Every February 14th men and women around the world proclaim love to each other in an unnecessary and overpriced holiday brought to you by the fine people of Hallmark. Half dead roses are purchased, shitty left over cards are reluctantly bought and millions of dollars are spent from the time man leaves work until he gets home.
Here in Chicago there is another annual tradition that takes place on Feb 14. The remembrance of one of the coolest gangland mass murders in history, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It was the beginning of the end for Capone but the beginning of a love affair with the mob that would infiltrate our culture forever. Movies like
Some Like It Hot and Roger Corman's The
St. Valentine's Day Massacre (with Jason Robards as Capone) are still being produced even though my examples are from the 50's and 60's.
Every year I love to look into this event a little more and this year I have an outlet to share my findings with random people that may read this. Join me as I go back through time for a little Chicago history. First, Al Capone:
Son of Italian immigrants, Al Capone was born in 1899 in Brooklyn, NY. He quit school in the 6th grade to join a street gang. As it turns out not a bad career move. During this time he becomes acquainted with a Johnny Torrio, crime boss in NY and Chicago. At 18 he is employed at a Coney Island nightclub run by Frankie Yale (also a mobster). During his employment at the nightclub, a brawl breaks out and Capone's face is slashed with a knife. This creates one of the coolest nicknames in gangster history, Scarface. Without this incident he would have wound up a "Tiny," "Buddha," or "Big Al."
The same year as the brawl, Capone knocks up his girlfriend and {drum roll} has a shotgun wedding. Not wanting to raise the kid in a life of crime (well, he was young and an idealist) he moved to Baltimore with his family to start a legitimate life as a bookkeeper. Two years later in 1919 a terrible tragedy befalls the United States . . . Prohibition. After two years of sobriety (as far as we know) Capone is lured to Chicago by Mr. Torrio to run a speakeasy.
Showing tremendous acumen for the business side of illegal activities, Torrio puts Capone in charge of Cicero, a suburb of Chicago. At the time Cicero was not as integrated into Chicago as it is today. Many things happen at this time that would make this post even longer than it already will be but suffice it to say that soon after Tarrio/Capone take over the South Side of Chicago and the Dion O'Banion gang takes over the North Side of Chicago.
If you know anything about North Side / South Side relations through Chicago baseball you can only imagine what this must have been like. Until interleague play started, this is what Chicagoans had to watch an incompetent boob on the North Side and an over-aggressive bully on the South Side.
At this time a lot of shooting occurs but for this story all you need to know is this: O'Banion is assassinated in 1924, Tarrio is shot and seriously injured in Jan 1925 by two thugs named "Hymie" Weiss and "Bugs" Moran, Capone is targeted in 1925 and though not shot himself he sees the damage that his car takes from the Tommy Gun and a love affair is born. Within a few months Tarrio "retires" (from jail none-the-less) and Capone moves into the entire fifth floor of the Metropole Hotel. By the end of the year "Bugs" becomes a famous gangster name and in charge of the North Side through a series of unfortunate "accidents" to the mob bosses before him (including Weiss) and Capone becomes a powerful, well-known and loved citizen of Chicago.
Now bad things happen. Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn was Capone's go-to killer guy. Actually, often Capone didn't go to him, he just killed. This made Capone unhappy. He asks McGurn to not kill anymore without his permission. Then "somebody" kills a prosecutor looking into Capone's activities. This made the Chicago cops a little unhappy. A lot of people are unhappy now. To flee the unwanted attention (and unhappiness), Capone buys a place in Miami to "chill."
At this time "Bugs" Moran assassinates Jack McGurn. Well that was the plan anyway. While in a hotel lobby McGurn is shot repeatedly. Being knock unconscious by the first few bullets entering his body, he falls behind the glass of the payphone he is using. Being in a hotel lobby he is quickly taken to a hospital where he makes a full recovery. Whoops.
Capone decides to visit his new digs in Miami and McGurn decides he does not like being shot. "Machine Gun" begins the planning of the assassination of "Bugs" Moran.
McGurn gets fellow Caponees Albert Anselmi and John Scalise as well as the outside help of Fred Burke and three other unknown persons. On February 13th a bootlegger calls Moran and offers a truck of Canadian whiskey at a low price. Moran likes what he hears and sets up the transaction for Thursday February 14, 1929 at 10:30AM at 2122 N. Clark Street in the S.M.C. company garage. McGurn grabs himself some policemen uniforms and prepares for the big day.
One problem with hiring lookouts, make sure the lookouts know what the person they are looking out for looks like. The lookouts report at 10:35 that Moran is entering the garage. This is not the case. Moran was fashionably late. In fact, he did not leave his house until 10:30 with Willie Marks and Ted Newberry.
The men that the lookouts saw were Frank and Pete Gusenberg, who were in charge of gathering the trucks and driving the whiskey to Detroit, James Clark, Moran's brother-in-law, Adam Heyer, Al Weinshank, and Reinhardt Schwimmer, an optometrist who got his wish and got to rub shoulders with real life gangsters.
Getting the news that Moran was in the garage, six men drive up in a squad car with sirens blaring. Witnesses say six cops leave the car, two plainclothes cops and four in uniform. They enter the garage and announce that everyone is under arrest. They disarm them and place them against the far wall of the garage. At this time Moran drives up and sees that there is a raid and waits outside to see what will happen. What happened was all six men shot in cold blood. Once the bodies had fallen to the floor the gunmen stood above them and shot them more. The "police" then left the scene of the crime. Moran was long gone. The only witness alive in the garage was a dog tied to a bumper. The dog's barking was probably not heard until the shooting was over.
When the real police arrived, they saw carnage that had not been seen in decades. Witnesses were confused. One famous account has the witness unsure if the police left or if they were still there interviewing her. No facts could be gathered. The next day the papers printed the picture above upside down so that it would be easier for the public to identify the bodies.
Capone was suspected but in Miami. McGurn had an ironclad alibi having been with his girlfriend and her friends for Valentine's Day. McGurn had accomplished a "perfect" murder of the rival gang. But the story does not end well for the folks in the story. It was the beginning of the end for mobsters in Chicago. The public turned on Capone and wanted the bootleg wars to end. The police were even angrier than before. Elliot Ness would soon be the new household name.
Moran's gang never recovered from the hit to the capacity it once had. Moran spent his final days in prison before dying of lung cancer. McGurn was shot by gunmen in a bowling alley on Valentines Day, specifically Thursday February 14th, 1936. Anselmi and Scalise died in the famous "baseball incident" so beautifully filmed in the
Untouchables with DeNiro as Capone.
As for Capone, in May of 1929 Capone was sent to prison for carrying a concealed weapon. He spent 10 months there. In June of 1931 he was found guilty of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and $80,000 in fines (He was worth $60,000,000 at the time). He was sent to the Atlanta penitentiary in 1932 and later moved to the brand new facility, Alcatraz in 1934. Of course by now Prohibition was repealed and Capone's empire had crumbled. He was released from prison after only 6 1/2 years for good behavior. It was easy for him to be on good behavior because the last year of his confinement was spent in the hospital ward with an advanced case of syphilis. He was treated in Baltimore after his incarceration and then moved to his estate in Miami. He died in 1947.
The moral of this story is . . . Well, there is no moral. But maybe you will have something to talk about to the other clowns standing in line at Peggy's House of Chocolate praying that there is one heart shaped box of chocolates left. Even if it is from 1945.
