THE RISE & FALL OF DEAN O’BANION
One of America’s most successful Irish gangsters
was Dean O’Banion, who ran the liquor operations on the North Side of Chicago
during the early days of Prohibition. At the start of Prohibition, when John
Torrio divided up the territories among the opposing factions, O’Banion managed
an area between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It was a lucrative area
that was given to O’Banion to keep him in line. He was, undoubtedly, Torrio and
his protégé Al Capone’s most dangerous opposition. He was an often reckless
Irishman who always carried three guns with him. He could shoot accurately with
either hand. Chief of Police Morgan Collins once called him “Chicago’s arch
criminal” and stated that O’Banion “has killed or seen to the killing of at
least twenty-five men.”
O’Banion never spent a day in jail for shooting any
of those men. His political usefulness was too great. O’Banion controlled the
Irish vote in the city and while bribery and intimidation usually did the
trick, he and his men never hesitated to beat, kidnap and murder. He always
delivered his district and the Democratic bosses of the Forty-Second and
Forty-Third wards prized O’Banion’s vote-getting abilities so much that they once
gave him a testimonial dinner at the Webster Hotel and presented him with a
gem-encrusted platinum watch. Among those present at the dinner were Colonel
Albert Sprague, the Cook County commissioner of Public Works and a Democratic
candidate for U.S. Senate; Robert M. Sweitzer, then Cook County Clerk; and
Chief of Police Michael Hughes. Ironically, O’Banion personally always voted
Republican.
Schofield's Flower Shop, in which O'Banion had a controlling interest. He used the upper floor as the headquarters for his rackets.
To offset his violent involvement in the rackets,
O’Banion loved flowers. He acquired a half interest in William Schofield’s
flower shop at 738 North State Street, directly across the street from Holy
Name Cathedral, where he once served as an altar boy. On most days, he could be
found in the shop, cutting flowers, potting plants and putting together
arrangements for weddings and burials. He became gangland’s favorite florist,
which was a lucrative business because underworld etiquette required both
friends and foes of a fallen gangster – including the man who killed him – to
honor him with elaborate floral creations. Everyone ordered from O’Banion and
the moment that word reached him of a gangster’s demise, he was on the
telephone to his wholesale supplier. At the same time the undertaker was
starting to prepare the corpse, and before the orders even started coming in
for flowers, O’Banion and his staff were already at work making wreaths and
elaborate bouquets and choosing banners that could be gilded with suitable
sentiments like “Sympathy from the Boys” and “Gone, but not Forgotten”. All a caller
had to do was telephone the shop, identify himself and name the amount he
wanted to spend. O’Banion would take care of the rest.
O’Banion was happily married and his wife, Viola, insisted
that he was a devoted family man: “Dean loved his home and spent most of his
evenings in it. He loved to sit in his slippers, fooling with the radio,
singing a song, listening to the player piano. He never drank. He was not a man
to run around nights with women. I was his only sweetheart. We went out often
to dinner or the theater, usually with friends. He never left home without
telling me where he was going and kissing me goodbye,” she told an interviewer.
O'Banion and his loving wife, Viola
Dean and Viola never had children. They occupied a
twelve-room apartment on North Pine Grove Avenue. He drove a late-model
Locomobile and his proudest possessions were a player piano, for which he had
paid $15,000, and a Victrola. He was constantly setting them up to play the
same tune and trying to synchronize them. Sadly, he died before the invention
of stereophonic sound systems, for a set of speakers would have produced the
effect that he sought. He dressed stylishly, always wearing a tuxedo when he
attended the theater or went out to dinner. He spoke well, minding his grammar,
and insisted that his associates follow proper etiquette. O’Banion walked with
a limp, his left leg being shorter than his right, the result of a boyhood fall
from a streetcar, but he was otherwise unremarkable. He was strong and fit with
a round face, cleft chin and a genial personality.
Dean (he later adopted the name Dion) Charles
O'Banion had been born in 1892 in the small Central Illinois town of Maroa. His
father, Charles, was a barber by trade who hailed from Lincoln, Illinois, and
his mother, the former Emma Brophy, was the Chicago-born daughter of an Irish
immigrant father and American mother. She had been just eight months old when
the Great Chicago Fire leveled the city in 1871. Charles and Emma married in
1886 and moved to Maroa the following year, where Charles' parents lived.
