Harry "Cherries" Dunn

Who was Harry "Cherries" Dunn?

Harry "Cherries" Dunn was a St. Louis gangster and member of the Egan's Rats.

Born and raised in North St. Louis to Irish-American parents, Harry and his brother John, known as "Pudgy", joined the Egan's Rats in their teens. Harry, nicknamed "Cherries", was known as a ladies man and a daring crook. A first-class street fighter, Harry was quick on the trigger of a pistol and known for his hair-trigger temper. Locked up in the City Workhouse in the spring of 1913, Harry staged a daring escape and resumed his place in the Egan mob.

While in Chicago with his brother John on November 5, 1914, the two Dunn brothers shot and killed a gangster named Robert Koch. Both men were convinced that Koch had been sent up from St. Louis to specifically kill them. While Harry got off scot free, Pudgy was convicted and sentenced to an Illinois prison.

Frustrated that Egan gang boss Tom Egan hadn't done anything to help his imprisoned brother, Harry went to the St. Louis police headquarters in December 1915 and offered to snitch on his gangmates in order to free Pudgy from prison. The cops turned down Harry's proposal. As he left the police station, Dunn ran into William "Skippy" Rohan, one of the original members of the Egan's Rats. Worried that Rohan would rat him out, Cherries Dunn became increasingly paranoid.