My assigned blog is about the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the name given to the murder of seven mob associates in 1929. It was a conflict between two powerful criminal gangs in Chicago during the Prohibition Era. The two gangs involved were South Side Italian led by Al Capone and North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran. Former Members in Egan’s Rats were also suspected to have played a major role assisting Capone, in the incident.
The whole conflict started because Moran was hijacking Capone’s Detroit based liquor shipments. Other probable contributing factors were Moran’s takeovers of some of Capone’s saloons that he insisted were in his territory and just the general rivalry between the two for complete control of the Chicago bootlegging business. When Capone planned the attack his target was just Moran. He would lure Moran and maybe a few of the other members to SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street. It was not meant to wipe out the whole North side gang like many people believe. It was assumed that they were lured in with the promise of stolen, cut rate shipment of whiskey supplied by Purple gang, associates of Capone.
By 10:30 AM most of Moran’s gang had arrived at the warehouse, but moran was nowhere in sight because he left his hotel late. Approaching the rear entrance Moran and Ted Newberry see a police car, so they immediately turn around and going to a coffee shop. On the way there they run into a Henry Gusenberg, another gang member, and warned him away from the warehouse. Back at the warehouse a Cadillac sedan pulls up. Out steps four men, two whom were dressed in police uniforms. The two in police uniforms walk in carrying shotguns and ordered Moran’s gang and two gang collaborators up against the wall. The two fake police officers then signal to the two in civilian clothes who accompanied them, and then two of the killers opened fire with Thompson submachine guns. They went left to right, seven men hit the floor, seven men were ripped apart. All their faces were obliterated with two shotgun blasts except for John May and James Clark. They walk out with their hands up in front of the fake police to make it look like everything was under control. The only survivors in the warehouse were highball, Mays dog, and Frank Gusenberg but he died 3 hours later.
On February 22 there was a garage fire on Wood street. The police arrive to a 1927 Cadillac sedan disassembled and partially burned. They determined it was the car had been used by the killers. The garage had been rented to a man who had been calling himself Frank Rogers, and who gave the address to Circus Cafe, which was operated by Claude Maddox. Part of Egan’s Rats, a gangster who ties into the Capone organization and Purple gang. They had no lead on anyone named Frank Rogers or James Morton, but they had a definite lead on one of the killers. Just minutes before the killings a truck driver was about to pull up to the warehouse only to be waved away by a guy in a police uniform with a missing tooth. The truck driver told police and the police knew the guy that fit the description perfectly. Fred “Killer” Burke and his partner would wear police uniforms whenever committing a crime. Police also thought Joseph Lolordo was in on it because his brother was recently murdered by North Side gang.
After all that happened nothing good came from it, so the whole thing was pointless and they wasted their time. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was the beginning to the end of Capone’s influence in Chicago. Moran managed to keep his territories until the early 1930’s even though he suffered a heavy blow. In 1931 Capone was sentenced 11 years in a Federal Institution because he was convicted of income tax evasion. He also had one year in Cook County Jail for attempted jury tampering. The massacre had equally affected them, and the war between was never resolved, and neither gang ever fully recovered from the war between them.
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