Dean spent the early years of his life in Maroa but
soon after the birth of his sister, Ruth, his mother contracted tuberculosis
and died in 1901. Dean was only nine years old at the time and the loss was a
devastating one. The remaining family members packed up and moved to Chicago,
where Emma's parents had a place for them. With the move came the end of Dean’s
innocent years. The hard times, and the legend, were about to begin.
Upon moving to Chicago, O'Banion found himself
turning to the streets for a playground. The family settled in a tenement flat
on the edge of the North Side’s Little Sicily, a maze of narrow, dirty streets
that reeked of smoke from the nearby factories. The flames from a gasworks
chimney that reddened the sky at night gave the neighborhood its nickname –
Little Hell. It had formerly been an Irish neighborhood dubbed Kilgubbin and
about a 1,000 Irish remained. The Sicilians started arriving around 1900 and
were soon the majority. Although only a square mile in size, Little Hell was
one of the most dangerous spots in the city and averaged between 12 and 20
murders each year.
O’Banion became involved with a junior street gang
known as the Little Hellions and began picking pockets and rolling drunks. At
the same time, he sang in the choir at the Holy Name Cathedral and, on Sundays,
he served as an altar boy. Some of the priests at the church believed that
perhaps his devotion might lead to a calling to the priesthood but O'Banion
soon learned to ration his religion to Sundays and to devote his remaining time
to robbery and, as he reached young adulthood, to burglary, what he called
"a man's profession." He soon hooked up with a number of other
hardcase young men, including George “Bugs” Moran, Earl “Hymie” Weiss, Vincent
“The Schemer” Drucci and Samuel “Nails” Morton. With these toughs at his side,
O’Banion put together one of the most devastating gangs in Chicago history.
They devoted themselves to burglary, safecracking, and after 1920, to
bootlegging.
In 1909, O’Banion served three months in the House
of Correction for robbery and two years later, another six months for beating a
victim. Those short sentences turned out to constitute his entire prison
record. He soon demonstrated his ability to bring in votes and he was able to
count on his political patrons to keep him out of jail.
A handful of missteps were all that ever gained the
attention of the police. He was not always the most subtle of safecrackers.
Once, when attempting to open a safe with a stick of dynamite, he blew out the
entire side of an office building but barely put a scratch on the safe. In
1921, Detective Sergeant John J. Ryan caught O’Banion, Hymie Weiss and a couple
of other men in the act of blasting open a Postal Telegraph safe. O’Banion
cheerfully told the police officer things weren’t as they appeared – they were
actually in the office late that night applying for jobs as apprentice
telegraph operators. An alderman furnished a $10,000 bond for O’Banion and
another $30,000 in bribes to make the case go away. Not long after, the
fingerprints of O’Banion, Weiss, and Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci, were found
on the dial of an empty safe in the Parkway Tea Room. A jury acquitted them.
O’Banion spoke to a reporter when he left the courtroom: “It was an oversight.
Hymie was supposed to wipe off the prints but he forgot.”
O’Banion might have had a questionable reputation
with the authorities, but was well liked in the neighborhood. As his fortunes
soared, his acts of charity went beyond those of a man just trying to make
himself look good. He had genuine feelings for poor and miserable people such
as his parents had been. Often, the police would get excited when they saw
O’Banion’s car cruising about in the shabby districts and suspected that a
crime was in the wind. In truth, he was merely out on an expedition of charity,
his car filled with food and clothing. He visited the slums, dropping off money
for widows, the elderly and the orphans. He gave groceries to those who
couldn’t afford them, bought shoes for ragged children and kept many men and
women from the poorhouse. A newsboy would sometimes be stunned to find that
O’Banion gave him $100 for a two-cent paper. He sent many sick children to the
hospital and paid their medical bills. He once sent a crippled boy to the Mayo
Clinic and, when told that neither surgery nor medication could cure him, set
up a trust to take care of him for as long as he lived.
