THE GREEN MILL

Legends & Lore of Chicago's Greatest Nightclub & "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn

 If I were forced to name only one location in Chicago as my favorite spot connected to the days of Al Capone, it would be legendary jazz club known as the Green Mill on North Broadway.

As the city’s oldest nightclub, it’s been offering continuous entertainment since 1907 and remains today as an authentic link to not only Al Capone but to the club’s former manager ---- and Capone henchman ---- “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn.

The Green Mill opened in 1907 as Pop Morse’s Roadhouse and from the very beginning, was a favorite hangout for show business people in Chicago. In those days, actors from the north side’s Essanay Studios made the roadhouse a second home. One of the most popular stars to frequent the place was “Bronco Billy” Anderson, the star of dozens of Western silents from Essanay. Anderson often rode his horse to Pop Morse’s and the proprietor even installed a hitching post that Anderson’s horse shared with those of other stars like Wallace Beery and William S. Hart. Back then, even screen greats like Charlie Chaplin stopped in sometimes for a drink.

Around 1910, the Chamales Brothers purchased the club from the original owners. They installed a huge, green windmill on the roof and re-named the place the Green Mill Gardens. The choice of the name “Green Mill” was inspired by the infamous Moulin Rouge in Paris (French for “Red Mill”) but green was chosen so that it would not be confused with any of the red light districts in Chicago. The new owners added outdoor dancing and live entertainment in the enlarged sunken gardens and also added a rhumba room next door. The Green Mill Gardens was more of a roadhouse that spanned an entire block than a cocktail lounge in those days.

Vintage Postcard of the Green Mill Gardens

Tom Chamales later went on to construct the Riviera Theater, around the corner from the Green Mill. He and his brother leased the Green Mill to Henry Van Horne and it soon began to attract the best --- and worst --- of the late-night denizens of Chicago.

By the time that Prohibition arrived, the Green Mill had become known as the most jumping place on the north side. Jazz fans flocked to the club to savor this new and evolving musical art form, which had been born in the south but had been re-created in Chicago after World War I. The jazz crowd ignored the laws against alcohol and hid their bootleg whiskey away in hip flasks, which they eagerly sipped at the Green Mill. The club helped to launch the careers of singers who went on to become legends like Helen Morgan, Anita O’Day, and Billie Holliday. It also offered an endless procession of swinging jazz combos and vaudevillians, who dropped in to jam or just to relax between sets at other, lesser clubs.

In the middle 1920s, Van Horne gave up his interest in the place and the Chamales Brothers leased the club to Al Capone’s south side mob. Capone himself, although straying into the enemy’s territory on the north side, often enjoyed hanging out at the club, listening to the music, and drinking with friends.

In the case of the Green Mill though, it’s not the remnants of Al Capone that attracts crime buffs to the club, it’s the legend of Jack McGurn, who managed the club for Capone in the 1920s.

James Vincenzo De Mora, or Jack McGurn as he later became known, was born in Chicago’s Little Italy in 1904. He grew up as a clean-cut kid from the slums who excelled in school and was an excellent boxer. A fight promoter managed to get him into the ranks of professional fighters and at the man’s suggestion; James adopted the ring name of “Jack McGurn”. He seemed to have a great career ahead, until his father, Angelo De Mora, a grocer with a store on Halsted Street, ran into trouble with the terrible Genna brothers and McGurn stepped over the line into the world of crime.

At the start of Prohibition, the Gennas had transformed all over Little Italy into a vast commercial area of alcohol cookers. Stills were set up in almost every home, franchised by the Gennas, making homemade rotgut whiskey that was popular in neighborhood speakeasies. Angelo De Mora sold sugar to the Gennas for their operations, a relatively safe enterprise until some competitors for the position appeared on January 8, 1923. Angelo was found shot to death in front of his store.

McGurn rushed home when he heard about his father’s death. He was only 19 but he immediately took the role of head of the household, shielding his mother and five brothers from the police. The police asked him if he was afraid for his life now that he was the man of the house.

“No,” McGurn answered ominously. “I’m big enough to take care of this case myself.”

McGurn never got back into the ring. He picked up a gun and started working for Al Capone, who regarded him as his most trustworthy gunman and the man to carry out the most dangerous and grisly assignments. Within a few years, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn was the most feared of Capone’s killers.

