Journalist. He is remembered as the outspoken radio commentator during the Great Depression era in Detroit, Michigan, who gave the citizens nightly reports on their local government. He rallied the citizens of Detroit for a recall election of Mayor Charles Bowles after the firing of Police Commission Harold Emmons. While Bowles was out of town at the Kentucky Derby, 276 people were arrested by Emmons in raids of saloons, gambling houses and underworld crime dens. Most were swiftly convicted and sentenced for illegal gambling, vice crimes, or racketeering. After Emmons firing, many of these establishments reopened. The citizens of Detroit accused Mayor Bowles, who had been in office for only six months, of “tolerating lawlessness,” thus causing vice and corruption to flourish, commiserating with gangsters and the Ku Klux Klan supporting his election. On the evening of the election for the recall, Buckley broadcast the election returns over the radio station WMBC and signing-off at about 11:30 PM. Residing at the LaSalle Hotel where the broadcast had been held, he was in the lobby resting in a chair reading a newspaper when three men sauntered across the nearly empty lobby. Within minutes, gunshots were being fired. Buckley received eleven gunshot wounds and died by the time he arrived to a hospital. Governor of Michigan Fred W. Green was outraged by the murder, came to Detroit, and ordered the state to investigate the crime independent of the city police department. Since this was the eleventh murder in Detroit within 18 days, Green threatened the city with martial law until the city's crime-wave stopped. There were at least two reasons for Buckley's murder. Beside the incident with Bowles' recall election, Buckley had witnessed the murder of two men a few weeks earlier and would have been the witness if the case came to trial, yet assistant State Prosecuting Attorney Paul Buckley stated that he thought his brother's murder was related to the Bowles' recall election. Although the police had witnesses and one of the guns from the murder, there was not enough evidence to go to trial. No convictions were ever obtained in the Buckley murder. On a dark rainy day, ten thousand mourners attended Buckley's funeral at St Gregory's Catholic Church. Among the mourners were judges, politicians, city policeman and the citizens of Detroit, who had listened faithfully to him on the radio. Eventually, a special election would be held, which Bowles was ousted by Frank Murphy. In 1921 Buckley had been a private investigator for Henry Ford in the Newberry case. In past years, he had been a special investigator for several court cases for the United States Government. As a crusader for the people, he had been a radio journalist for two years in Detroit, Michigan.