06/10/2026
Check out some Amazing local history Joe got recently through a local estate!
This is Matthew Walker's Badge from the early 1920s. He was the Herrin, Illinois Police Chief off and on in the first few decades of the 20th Century. His sons were Harry Walker, then Shelton Gang member whose killing set off the Gang War in 1926, and Ray Walker, who would remain loyal to the Sheltons through all of the assassinations. He's the one who dropped the bombs on Shady Rest from the airplane in 1926. He later married Bernie Shelton's widow. Both were ex-cons by the mid 1920s. Matthew Walker was a prominent police chief in southern Illinois (such as in Herrin) in the early 1920s who presided over a deeply corrupt and lawless era. His sons Harry and Ray became infamous bootleggers, and their criminal exploits sparked the legendary Prohibition-era Williamson County gang war. A quick look at the history of Matthew Walker and his sons provides clarity on these events: Matthew Walker: He served off and on as a local law enforcement official during the early 1900s and 1920s. Rather than quelling the rampant vice, his tenure coincided with the rise of rampant bootlegging, as law enforcement was famously compromised during Prohibition. Harry Walkers death in a deadly ambush was a major catalyst for the explosive 1926 gang war against rival bootlegger Charlie Birger. Ray Walker: A fiercely loyal member of the Shelton crew, he achieved historical notoriety during the gang war. In 1926, Ray piloted an airplane over rival territory and dropped dynamite bombs onto Birger's Shady Rest headquarters. Decades later, Ray Walker married the widow of Bernie "Red" Shelton, one of the three founding Shelton brothers.