McGurn relished his work, especially when six of his targets were part of the Genna mob, which he believed was responsible for his father’ death. In just over a month’s time, he wiped out the Genna's top men and he learned that one of these men had referred to his father as “a nickel and dimer.” So, after each of them had been machine-gunned to death, McGurn pressed a nickel into their palms, his sign of contempt and a trademark that would be forever linked to his murders.

McGurn continued to earn his pay --- and his reputation. Joe Aiello’s feud with Capone over west side beer territories reached its peak when Aiello offered a $50,000 reward for Capone’s murder. He imported four out-of-town killers to do the job when no one in Chicago took him up on his offer. Days after their arrival, the four men met with the wrath of Jack McGurn. All of them were found riddled with machine gun bullets --- and with nickels pressed into their palms.

When not working for Capone, McGurn frequented Chicago’s hottest jazz spots and managed to become part owner of several of them through intimidation and violence. By the time he was 23, McGurn owned pieces of at least five nightclubs and managed a number of other lucrative properties. He also managed the Green Mill for Capone and was later given 25 percent of its ownership in exchange for his loyalty. This became his usual hangout and he could often be found sipping liquor in one of the green-plush upholstered booths.

Jack McGurn

McGurn was fiercely loyal to the Green Mill and so in 1927, became enraged when the club’s star attraction, singer and comedian Joe E. Lewis, refused to renew his contract, stating that he was going to work for a rival club. He opened to a packed house at the New Rendezvous the next night. Days later, McGurn took Lewis aside as he was about to enter his hotel, the New Commonwealth. McGurn had two friends with him and all three of them had their hands shoved in their pockets. 

McGurn told Lewis that they missed him at the club and that “the old Mill’s a morgue without you.”

Lewis assured him that he would find another headliner and when McGurn told him that he had made his point and needed to come back, Lewis refused. He bravely turned his back on the killer and walked away.

On November 27, three of McGurn’s men stormed into Lewis’ hotel suite, beat him and then cut his throat almost from ear to ear. The comedian survived the attack though, managed to recover his singing voice and continued with his career. Capone, unhappy with McGurn’s actions but unable to rebuke one of his best men, was said to have advanced Lewis $10,000 so that the performer could get back on his feet.

A short time later, McGurn’s own career was almost cut short. Two machine gunners for George Moran, Pete and Frank Gusenberg (both later killed during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre), caught up with McGurn in a phone booth inside of the McCormick Inn. Several bursts from their tommy guns almost finished McGurn for good but major surgery, and a long period of secluded convalescence, saved the killer. Interestingly, this phone booth can now be found in a little inn called the Ruebel Hotel in Grafton, Illinois. How it managed to end up here is anyone’s guess.

In early February 1929, McGurn visited Capone at his Palm Island, Florida home for a discussion about the north side gang run by George Moran. Ten days later, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place. This hardly seems to be a coincidence!

McGurn has always been connected to the massacre, as has Fred R. “Killer” Burke. George Brichet, a teenager, was walking past the garage when the five men entered on February 14 and overheard one of the men say to another one: “Come on, Mac.” He picked out McGurn’s photograph from police mug shots. Armed with an arrest warrant, police broke into McGurn’s suite at the Stevens Hotel on February 27. As they hauled the gangster away, they were cussed out by McGurn’s sweetheart, showgirl Louise Rolfe. The press dubbed her “the blonde alibi” and she swore that McGurn was with her at the time of the murders. McGurn was later indicted but he married Louise soon after and thanks to this, she was not required to testify against him.

McGurn’s defense attorneys insisted four times that their client be brought to trial --- so that he could prove his innocence, of course. Each time, the prosecution stated that it was not ready to proceed. Under Illinois law, the prosecution was only allowed four legal delays of this kind. After they, they had to drop the case. McGurn was set free on December 2, 1929.

McGurn’s likely role in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre led to Capone putting him “on ice”. He was just too hot to use again as an enforcer. He began to be seen less and less with the boss and was not seen at all during Capone’s tax trial, the job of bodyguard given over to Phil D’Andrea.