O’Banion also had an odd sense of justice. After an
altercation at the LaSalle Theater that put a man named Dave Miller in the
hospital for several weeks -- O’Banion later apologized, saying, “it was just a
piece of hot-headed foolishness,” -- Miller’s brother, Hirschie, was approached
by someone who offered to kill O’Banion for money. The would-be assassin’s name
was John Duffy and he came to Chicago after killing a policeman in
Philadelphia. He was a blustering, swaggering fellow who was proud of the fact
that he had committed four murders. He had earlier met O’Banion and the Millers
(who were usually friends – the Millers declined to prosecute Dean for the
shooting) and all of them sized Duffy up as a drunken braggart and wanted
nothing to do with him. Duffy approached Hirschie about killing O’Banion and Hirschie
turned him down cold. He later told O’Banion about it and while angry, he vowed
to watch his back around the man. He and the Millers were convinced that Duffy
was crazy and Hirschie warned him, “Lay off that guy. He’ll kill somebody yet.”
Duffy continued to throw his weight around in
Chicago with no thought of danger. He was oblivious to the fact that his
situation was growing precarious. He brought it to an abrupt climax with an
impulsive but brutal crime that offered O’Banion the perfect excuse to revenge
himself on Duffy.
At the time Duffy was living with a likable young
woman named Maybelle Exley in a little apartment on Carmen Avenue on the North
Side. They had a volatile relationship, mostly caused by Duffy, who sometimes
flew into terrible rages when he was drinking. One night, a pal named Billy
Engelke was drinking with them in their apartment and Duffy went into another
of his alcohol-fueled outbursts. Suddenly, he pulled out a revolver and shot
Maybelle in the head. She was dead before she hit the floor.
Duffy snapped. He began to weep as though his heart
was broken and began rushing up and down the room, waving his arms and crying.
He couldn’t believe what he had done. Billy Engelke later said that he was sure
the man had gone insane. Duffy picked up Maybelle and gently laid her down on
the davenport. He bent down and kissed her on the forehead before covering her
with a sheet. “Goodbye Maybelle,” he said.
Panic-stricken, Duffy knew that he had to get out
of Chicago. Not knowing what else to do, he went to see O’Banion. He told
O’Banion that he had “accidentally” killed his sweetheart and needed money to
leave town. O’Banion listened in silence and then told him that he would meet
him later that night. O’Banion drove up alone to where Duffy and Engelke waited
for him, arriving around midnight. He had a few words with Duffy, told him that
he had a plan for him to escape, would stake him some money and drive him to an
outlying railway station where he could board a train without worrying about
the police finding out. Duffy, feeling better with the prospect of a safe
getaway, climbed into the car with O’Banion and they drove off into the night.
Duffy was found dead the next morning with three
bullet holes in his head. O’Banion had his revenge – and he managed to get a
little justice for the poor farm girl who had died at Duffy’s hand.
On another occasion, one of O’Banion’s close
friends, Samuel “Nails” Morton (who earned his famous nickname for being “tough
as nails” fighting in the streets of the old Maxwell Street neighborhood) was
killed by an unlikely adversary. Morton and O’Banion were avid horseback riders
and the men liked to rent horses from the Brown Riding Stables at 3008 North
Clark (later the site of the old Ivanhoe Theater) and then go riding in Lincoln
Park.
On this morning, Morton mounted a frisky colt named
“Morvich” after a famous jockey of the day. The plan was for “Nails” to ride
east down Wellington toward the Lincoln Park bridle path, where he would
rendezvous with friends. Unfortunately, the nervous horse began behaving
erratically and as Morton rode away from the stable, Morvich bolted south down
Clark Street. Near the intersection of Clark and Diversey, Police Officer John
Keyes saw how fast the animal was approaching and tried to curb him when he
realized the rider has lost control. Then suddenly, the left stirrup gave away
and fell to the ground. Morton clung to the horse’s neck, and then decided to
take a chance and jump to the ground. He landed headfirst on the street and on
the way down, one of the horse’s hooves hit him in the head, causing a skull
fracture that would turn out to be fatal. Morton was rushed to the hospital and
died on the operating table.
As far as his pals were concerned, “Nails” had been
murdered – a crime that could not go unpunished. Late on the night of his
funeral, several members of the North Side gang broke into the Brown Riding
Stables and executed the guilty horse. One of them later telephoned the stable
manager and told him “we taught that horse of yours a lesson.” Dean O’Banion
threw a party in celebration of this unusual act of vengeance.
