and then bodyguard for Dean O’Banion, the capo and Al Capone’s arch rival. When blood owed in the streets in 1924 Chicago, Alterie and O’Banion chose to cool o in Colorado at the Woodbine Lodge (later to become the Woodbine Country Club) in Sedalia’s Jarre Canyon.
The Lodge was already the county den of iniquity with loose women, booze and gambling. While in residence,
Alterie allegedly discovered the Thompson submachine gun which Sedalia ranchers used to run o coyotes. He and O’Banion then purchased their own, quickly becoming pro cient marksmen. Local resident Esme Williams Couch once saw them draw Indian silhouettes in the dirt with sustained machine gun re.
Alterie later acquired an interest in Jarre Canyon’s Round-Up Ranch at a poker game and another assorted 4,000 acres through other deals. As a decorating theme in his lodge, he chose rearms, embellishing the walls with pistols. Given his penchant for booze and bullets, it was no surprise he once got into a gun ght with his baby grand piano.
Perhaps the diamond-encrusted badge
he would buy for County Sheri Roy McKissack made for another moniker, “Diamond Jack.” Or was it a lavish, moneyed lifestyle evidenced through diamond cu links, belt buckles and other diamond-studded jewelry? While here, Alterie also developed a fondness for rodeos and hosted his own at Round-up Ranch.
When he and O’Banion returned to Chicago, they were quickly in the thick of gang wars again. One morning O’Banion was in his
“Diamond Jack” Alterie in cowboy mode.
ower shop without Alterie, who was sleeping o a hangover. In what came
to be known as the “handshake murder,” O’Banion was brutally executed while still in the clasp of a customer. Alterie was furious but not stupid, and brie y retreated to his Jarre Canyon redoubt.
The divorced Alterie then married 18 year- old Ermina Rossi in Denver, daughter
of incarcerated city crime kingpin Mike Rossi. Now a rodeo fanatic, he hosted and promoted the rst two Rocky Mountain events at the Denver Stockyards. Ever amboyant and always bejeweled, his shows were as much circus as rodeo competition. A marked man by 1927, he left Sedalia permanently to reside at his Sweetwater Ranch in Gar eld County, Colorado. To ensure safety, he took an arsenal of 250 weapons.
Alterie lived and would die “by the sword,” rubbed out eventually by contract killers in 1935 Chicago. Ironically, the killers used a sniper technique developed earlier by Alterie himself.
A Thompson Submachine Gun (“Tommy Gun”) which Alterie could wield like a precision instrument.