Once Capone went to prison, McGurn’s prestige started to slip. He busied himself with his nightclubs, most of which went under during the Depression and Louise left him when his money ran out. Alone and flat broke; McGurn met his end on February 15, 1936 ---- the day after the anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

McGurn was in the middle of his third frame at the Avenue Recreation Parlor, a bowling alley located at 805 North Milwaukee Avenue, when remnants from the old Moran gang finally caught up with him. Five men burst into the place and while three of them pretended to rob the place, the other two machine-gunned McGurn to death on the hardwood lanes.

In his left hand, the killers had placed a comic valentine, which read:

You’ve lost your job.
You’ve lost your dough,
Your jewels and handsome houses.
But things could be worse, you know.
You haven’t lost your trousers.

In the palm of “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn’s right hand, the killers had placed a solitary nickel.

"The Man Who Got Away"

“THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY”

The Demise of George “Bugs” Moran

Most famously known as the man who narrowly escaped death at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, George Moran had ended up with the North Side mob almost by accident since he managed to outlive all of his friends. But Moran’s power was broken by the massacre and he eventually drifted away from Chicago and died in prison on February 25, 1957. It was a forgettable moment for the man who once challenged the reign of Al Capone.

George “Bugs” Moran

George "Bugs" Moran was born Alelard Cunin in Minnesota in 1891, the son of a French stone mason named Jules Cunin, and his wife, Marie. His father was later recalled as a mean-tempered man and the two never got along, although he and his mother stayed on good terms throughout this life. He ran away in 1910 and adopted the name of George Moran. He became involved with a gang of young toughs who began specializing in stealing horses. In 1912, Moran was arrested for the first time. He spent several stints in jail after that for other crimes, including larceny and burglary.

    

Moran made friends in Joliet Correctional Center and began hanging around the North Side after his release. One day, Moran was listening to a speech given by an outdoor orator and became annoyed when a man in the crowd started heckling him. Moran confronted the heckler and a fight broke out. As a result, Moran’s chest and neck were badly slashed with a knife and he spent the rest of his life wearing high-neck collars to hide the scars. His nickname of “Bugs” was probably created by newspaper writers (as most gangsters’ more colorful handles were) but it was noted that Moran had a fiery temper, which led to the moniker.

Following the knife attack, and after recuperating for several weeks in the hospital, Moran began hanging around McGovern’s, a cabaret at 666 North Clark Street, where Dean O’Banion worked as a singing waiter. Many criminals who were just starting out hung around the place and Moran became friends with many of them, including O’Banion. The two began working together, robbing warehouses, with other members of what would become the North Side gang. After one fouled-up job, Moran was captured. He kept his silence and served two years in Joliet without implicating O'Banion in the crime. After he was released, he went back to work with his friend. He was soon captured again and, once more, he kept silent about who he worked with. He stayed in jail this time until 1923.

When Moran got out the last time, he joined back up with O’Banion’s now formidable North Side gang. They had become a powerful organization, supplying liquor to Chicago's wealthy Gold Coast. Moran became a valuable asset, hijacking liquor trucks at will. He became known as O'Banion's right hand man, always impeccably dressed, right down to the two guns that he always wore.

Moran fell in love with a showgirl who had recently arrived in America from Turkey. Her name was Lucille Bilezikdijan and she had a child from a previous relationship, which she feared would turn Moran away from her. Instead, he raised the boy as his own and not long after, he fathered his own child with Lucille. Like so many other gangster wives, Lucille averred that her husband was, “one of the best men she had ever known.”

After O’Banion was murdered, Moran served as one of his pallbearers – and then as one of his avengers. He took part – along with Hymie Weiss and Vincent Drucci – in several assassination attempts on Capone and in January 1925, was the first man to fire a bullet into John Torrio outside his South Side apartment building (see earlier blog post).

Moran was identified in the Torrio hit by the 17-year-old son of the apartment building’s janitor, Peter Veesaert, who had been standing in the doorway of the building at the time of the attack. He was shown some photographs that were taken by the police during Dean O’Banion’s funeral and he pointed out George Moran as the first man who shot Torrio. Bravely, he insisted that his identification was correct when he was brought face-to-face with Moran after he was arrested. “You’re the man,” Peter said. The police wanted to hold Moran until they could establish some evidence in support of the boy’s identification but Judge William Lindsay released him under $5,000 bail. He was never indicted for the crime.