Chicago crime boss John Torrio
For three years after Torrio divided Chicago into
gang territories, O’Banion remained in the good graces of Torrio and Capone. In
fact, after the death of Frank Capone in April 1924, he had even prospered
because of that uneasy friendship. Capone had not forgotten the extravagance
with which O’Banion had prepared the arrangements for his brother’s funeral and
he maintained a grudging fondness for the North Side gangster that likely kept
the man alive longer than he deserved to be. O’Banion’s business flourished,
not just the flower shop, but bootlegging, which was netting him almost a
million dollars a year. He supplemented his income with daring hijackings that
netted him high-quality whiskey, pulled off trucks by members of his eccentric
gang. On one occasion, he raided a warehouse that contained almost 2,000
barrels of liquor and replaced the booze with water as a joke. In spite of all
this, he wasn’t happy. Officially, he was allied with Torrio and Capone, which
offered him protection from rival bootleggers and the numerous freelancers that
lurked about Chicago, but even though he had contributed men to act as muscle during
the Cicero election, he felt slighted, used and unappreciated.
To improve O’Banion’s mood, Torrio offered him a
small piece of the action in Cicero, a beer territory that added up to less
than $20,000 a month – walking-around money by the standards of the Torrio
organization, but it was still something. O’Banion took it and ran with it. He
owed his talent for making money to the fact that he was a little bit crazy and
he proved this once again by encouraging speakeasies to move to Cicero. Torrio
and Capone were impressed and more than a little resentful. Capone complained
about giving O’Banion the territory to begin with and urged Torrio to take it
back. But ever the peacemaker, Torrio proposed that O’Banion kick back a
percentage of his new business in exchange for a percentage of the outfit’s income
from prostitution. The deal was typically Torrio, linking possible adversaries
in a mutually beneficial enterprise. But O’Banion, like many Irish-Catholic
racketeers, hated prostitution. It was a filthy business they believed better
left to the Italians and the Jews. During his time as leader of the North Side,
not a single bordello could be found in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. He
refused Torrio’s deal.
O’Banion tolerated Torrio and Capone but he
outright despised their closest allies, the “Terrible Gennas.” The Gennas sold
their homemade poison for just $3 a barrel, which was half the price of
O’Banion’s high-class whiskey. Each of their stills produced as much as 350
gallons of the wretched high-proof stuff each week with ingredients that cost less
than $1 a gallon. When the Gennas began selling their whiskey in O’Banion’s
territory on the North Side, he implored Torrio to send the Sicilians back to
their own neighborhood on the West Side. Torrio stalled for time. He knew how
dangerous the Gennas were – heavily armed, entrenched in Sicilian blood oaths
and connected to the police – and he didn’t want to get involved in the
dispute. So, O’Banion dared to do what no sane bootlegger would do and hijacked
a truck that carried $30,000 of the Gennas’ liquor. The Sicilians were
infuriated but with Torrio acting as a peacekeeper, the animosity between
O’Banion and the Gennas stopped short of bloodshed.
Even though the situation was close to boiling
over, O’Banion made matters even worse by developing his own private
relationship with the police. Capone complained, “He was spoiling it for
everybody. Where we had been playing a copper a couple of hundred dollars, he’s
slip them a thousand. He spoiled them.” In return for his money, O’Banion
received information that he planned to use against his bootlegging partners in
a complicated scheme that proved just how clever – and reckless – he could be.
Six weeks after the funeral of Frank Capone, and
days after the murder of Joe Howard, O’Banion paid a visit to the Hawthorne Inn
in Cicero. He met with Torrio and Capone and stunned them with the news that he
planned to retire from bootlegging. He was tired of dealing with the Gennas, he
explained, and wanted to leave the dangerous life in Chicago and settle down in
Colorado. Although they tried not to show it, Torrio and Capone were thrilled
by the news and were even happier when O’Banion named his price. The three men
jointly owned the Sieben Brewery and O’Banion offered to sell his share for
half a million dollars. He even volunteered to transport the last shipment of
beer as partners; it was scheduled to go out on May 19, 1924. Torrio and Capone
immediately agreed to his terms and saw to it that O’Banion received his
payment in full.
