Gus Winkler

Who was Gus Winkler?

Gus Winkler was a St. Louis mobster who, with Fred “Killer” Burke, was head of a criminal gang specializing in armed robbery and murder for hire.

Born August Henry Winkeler to Bernard J. Winkeler and Mary K.. He was a brother to Clara, Jacob C. and Anna C. in Lemay, Missouri. In 1916, at the age of 13, Winkler started associating himself with the Bottoms Gang, which would later evolve into The Cuckoo Gang, headed by during his teenage years. After a stint as a driver for the U.S. Army Ambulance Corps during World War I, at the age of 19, Winkler joined up with the Egan's Rats gang before moving to Detroit, Michigan in the mid-1920s. He later moved to New Center, Detroit and quickly aligned himself with the Purple Gang that was under control of Abe Bernstein where he worked until mid-1927. Winkeler and Fred Burke were hired out for freelance work from Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit as well as beginning a national crime spree holding up banks, armored cars, and mail trucks from New York to Los Angeles. He told people that he worked as a 'contractor' which might have played on the undertone of the word and his career as a contract killer. He married a woman named 'Georgette Bence' who wrote in her unpublished memoirs that Gus, along with Bob Carey, Ray Nugent, Fred Goetz and Fred Burke as a 'special assignment squad' and was part of Jack McGurn's 'American boys'.