There’s one in every family, they say. This is a lyric in every song sung by family down the ages.

In my personal family — the loud, shouting, singing, dancing Irish family on Minnesota Avenue — not a Christmas or Thanksgiving, birthday, wedding or wake went by without someone, with a glass in their hand, retelling for the 100th time a dusty old story about one or all of us since we got off the “boat.”

Finally, this one lurid story emerges yet again. It’s one I’ve brought to these papers before, but dropped because there was no evidence that this Eddie Devine, the gangster no one thought was credible, was in any way related to our crazy bunch at all.

Now, thanks to the ongoing efforts of my nephew, Dr. Kevin Devine, who has almost professionally combed the closets of the past, we have finally unearthed the whole story.

It has the fever and haunting flavor of a Warner Bros. movie, with bloodlines leading directly up to this weary writer, and it would be one with the help of Dr. Kevin if the Brothers Warner were still in the business of making old gang busting tales. Sadly, they are not.

Here, for your entertainment, is the storyline.

Ripped from the headlines of the St. Louis papers of the roaring ’20s, I bring it to you in the original language of the times, which Dr. Kevin has unearthed.

Eddie Devine is shown in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of J.P. Devine

In the torrid, crime-ridden neighborhoods of the “Roaring Twenties,” a gaggle of kids in front of 2134 Franklin Ave., playing ball with worn equipment I imagine, heard gunshots from a nearby alley and saw two men running away.

This is from the police report, torn from their reports given to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Yessir. The kids breathlessly said the men both were short and stout.

“The chief difference in their appearance being that one wore a light suit and the other a dark suit. And that they were bareheaded.”

Oh yes, and that a hat was found at the crime scene where the body of the famous gangster, Eddie Devine, was found in the alley, a bullet wound in the back of his head. He was dead.

It seems he had a more prosperous appearance than some of his fellow gangsters, and he was wearing a tailor-made suit when killed.

His body was not recognized until Sam Lazarus, a tailor, declared that he recognized him.

His brother, Matt Devine, my great uncle, later identified the body positively. Romantically, a stamp photograph of a young girl was found in Devine’s pocket. There was also a pawn ticket for a ring.

Devine, it seems, had been arrested the previous April with “Skippy” Rohan on a pick-pocketing charge, but after Rohan pleaded guilty, the charge against Devine was not pressed.

Eddie Devine was 23 years old, and lived at 2230 Broadway.

Roll the credits. Show the cast. Blackout.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.