Sieben Brewery -- years after O'Banion sold out to Torrio
Unknown to Torrio and Capone, O’Banion’s offer to
sell his share of the Sieben Brewery was nothing more than an elaborate ruse.
Prior to the meeting, he had learned through his police contacts that the
brewery was going to be raided by the police on the night of May 19. Normally,
a brewery raid was of little concern in Chicago. It usually just meant that a
precinct captain had not been paid off, or wanted more money, and it was easy
to avoid if the right amount of cash ended up in the right pocket. But this
raid was different. This time, federal authorities under orders from the U.S.
Attorney were running the operation with Mayor Dever’s full approval. Since
Torrio already had a prior federal conviction for violating Prohibition laws in
1923, a second conviction would lead to a large fine and a mandatory jail
sentence.
On the night of May 19, the raid on the brewery
occurred just as O’Banion knew it would. Torrio and O’Banion were supervising
the loading of the trucks that would take the beer to speakeasies all over
Chicago when the police broke in and arrested everyone in the place. Torrio was
detained, as was O’Banion, so that he could maintain the ruse that he knew
nothing about the raid. Only Capone managed to avoid arrest since he was not
present at the brewery that night. Once Torrio was delivered to the federal
authorities, he realized that O’Banion had betrayed and humiliated him.
Seething, he refused to post bond for O’Banion, as he routinely did for his
other partners and employees. Torrio himself was soon free on bail, but he was
later convicted of owning a brewery and was sentenced to nine months in jail
and a $5,000 fine – all thanks to Dion O’Banion.
After the raid and Torrio’s arrest, O’Banion’s days
were numbered. Strangely, he seemed completely oblivious to the fact. He worked
each day at his flower shop, cheerfully greeting his customers and spent his
evenings at home or having dinner with his friends. Months passed and O’Banion
had no idea that several of his old bootlegging partners were plotting his
demise. Only Torrio hesitated to have him killed. He knew that O’Banion’s death
would spark all-out war in Chicago. However, after the brewery raid, even the
cautious Torrio was leaning toward O’Banion’s murder.
On November 3, O’Banion and Hymie Weiss arrived at
The Ship, a Capone-run gambling joint in Cicero, to divide up profits with his
partners. Business proceeded as usual until Capone mentioned that Angelo Genna
had racked up $30,000 in gambling debts that had never been paid. In the
interest of preserving the peace, Capone suggested that they forgive the debt.
O’Banion adamantly refused. He went straight to a telephone, called Genna, and
demanded that he pay the debt within a week’s time. Capone and Torrio were
shocked at O’Banion’s rash behavior. Capone and Torrio were doing all they
could to keep the murderous Gennas happy, but they could not control the
reckless O’Banion – and were not sure they really wanted to. As they left the
gambling den that day, Weiss cautioned O’Banion to stop antagonizing the Gennas
and Torrio. But O’Banion, in a typically rebellious mood, waved away his
friend’s words. “Oh, to hell with them Sicilians,” he said.
This bold statement soon became a refrain among
O’Banion’s men and among many other Chicago bootleggers, most of whom felt the
same way but had never been brave enough to say it out loud – to hell with the
Sicilians. To the Gennas and other Italian mobsters, though, such words were
the worst kind of insult and together with Torrio and Capone, the Gennas put
the final touches on their plan to assassinate O’Banion. The murder would be
carried out the old-fashioned way, which meant O’Banion would be killed
face-to-face, at his place of business, in the middle of the day, and everyone
in Chicago would know who was responsible and why it had been done.
To carry out such a public assassination, the
Torrio-Capone organization required the blessing of Mike Merlo, the president
of the powerful Unione Siciliane. Merlo was opposed to the idea of eliminating
O’Banion, however. The murder was bad for business, he told them, and as long
as he was in office, O’Banion would not be killed. Torrio took the news calmly
for he knew that Merlo was suffering from end stage cancer and would not be
around to protect O’Banion for long. He would be patient, knowing the time for
action would come. He didn’t have long to wait – Merlo died on November 8.
