Eliot Ness was well known because of the popular 1960s television series, The Untouchables,, which was based on an account of his life as an FBI agent. The autobiography on which the series was based was published several months after Ness died in Coudersport, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1957, from an untimely heart attack. Desilu Productions produced a two-part dramatization of the book for television in 1959, a move which ultimately led the successful but controversial series to an early demise, much like the man who told the story. Veteran actor, Robert Stack, starred as Ness.
Eliot Ness was born in Chicago, on April 19, 1903, to Norwegian immigrant, Peter Ness, and his wife, Emma King, daughter of a British engineer and Norwegian mother. Ness was the youngest of five children, with three sisters and a brother, his closest sibling in age, who was 13 years older than Ness. After his graduation from the University of Chicago in 1925, Ness pursued his longtime interest in investigative work and took a low-paying job as an investigator with the Retail Credit Company. Two years later a civil service test gave him entry into a job with the U.S. Treasury Department as a special agent. Ness was appointed to the Prohibition Bureau in Chicago and ultimately selected to head a group of special agents under the Department of Justice whose target was Al Capone and his illegal bootlegging operations. That group came to be known as "The Untouchables."
Ness gained more notoriety among citizens of Cleveland, Ohio, in his work as Public Safety Director from 1935 through 1941, specifically in his relentless pursuit of the murderer in a series of crimes known as the "Torso Murders." Despite many theories, Ness was never able to solve the murders, whose signature was the victim's mutilated torso. Those cases remained unsolved even after Ness left the position. Ness was also Director of the Division of Social Protection of the Federal Security Agency in Washington, D. C., during World War II and chairman of the board of Diebold, a company based in Canton, Ohio, known for its safes and security systems.
Upon his death, Ness's ashes were scattered over a pond at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland. Over 40 years later, on September 10, 1997, Ness and his family were honored with a memorial service arranged through the police and fire departments of Cleveland, expressing the respect and love of those people in the city whom he had served so diligently. The film, "The Untouchables," released in 1987, featured Kevin Costner in the leading role.
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