Elizabeth Ness — wife of Eliot Ness, the iconic-crime fighter of the 20th century — got into a little trouble with Pennsylvania fishing laws way back when. And since they were married, and had their adopted son, Robert, with them at the time, you have to wonder how much Eliot knew about the situation.
Was Eliot — to use his lingo — an “accessory before — or after — the fact?”
The story unfolded 52 years ago this summer near Coudersport, Pa. Eliot had had a checkered career after his fame as the head of “The Untouchables,” his nine-man crime-fighting crew that could not be bribed or corrupted. His men, along with the IRS, is credited with putting Al Capone in the slammer with 29 violations of IRS laws and 5,000 charges of violating the Volsted Act of prohibition.
(According to later biographies, that’s ironic, since Ness was a “severe alcoholic.”)
Ness was down but not out after all this fame and excitement. Since his Chicago glory days, he had been in lukewarm careers, the last of which was the North Ridge Industrial Corporation that had moved from Cleveland to Coudersport. Ness was president of two of its divisions — the Fidelity Check Corporation and the Guaranty Paper Corporation.
With Elizabeth, he was on his third marriage and on his last job before dying at age 54 of a heart attack less than a year after the Elizabeth Ness arrest incident.
On Aug. 14, 1956, Eliot, Elizabeth and Robert were trout fishing at Lyman Run Lake, when Pennsylvania Fish Warden Kenneth Aley stopped to check them about 7 in the evening.
Robert didn’t need a license, since he was under the required age of 16. Eliot, who did not have a license, was not fishing — or at least not fishing when Aley showed up. But Elizabeth had a line in the water, and when asked by Aley, she produced a license from the Ness car. The problem was, she had a “resident” license. Elizabeth Ness had only moved to Coudersport the day before — slightly shy of the 60-day residency requirement for a resident fishing license. Aley also noticed that their car — a Ford convertible — sported Ohio plates.
When asked for further identification, Elizabeth produced an Ohio driver’s license. She ended up with a citation for a “non-resident fishing on a resident license.”
According to Aley’s field notes, Elizabeth chose the resident license over the slightly more expensive non-resident one because she didn’t want to pay the higher fee for “only a month of fishing”.
You have to wonder about Eliot’s role in all this. Did he have a valid fishing license? Did he fish on the fated day? If he had a fishing license, would he not have offered it to Aley to suggest that all three of them were fishing, perhaps to deflect attention from Elizabeth?
If he did not have a license, could he have been fishing but stopped when noticing Warden Aley approaching? Of course, if he had been fishing and had a legal license, there would be no need to stop fishing. Was he even aware that Elizabeth had bought an invalid, illegal license?
It may have all been in ignorant innocence. Live in an area for one day or 60 days, and you are a resident, some would argue. But you couldn’t argue with Pennsylvania Fish Commission rules. And the arrest was reported several times in the local Potter Leader-Enterprise newspaper.
Many questions, few answers beyond the above established facts. The bottom line is this: Elizabeth paid the fine for illegally fishing with a resident license — $25. She would have been better off buying the correct non-resident license.
After all, in 1956, a resident license cost $2.50; a non-resident (the exact fee lost to history) probably cost somewhere between $4 and $7.50. That’s far less than the cost of the fine and a lot better than ending up in the arrest column of fishing history books.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting and the outdoors. He can be reached at [email protected].