Moran continued to take part in the attempts to kill Capone – and continued burying his friends who were slain in the Chicago violence. In time, by blood and attrition, he became the leader of the North Side gang and was just as relentless against Capone’s business efforts as O’Banion, Weiss and Drucci had been. On the highway between Detroit and Chicago, they hijacked trucks of liquor that had been shipped to Capone by the Purple Gang. They bombed saloons that exclusively sold his beer. They had assisted Joe Aiello when he had reclaimed the liquor stills of Little Italy. The North Side gang had attempted twice to kill Capone’s favorite gunman, Jack McGurn. The second time, the Gusenberg brothers had caught up with him in a telephone booth at the Hotel McCormick and emptied a Tommy gun through the glass. Major surgery and a long recovery in the hospital saved his life. The gang even started their own dog racing tracks. Moran opened a track in Southern Illinois while his business manager, Adam Heyer, opened the Fairview Kennel Club in Cicero, not far from Capone’s Hawthorne Kennel Club – which was set on fire during a terrorist attack. In late 1928, Moran became entrenched with the Master Cleaners’ and Dyers’ Association, a blatant challenge to Capone. He managed to get control of an independent plant, the Central Cleaning Company, and installed two of his men, Willie Marks and Al Weinshank, as vice-presidents. In short, Moran took every opportunity to provoke Capone, both on the streets and in the newspapers, where he often publicly blamed Capone for local violence.

Just days before the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Moran was contacted and asked to be at the garage on North Clark Street where the massacre occurred. He arrived a few minutes late and, seeing what he believed were police cars outside, was at a nearby coffee shop when his friends were slaughtered. He narrowly missed being killed and to this day, many historians believe that Al Weinshank was mistaken for Moran by the lookouts for the assassins. The massacre was a simple, cold-bloodedly efficient assassination that was meant to kill George Moran and break the back of the North Side gang, opening up its territories and operations to Al Capone. But they missed Moran and from that point on, he was known as “the man who got away.”

Although the St. Valentine’s Massacre greatly diminished the power of George Moran and the North Side gang, it did not completely destroy it. Moran managed to keep control of most of his territory and what remained of his gang through the end of Prohibition and into the early 1930s. But with the repeal of Prohibition, the North Side gang declined along with almost everyone else and Moran decided to leave Chicago.

Many crime writers believe that Moran's biggest liability as a gang boss was Moran himself ---he was simply not very smart in the ways of long-term survival as a mob leader. While Capone was a master at planning his operations several steps in advance (thanks to his mentoring by Torrio), Moran operated almost like an ordinary street fighter, doing everything by cause and effect. So, having been squeezed out of Chicago at the end of Prohibition, he reverted back to his early life of pulling common crimes like safecracking and robbery. Moran went from being one of the wealthiest gangsters in Chicago to a penniless crook in less than two decades.

Moran toward the end of his life

In July 1946, Moran was arrested in Ohio for robbing a bank messenger of $10,000, a paltry sum compared to his ill-gotten gains during the Prohibition days. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in the Ohio Penitentiary. Shortly after his release, Moran was again arrested for an earlier bank raid, receiving another ten-year sentence, this time in Leavenworth. Only a matter of days after arriving there, most of which were spent in the prison hospital, Moran died of lung cancer on February 25, 1957. He was buried in the prison cemetery.

While at the height of his career in Chicago, Moran was quoted as saying, “I hope when my time comes that I die decently in bed. I don’t want to be murdered and left for dead beside the garbage cans in some Chicago alley.” And he didn’t – he died lonely and mostly forgotten in a prison hospital bed. And one has to wonder, if he’d had the chance, would he have changed his mind about his choice?

The story of George Moran, the North Side Mob, Capone and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is chronicled in my book BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES, which is available in print from the website and as a Kindle edition.

A Valentine for Bugs -- Aftermath of the Massacre

A VALENTINE FOR BUGS

The Aftermath of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

On this date in 1929, the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place at the S-M-C Cartage Company building at 2122 North Clark Street in Chicago. In a few moments of savage gunfire, Al Capone effectively wiped out the resistance from the remnants of the North Side mob, founded by Dean O’Banion and by 1929, in the hands of George “Bugs” Moran. On that cold winter morning, Capone missed Moran but managed to kill six other members of the North Side gang, as well as an optometrist who was a friend of the gangsters.

