By 10:30 on the morning of February 14, 1929, it was eighteen degrees outside and snow was falling in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park. Residents were dressing, having breakfast and getting ready to leave for work. Some had a view of the SMC Cartage Company. It was relatively common knowledge that the North Side gang, under the leadership of George Moran, operated from the big garage with its blacked out windows.
The routine of that snowy morning was suddenly shattered by a sharp explosion of sound. One resident later described it as an “air hammer” and then “a car backfire.” Those who looked out their windows saw two men in civilian clothes being escorted by what appeared to be two police officers, who loaded the men into a waiting police car and then sped off down the street. A dog began howling in the garage, and a next door landlady sent one of her tenants to investigate. He found the dog, unharmed, six dead men on the floor of the garage, and a seventh, barely alive, trying to crawl to the front door. The neighborhood quickly assumed that the massacre could be the work of only one man.
Al Capone was born in Brooklyn in January, 1899. He held a series of odd jobs before joining a local gang. He went to work for Johnny Torrio in Chicago in 1920, and soon proved to be an efficient killer and enforcer. That same year, Prohibition was passed. Overnight, gangsters all across the county established underground routes to smuggle liquor into the country and charge double the pre-Prohibition price. Decades later a newspaper reporter would remember about a hundred “speakeasies” (illegal bars) which sprang up in the city. Record profits began coming in, and gangs like the one Capone belonged to were soon rolling in money. This created intense rivalries in the Mob, where leading members fought for absolute control of major cities.
Soon after their arrival in Chicago, Capone and Torrio seized control of the South Side rackets. However, the North Side rackets were controlled by Irish mobster Dean O’Bannon. Inevitably, a war broke out between the two sides, after O’Bannon had Torrio arrested and sent to prison. On November 10, 1924, three men walked into a flower shop O’Bannon owned. When O’Bannon went to shake hands with one of the men, he was grabbed and shot several times at close range, and died at the scene.
Then on January 24, 1925, Torrio, newly out of prison, pulled up to his apartment and exited his car, and he was shot several times by two North Side gang members. As he lay bleeding, one of the gunmen, George “Bugs” Moran, put a gun to Torrio’s head and pulled the trigger. The only noise was an empty click, and the two would-be killers ran off. Torrio was taken to the hospital and emergency surgery saved his life. He was badly shaken by the event and handed over control to Capone before leaving for Europe. By this time, the South Side Gang was making $105 million a year from their illegal business, and although Capone himself was nearly killed in an ambush at his hotel on June 13, he continued the war against the North Side Gang. He killed its new leader, Hymie Weiss, in October, 1926, and in April, 1927, Weiss’ replacement, Vincent Drucci, was shot while fighting with police and died shortly after. George Moran became the next leader of the North Side Gang, and a new target for Capone. The conflict between the two gang factions continued, and in September, 1928, the North Side Gang managed to kill one of Capone’s close friends.
Capone had had enough; weary of the sporadic mutual ambushes, he decided to deal with Moran and the North Side Gang in one massive stroke. He focused his plan on 2122 North Clark Street – the address of the SMC Cartage Company. Two “cab drivers” rented rooms across the street and watched men come and go. Other men took rooms nearby and waited. Word was sent to Moran about a hijacked shipment of Capone liquor that would arrive on the morning of February 14, 1929.
On Valentines Day, four members of the North Side Gang waited inside the garage along with a visiting friend and a mechanic. When a seventh man entered the garage, the Capone men across the street incorrectly identified him as Moran and ordered the other waiting men to move out. A police car pulled up minutes later. At that same moment, Moran himself was walking toward the garage and saw the car. Spooked, he and his two body guards ducked into a nearby restaurant. He wasn’t overly alarmed; police raids were normal. More than likely, they would be paid off and he could return shortly.
What follows is speculation, but it is believed that two men dressed as armed policemen burst in on the waiting gangsters and ordered them up against the wall, where they disarmed them. Then a few minutes later, two other men in civilian clothes entered. They pulled Tommy guns from under their trench coats and opened fire, raking their guns back and forth. It was later found that about two hundred rounds had been fired. The “police” then finished off one of the dying men with a shot gun, and the four men exited through front door into the waiting car and drove away.
Real police arrived within twenty minutes. Frank Gusenberg, the wounded man who had been crawling toward the door of the garage, had been shot fourteen times. The officers immediately took him to the hospital, where he refused to divulge any information and died three hours later.
Chicagoans were shocked by the murder and demanded the police catch those responsible. One week after the massacre, a car matching the one used at the scene was found burning in a garage and could only be traced to man who gave his name as “Morton.” Police questioned Jack McGurn, a known Capone assassin, but his girlfriend claimed that he had been with her. John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, two other Capone associates, were also questioned, but had to be released due to lack of evidence. Bullets matching the ones used were later found in Fred “The Killer” Burke’s house when he was arrested in Michigan for the murder of a policeman. Burke was well known for his connections to organized crime, though he was never officially tied to it.
McGurn would later be shot to death in a Chicago bowling alley on February 14, 1936, a bloody valentine left on his chest. Scalise and Anselmi were found beaten to death and disfigured near Hammond, Indiana three months after the massacre. It is commonly believed that they had been plotting against Capone and were found out. Burke would die in prison in 1940. Others were also mentioned as having taken in part in the massacre, but no solid evidence has ever been found.
As for the two surviving gang leaders, North Side boss Moran, who had hidden in a restaurant during the massacre, fled to a hospital afterward and claimed illness. In an interview with reporters several hours later, he said, “Only Capone could do something like that.” Moran continued to try to battle South Side boss Capone, but never managed to rebuild his North Side gang. He eventually left Chicago and was arrested in 1946 for the robbery of a tavern in Ohio and served ten years in prison. Upon his release, he was arrested again for robbery and was sent to Leavenworth Prison, where he died, within days, of lung cancer. Unlike the other deceased leaders of the North Side gang who had lavish funerals, he was given a modest burial in the prison graveyard.
Capone was in a meeting in Florida at the time of massacre, and claimed to have nothing to do with it. He would enjoy his reign as underworld leader of Chicago until 1931, when he was found guilty of tax evasion and imprisoned in Atlanta and then Alcatraz, and finally released in 1939 when his body and mind began to deteriorate from Syphilis. He would die of heart failure in 1946.
Today, a parking lot covers the land the SMC Cartage Company garage used to occupy, and Chicago has moved on. The Mafia continues to have a presence both in the city and nationally, but lost most of its smuggled liquor profits after Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and shifted to narcotics and other lucrative illegal pursuits. Many people who had turned a blind eye to gang activity before the massacre could no longer do so afterward. One could argue that the freewheeling era of the gangster died on the floor with those men. The Mob has largely gone underground and is not quite the force they once were. Still, the days of bootlegging and Tommy guns hold a fascination that never allows mobster characters to fade into obscurity, and many people continue to be shocked by the story of Capone’s bloody Valentine.
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