Initially, Merlo’s death was a windfall for
O’Banion, who promptly sold over $100,000 in flower arrangements to the
mourners, including a spectacular floral effigy of the deceased that stood
twelve feet high. Capone himself purchased $8,000 worth of flowers. O’Banion
also received unusual order, so small that he almost overlooked it. Jim Genna,
one of his sworn enemies, visited the store and ordered a wreath for Merlo’s
funeral. He gave O'Banion $750 to pay for the arrangement and told him that
some boys would be by to pick it up on
Monday morning. He left the shop quietly, barely speaking, but he was there
long enough to put together a mental blueprint of the place – just in case he
had need to visit it again.
The selection of Mike Merlo’s successor as
president of the Unione Siciliane brought Frankie Yale back to Chicago. As the
head of the powerful New York branch of the organization, Yale had considerable
influence over who took over the corresponding post in Chicago. He conferred
with Torrio and Capone and the three men decided to appoint Angelo Genna to the
position. As the new president of the Unione Siciliane – and a man who had been
recently humiliated over a gambling debt by O’Banion and wanted to see him dead
– he had no objection to the immediate elimination of the North Side
bootlegger. This finally put into motion the most highly publicized and
significant gangland slaying in Prohibition-era Chicago – the murder that would
make Chicago a city at war.
On Monday, November 10, 1924, two days after the
death of Mike Merlo, O’Banion left his apartment and went straight to
Schofield’s flower shop on North State Street. There was still much to do in
preparation for Merlo’s funeral and he spent most of the morning working on
large orders for the event. He worked alongside three of his employees,
surrounded by plants and flowers of every description. Late in the morning, the
telephone rang and the caller asked if O’Banion had the Genna wreath ready to
be picked up. O’Banion replied that it could be picked up at noon.
At five minutes past the hour, a blue Jewett sedan
parked in front of the flower shop. The driver remained at the wheel, the motor
idling, and the passenger door standing open. Gregory Summers, an 11-year old
junior traffic officer who was guiding some children across the street near Holy
Name Cathedral, saw three men get out of the car. “Two of them were dark and
looked like foreigners. The other man had a light complexion,” he later said.
The three men passed him and entered the flower shop.
Inside Schofield's flower shop -- where O'Banion met his end
O’Banion was in the back, working on a flower
arrangement, but the porter, an African-American man named William Crutchfield,
was sweeping up flower petals and looked up to see the men enter the shop. He
assumed they were racketeers, like many of the men that O’Banion did business
with. He didn’t recognize the men, but it was obvious that his boss did, which
is likely why O’Banion never drew any of the three guns that he habitually kept
hidden on his body. O’Banion, who was dressed in a long white smock and holding
a pair of florist's shears in his left hand, came out from behind the counter
and extended his right hand in greeting. He said to them, “Hello, boys. You
want Merlo’s flowers?”
The three men walked abreast and approached
O'Banion with smiles on their faces. The man in the center – either Frankie
Yale or Mike Genna, depending on which version of the events you believe –
reached out his own hand. The two men beside him were almost definitely John
Scalise and Albert Anselmi. They were shorter and stockier, with dark
complexions, and would kill anyone on the orders of whoever their boss happened
to be at the time.
Crutchfield heard the man in the middle reply,
“Yes, for Merlo’s flowers.” He then stepped closer to O’Banion, grabbed his
hand in greeting and pulled him close. The two men at his sides moved around
him and drew pistols. Then, at close range, the center man rammed his own
pistol into O'Banion's stomach and, holding his arm in a vice-like grip, opened
fire. The other two men also fired their weapons, the bullets ripping into
O'Banion. Two slugs struck him in the right side of the chest, two hit him in
the throat and one passed through each side of his face. The shots were fired
at such close range that powder burns were found around each wound. From that
point on, this up close and personal method of murder became known as the
"Chicago Handshake."
The leader of the North Side gang fell, having died
on his feet, into a display of geraniums. O’Banion’s pistols were unfired, not
even drawn. The three men fled from the store, jumped into the blue sedan and,
as young traffic patrol Gregory Summers watched in amazement, sped away.