The SMC Cartage Company at the time of the Massacre in February 1929. 

For today’s, history post, though, we’re going to take a look at what happened at 2122 North Clark Street AFTER the massacre took place on February 14.      

We will never know for certain what took place inside of the SMC Cartage Co. on the cold morning of February 14, 1929. Only one man survived the initial slaughter and he never talked. However, historians and crime enthusiasts have spent many years trying to put together the pieces of one of the greatest (technically) unsolved crimes in history. It ended with seven men dead, a flurry of accusations and a blight on the property that never lifted.

The bloody aftermath of the massacre
(Below) A crowd gathered outside to witness the carnage inside the garage.

Chicago, in its own way, memorialized the warehouse on Clark Street where the massacre took place. It became a tourist attraction and the newspapers even printed the photos of the corpses upside-down so that readers would not have to turn their papers around to identify the bodies.

Right after the massacre, the SMC Cartage Company was temporarily boarded up. The building had been leased by Moran gang associate Adam Heyer but was owned by Frank C. Brusky, who moved his own trucking firm (Brusky Overland Movers) into the space in 1930. When he did, he renovated the building, installed two more windows and added space for storage on the second floor.

The building as it looked in 1930, when it was boarded up. 

During the renovations, Brusky discovered a trap door in the corrugated ceiling of the garage, directly above the spot where the Moran gangsters were killed. The door led to a concrete chamber nestled against the second floor wall that was undetectable from below. The chamber contained funnels, a stool, an alcohol hydrometer, a crate that could contain a five-gallon bottle of liquor and a block and tackle system that could lower the crate to the floor of the garage. Brusky called the police, who searched the premises again. They first believed the secret room to be torture chamber but Police Captain Thomas Condon concluded that it was merely an alcohol cache.

By 1935, the building was occupied by Red Ball Movers, Inc., a moving company that also did telephone directory pick-ups and exchanges each year. In 1936, it was purchased by Anaconda Van Lines, which was owned by Samuel J. McArthur.

The building in the 1950s, when it was the Werner’s storage company.

(Below) The Infamous wall where the massacre took pace during the time when the building was owned by the Werners. They were frequently harassed by people wanting to take a look at the wall.

In 1949, the building was taken over by Charles and Alma Werner, who turned it into a moving, packing, shipping and storage office for antique furniture. At the time, they had no idea of the buildings’ bloody past. They soon found that tourists, curiosity-seekers and crime buffs visited the place much more often than customers, all of them asking to see the infamous wall in back. Depending on her mood, Mrs. Werner either turned them away or allowed them to take a look. She once stated that she wished she and her husband had never bought the building. The Werners were later bought out by the city of Chicago, who wanted the place torn down and replaced with apartments for the elderly.

In 1967, the building was demolished. However, the bricks from the bullet-pocked rear wall were preserved and purchased by a Canadian businessman named George Patey. The bricks were packed and shipped across the border and then put together as the main attraction for a traveling crime show that was displayed at shopping centers, museums and galleries. The show was only a moderate success so, in 1971, Patey opened a Roaring Twenties themed nightclub called the Banjo Palace and rebuilt the wall, for some strange reason, in the men’s restroom. Three nights a week, women were allowed to peek inside at this macabre attraction. To make matters even more bizarre, a sheet of clear acrylic was placed in front of the wall so that patrons could urinate and try and hit targets that were painted on the glass. The club closed down in 1976 and the 417 bricks that made up the back wall were placed in storage until 1997.

Businessman George Patey with the infamous bricks

Patey tried offering the wall for sale, along with a written account of the massacre but had trouble selling the entire wall in one piece. Patey, along with a friend named Guy Whitford (who contacted me about the wall in 2002) tried to sell the single piece for some time, without success. The original lot came with a diagram that explained how to restore the wall to its original form. The bricks were even numbered to facilitate reassembly. They remained on the market for several years, but there were no buyers. Eventually, Patey broke up the set and began selling them one brick at a time for $1,000 each. Patey died in December 2004, by which time he had sold most of the bricks. A large number of them are now on display at the crime museum that opened in Las Vegas last year.

