Wanted Comics #20

In 1920s Springfield, the seemingly upstanding Mortimer Dollard leads a secret double life—a bank embezzler and collaborator with robbers who commits murder to cover his tracks, then flees town under an assumed identity. Two years later, having reinvented himself as the respectable John Spurgeon and courted the wealthy Mary-Lou Daneff, Dollard finds his carefully constructed new life unraveling when the police close in, forcing him to become increasingly desperate. This crime tale explores how a man's fundamental nature proves impossible to escape, no matter how far he runs or who he pretends to be.

Skip Tracer investigates a massive charity drive organized by Big Joe Colas after a secretary from the Goodheart Welfare Society suspects something is amiss with how the funds are being handled. As the Tracer digs deeper into the operation's books and delivery routes, he uncovers a ruthless scheme to pocket donations meant for the city's neediest residents—and discovers that those behind it will stop at nothing to protect their criminal enterprise.

Walter Evans Connell looks like an ordinary working man, but behind that quiet demeanor lies a career criminal with a rap sheet stretching back years—one who won't hesitate to turn violent when cornered. This true-crime account traces how a man who escaped from Florida State Penitentiary resurfaced in Indiana, where his criminal nature finally led him to commit a brutal crime that made him one of law enforcement's most wanted fugitives.

When Dennis James is named Public Enemy Number One, newspaper reporter Jerry learns the true story behind the criminal's violent "heroic" reputation—and it's nothing like the glamorous headlines suggest. Mr. Vaughn takes Jerry to meet the real victims of James's crimes: the family of a man he murdered during a payroll robbery, and James's own mother and sister, who reveal how his life of crime brought nothing but death and heartbreak to everyone around him. This is the dark reality behind the myth of the desperado—a cautionary tale about how newspapers can turn a ruthless criminal into a folk hero.

Joseph Charles Bartos operates a newsstand under the alias Joe Martin, using his position to scope out and rob unsuspecting customers like Mr. Chambers. When one victim decides to report the theft to police, detectives piece together the common thread linking all the mysterious robberies and move in to apprehend the smooth-talking thief.

A newspaper reporter's investigation into a mob murder at an exclusive nightclub puts him and his photographer directly in the crosshairs of the underworld. When Jim Carelli is gunned down outside El Toreador, Al Jackson and Len Bates of the Gotham Courier follow a trail of clues straight to Mark Benson's roadhouse headquarters—where they discover far more danger than they bargained for. With Benson's enforcer Trigger Mason and the body count rising, Jackson finds himself trapped and running out of time to expose the truth before it's too late.

George Emerous Morgan poses as a federal officer in 1935 to run a shakedown racket, extorting money from gambling club owners under threat of shutdown. When real federal agents raid one of his targets, the con is exposed and Morgan is arrested, facing the consequences of his impersonation scheme. The "Wanted File" presents this true-crime episode as a cautionary case in the ongoing war between law enforcement and career criminals.