With the death of O’Banion, the Torrio-Capone
syndicate had eliminated the most unpredictable and dangerous bootlegger in the
city. They had also ingratiated themselves with the Gennas and set the wheels
in motion to take over O’Banion’s wealthy North Side territory. O’Banion’s funeral, for the South Side
outfit, was not an occasion for mourning, but a time for celebration. Torrio
and Capone were glad to see him go and were happy to contribute to his
send-off. But it wouldn’t be easy. The Catholic Church, under the authority of
Cardinal Mundelein, refused to permit a funeral mass for O’Banion to be held at
Holy Name, the cathedral across the street from the flower shop and the place
where the young O’Banion had served as an altar boy. Mundelein also forbade him
to be buried in consecrated ground. But Torrio and Capone refused to let this
dampen the festivities. They were intent on throwing O’Banion the most lavish
gangster funeral that Chicago had ever seen.
The funeral procession was so large that it became
the subject of national fascination. It extended for a mile and included three
bands and a police escort dispatched by Capone from the village of Stickney.
Chief Collins had issued an order that prevented Chicago police from joining
the parade or an embarrassingly large contingent of city police officers would
have most assuredly been involved. More than two dozen cars were required to
transport floral tributes from the funeral home to the cemetery, including a
large basket of roses that bore the ironic message: “From Al.”
For blocks in every direction, from the street,
from the windows of office buildings, and from rooftops, thousands watched the
cortege forming. It reached gigantic proportions – 10,000 people walked behind
the hearse and when they reached Mount Carmel Cemetery, they joined another
10,000 mourners assembled at the gravesite. Mounted police had to clear a path
through the mob so that the motorcade could advance. Every trolley car to the
area near Mount Carmel was packed with curiosity-seekers.
A grave was dug for O’Banion in a section of
unconsecrated ground. This area, reserved for lapsed or excommunicated
Catholics, was as close to holy ground as could be found. At the grave, Father
Patrick Malloy, who had known and liked O’Banion since he was a boy, delivered
a short eulogy. Cardinal Mundelein had forbidden a funeral service, but Malloy
defied him just enough to at least offer words of comfort and prayers. Five
months later, Viola O’Banion managed to have her husband’s remains disinterred
and reburied in consecrated ground. Although this was brought to the attention
of Cardinal Mundelein, he did not have the body removed. A stone obelisk
bearing O’Banion’s name stands in the cemetery today, a short distance from some
of his rival gangsters and a few feet from a mausoleum that contains the
remains of a bishop and two archbishops. The irony of this turn of events led
Police Captain John Stege to remark, “Strange, isn’t it? A murderer and he’s
buried side by side with good men of the church.”
The author at O'Banion's grave
Capone and Torrio were in attendance at the
cemetery, although they knew that O’Banion’s friends saw past the elaborate
floral arrangements and empty words of grief and knew exactly who was
responsible for his death. A reporter came up to Hymie Weiss and asked him who
he thought was responsible for O’Banion’s murder. Was it Al Capone? Weiss
mockingly recoiled. “Blame Capone?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm,
“Why Al’s a real pal. He was Dion’s best friend, too.” Passions ran so high
that all mourners were ordered to check their weapons until the funeral was
over. It was likely a good thing. Capone and Torrio spent a long, uncomfortable
afternoon being glared at across O’Banion’s grave by Weiss, Drucci and Moran.
Relieved that another racketeer was out of the way,
the police didn’t try too hard to catch O’Banion’s killers. The half-hearted
investigation went nowhere. As a matter of routine, they questioned John
Torrio, Al Capone and the Gennas, all of whom claimed to revere O’Banion. They
were deeply grieved by his death, they said, and pointed to the large and
expensive floral arrangements they purchased as proof. Frankie Yale was also
questioned but he claimed to be in town only to attend the funeral of Mike
Merlo. He had nothing to do with the death of O’Banion, he said. After making a
statement to the police, he returned by train to New York.
After the inquest, the Cook County Coroner made a
note in the margin of the court record: “Slayers not apprehended. John Scalise,
Albert Anselmi and Frank Yale suspected, but never brought to trial.”
Officially, the murder of Dion O’Banion was marked with one word – unsolved.
O’Banion’s men had no doubts about who had carried
out the assassination, though. They knew that Torrio, Capone and the Gennas
were behind it and as Hymie Weiss assumed the leadership of the North Side
gang, he swore out an oath of vengeance that started the city’s legendary “Beer
Wars.”
The streets of Chicago were about to run red with
blood.
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