But there are legends that say that Patey had some trouble selling some of the bricks. The stories say that some buyers returned their bricks soon after purchasing them. It seemed that anyone who bought one was suddenly stricken with bad luck in the form of illness, financial ruin, divorce and even death. According to the stories, the bricks had somehow been infested with the powerful negative energy of the massacre. This story has been dismissed as a “journalistic embellishment,” but there are many who maintain that it’s the truth. These same people insist that Patey’s 417 bricks were not the only surviving bricks from the warehouse.

In recent years, other bricks have emerged that are said to have come from the wall, or at least from the building itself. These were not bricks purchased from Patey; rather they were smuggled out of the lot by construction workers and curiosity-seekers. It was said that from these bricks, too, come the legends of misfortune and bad luck. Are these bricks authentic? The owners say they are, but the reader will have to judge for himself.

Whatever the legend of the bricks, and whether or not they were somehow "haunted" by the horrific murders, there is little doubt that the massacre site on Clark Street was haunted – at least for awhile.

For many years, people walking along the street, or who lived nearby, reported hearing the sounds of screams, moans, muffled voices and even the unmistakable thump-thump-thump of Tommy gun fire. The garage is long gone now, demolished in a misguided attempt by city officials to erase all vestiges of Chicago's gangster past. 

A portion of the block was taken over by the Chicago Housing Authority and a fenced-in lawn that belongs to a senior citizens’ development now marks the area where the garage once stood. Five trees are scattered about the site and the one in the center actually marks the point where the rear wall once stood, where Moran's men were lined up and mercilessly gunned down. The apartment building where Jeanette Landesman lived and where she heard the sound of the terrified German shepherd barking in the garage still stands but all remnants of the SMC Cartage Company have vanished. Or have they?

This empty lot on Clark Street marks the site of the SMC Cartage Company. Small remnants of the building remain, like the tar line of the roof on the wall of the building next door, and bricks in the back alley that came from the garage. 

According to reports, residents of the senior housing complex built on one end of the lot have had strange encounters in the building, especially those who live on the side that faces the former massacre site. A television reporter from Canada interviewed a woman who once lived in an apartment that overlooked the small park area. She often complained that, at night, she would hear strange voices, sounds and knocking on her door and her window. She complained to the management, who dismissed her claims as imagination but assigned her another apartment. A new tenant moved into the rooms and she also complained of odd happenings, including knocking sounds on her door at night. When she opened the door to see who was there, she never found anyone nearby. One night, the tenant stated that she saw a dark figure wearing an old fashioned-looking hat. He remained in place for a few moments and then faded away. Most of the strange phenomena experienced by the new tenant also faded away and soon eerie events either stopped completely or she became so used to them that they no longer bothered her anymore.

    

Outside, along Clark Street, passersby occasionally reported strange sounds, like weeping and moaning, and the indescribable feeling of fear as they walked past the former site of the garage. Skeptics tried to laugh this off, saying that the sounds were nothing more than the overactive imaginations of those who knew what once occurred on the site, but based on the reports of those who had no idea of the history of the place, something strange was apparently occurring.

Those who were accompanied by their dogs also reported their share of weirdness. The animals seemed to be especially bothered by the section of lawn where the garage’s rear wall once stood, sometimes barking and howling, sometimes whining in fear. Their sense of the tragedy that happened there many years ago seemed to be much greater than that of humans.

However, many believe that what dogs sensed at the site was not the human trauma experienced in the massacre, but rather the trauma that must have been experienced by Johnny May's German Shepherd, Highball. The poor animal must have been terrified by what occurred that morning, from the deafening sounds of the Tommy guns to the bloody slaying of his beloved owner. Tied to the front bumper of the truck, Highball had nowhere to run. It should be noted again that it was not the sound of machine-gun fire that alerted Mrs. Landesman to the horror inside the garage: it was the howling and barking of the dog.

Johnny May’s traumatized German Shepherd, Highball

Tragically, Highball was so traumatized by the events of that morning that he had to be put down after the massacre. Chicago Sun reporter Russell V. Hamm, one of the first newsmen on the scene, said that the dog was never the same again. His bizarre behavior left the police no choice but to put him to death. 

