Items from Ness are up for auction

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

A Massachusetts business plans to auction memorabilia from crime-fighter Eliot Ness, the onetime Cleveland safety director and federal agent whose unit brought down Chicago mobster Al Capone.

The collection up for auction Sept. 27 includes his signed credentials and photos of his unsuccessful bid for Cleveland mayor.

The items also include Western Union messages regarding his schedule and expenses, a family Christmas card and a business card saying simply, “Eliot Ness/Director/Dept. of Public Safety/City of Cleveland.”

Photos include a VIP dinner with Thomas Dewey, the two-time governor of New York and presidential candidate, tire magnate Harvey Firestone Jr. and boxer Gene Tunney.

Worcester-based Central Mass Auctions said the items were appraised at $30,000 to $50,000 and came from the estate of the lawman’s personal secretary. It’s not clear how Winifred Higgins Knorr obtained them.

Auctioneer Wayne Tuiskula of Central Mass Auctions said he believed Knorr worked closely with Ness while in the federal government. The collection includes notes and Western Union messages Ness sent to her.

“I think she did a lot of work for him, and he appreciated it,” Tuiskula said.

Ness made his name during the Prohibition era and headed a special unit dubbed “The Untouchables,” which had a reputation that members couldn’t be bribed. He worked as Cleveland’s safety director in the 1930s.

In 1997, his cremated remains were dispersed in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery lagoon with those of his wife, Elisabeth, and their adopted son, Robert.

Ness was nearly broke and forgotten when he died of a heart attack in 1957. The 54-year-old crimefighter was so poor his family couldn’t afford a burial plot.

As Cleveland safety director for seven years, he reformed a corrupt police department, started a police academy, reorganized the city’s traffic patterns to reduce accidents, cut juvenile crime and started a citywide Boy Scout program.