Could the animals that subsequently passed by this empty lot have sensed the trauma suffered by Highball so many years ago? As any ghost buff can tell you, it's the events of yesterday that create the hauntings of today and sometimes, those who lived in the past can leave a little piece of themselves behind to be experienced over and over again.

While the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre seems to be quiet today, the violent events of the city’s gangster era still reverberate over time. Men like Al Capone, whether city officials want to admit it or not, left an indelible mark on Chicago. It seems that the events of St. Valentine's Day 1929 left one, too.

The ghosts of the massacre may not be still around today – but one of them made his presence known for many years after his death. He had a reason for staying behind and, according to his victim, haunted him to the grave.

Want More? Then pick up my book BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES, which not only tells about the rise of Capone’s power in the Chicago underworld, but details the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, who died, who was involved and who was the ghost that haunted Capone for the rest of his life. You get an autographed copy of the book at from the website, or it’s also available in a Kindle edition. 

The "Tommy Gun" Comes to Chicago

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT THE TOMMY GUN TO CHICAGO

The Rise & Fall of Frank McErlane

On this date, January 28, 1930, Chicago mobster Frank McErlane was shot in an assassination attempt by either the Capone gang – or by men sent by his former partner, Joe Saltis. McErlane had a lot of enemies in the Chicago gangs by 1930. He had earned the wrath of Al Capone by switching loyalties to another gang and angered his long-time partner, Saltis, by arguing over shares and then going to work for the South Side O’Donnell gang, which was a losing proposition all around.

These days, Frank McErlane is a barely remembered part of Chicago’s Roaring 20s history, but in truth, he played a very important role – he was the man that introduced the Thompson machine-gun to Chicago’s gangland wars. The “Tommy Gun” – a.k.a. the “Chicago Typewriter” – is the gun that “made Chicago roar” in the 1920s!

South Side Gangster and Killer, Frank McErlane

Born in Chicago in 1894, Frank McErlane was first arrested in 1911 and sent to Pontiac Prison in June 1913 for involvement in a car theft ring. Released on parole in March 1916, he was arrested eight months later as an accessory in the murder of Oak Park police officer Herman J. Malow, Jr. He was sent back to prison, this time to Joliet, for one year. He attempted to escape but was caught and spent another two years in prison.

Shortly after the start of Prohibition, McErlane began running a gang with partner Joseph "Polack Joe" Saltis, operating in the "Back of the Yards" section of the South Side. The “Back of the Yards” was a grim landscape of slaughterhouses, factories and train tracks in those days and a depressing wasteland of rundown homes and buildings that would forever be connected to the nearby stockyards. This bleak area was the domain of the Saltis-McErlane gang.

“Polack Joe” Saltis, a hulking dim-witted coward who only managed to rise to a power position in the mob because of his partners, savvy “Dingbat” O’Berta and killer Frank McErlane

Saltis, a slow-witted, hulking Hungarian was a saloonkeeper before Prohibition and while he presented an imposing figure, his cowardice had long been known to his underworld colleagues. His ferocity only emerged when he was dealing with someone smaller and weaker than he was. On one occasion, he beat an elderly woman to death after she refused to let him turn her ice cream parlor into a speakeasy. Only his political connections and gangster pals like Frank McErlane kept his business from being taken over by stronger rivals.

   

Another principal associate was John “Dingbat” O’Berta, a labor racketeer and politician from the Thirteenth Ward. O’Berta was actually of Slavic descent but had fudged his real name of “Oberta” to appeal to the Irish voters of the district. Childhood friends had nicknamed him “Dingbat” after a popular comic strip character of the day but the ruthless mobster was anything but comical. His ambitions ran unchecked. After rivals gunned down labor racketeer “Big Tim” Murphy, O’Berta gained underworld prominence by marrying Murphy’s widow, Florence.

“Dingbat” O’Berta with his bride, the former Florence Murphy – who saw two of her husbands die by violent means

Saltis began bringing in beer from Wisconsin at the start of Prohibition and he made enough money to buy one brewery and invest in three others. He also used a percentage of his brewery money to buy a summer home in Wisconsin’s Eagle River resort area, a favorite retreat for millionaires in the northern part of the state.

In 1922, McErlane and Saltis allied with the John Torrio – Al Capone operation against the South Side O’Donnell Brothers. McErlane, a stocky, hard-muscled man, was soon known as an especially ferocious assassin. McErlane carried a rosary in his pockets along with a pistol. Unfortunately, he had a taste for alcohol. When he drank, he got crazy, as many unlucky people found out. One night while drinking in Crown Point, Indiana, an equally drunken companion challenged him to show off his skill with a revolver. McErlane picked a stranger at random, an attorney named Thad Fancher, and shot him in the head. He fled the state just one step ahead of the Indiana State Police and fought extradition for a year. When he was finally brought to trail, the state was unable to call its one key witness because his head had been split with an ax. McErlane was acquitted.

McErlane gave Saltis’ operation the deadly element that it had been missing and it didn’t take long for word to spread that crossing Saltis would incur the wrath of the brutal killer.

During the 1923 "Beer Wars", McErlane would be credited with killing three O'Donnell gangsters in September of that year; Jerry O'Conner, George Bucher, and George Meegan. On December 1, 1923, two O'Donnell beer trucks were stopped on the road between Chicago and Joliet. The occupants of one, William "Shorty" Egan and Thomas "Morrie" Keane, were shoved into a car with Frank McErlane and Willie Channell, who drove. Egan miraculously survived what happened next and gave this chilling account:

"Pretty soon the driver asks the guy with the shotgun, 'Where you gonna get rid of these guys?' The fat fellow laughs and says, 'I'll take care of that in a minute.' He was monkeying with his shotgun all the time. Pretty soon he turns around and points the gun at Keane. He didn't say a word but just let go straight at him. Keane got it square on the left side. It kind of turned him over and the fat guy give him the second barrel in the other side. The guy loads up his gun and gives it to Keane again. Then he turns to me and says, 'I guess you might as well get yours too.' With that he shoots me in the side. It hurt like hell so when I seen him loading up again, I twist around so it won't hurt me in the same place. This time he got me in the leg. Then he gimme the other barrel right on the puss. I slide off the seat. But I guess the fat guy wasn't sure we was through. He let Morrie have it twice more and then let me have it again in the other side. The fat guy scrambled into the rear seat and grabbed Keane. He opens the door and kicks Morrie out onto the road. We was doing 50 from the sound. I figure I'm next so when he drags me over to the door I set myself to jump. He shoves and I light in the ditch by the road. I hit the ground on my shoulders and I thought I would never stop rolling. I lost consciousness. When my senses came back, I was lying in a pool of water and ice had formed around me. The sky was red and it was breaking day. I staggered along the road until I saw a light in a farmhouse…"

Despite having nearly half his face blown off, Egan had amazingly lived to tell about his "one-way ride" and fingered Willie Channell as one of his attackers. McErlane was eventually arrested but he beat both this case and charges in the double homicide of George Bucher and George Meegan, who were riddled with bullets while driving home on September 17, 1923.

McErlane’s greatest claim to fame was introducing what would be the Chicago underworld’s weapon of choice – the Thompson sub-machine gun. Known as the “Tommy gun,” “the chopper” and the “Chicago Typewriter,” the weapon had been named for its co-inventor, Brigadier General John T. Thompson, the director of arsenals during World War I. Developed in 1920, it came too late for the war and it was placed on the open market by the New York company, Auto Ordnance. It met with little success with military customers (the Army didn’t want to invest in it until World War II) and most law enforcement agencies rejected it as a hazard to innocent bystanders. To General Thompson’s dismay, it became very popular with gangsters.

At just over eight pounds, the gun was light enough to be handled by a small boy and it could fire up to 1,000 .45 caliber cartridges per minute. It could penetrate a pine board at 500 feet and in no time could reduce a heavy automobile to junk. While most cities and states had enacted legislation similar to New York’s 1911 Sullivan Law, which made it illegal to carry small, easily concealed firearms, they placed no restrictions on Tommy guns. Anyone could buy as many as he liked by mail order or from sporting goods stores. The seller was only required to register the purchaser’s name and address. And if you couldn’t buy one, you could steal one from one of the few police or military arsenals that stocked them.

The Tommy gun soon became an indispensable accessory for every self-respecting gangster. The clattering of the machine gun soon became an all-too-familiar background accompaniment to mayhem on the streets of Chicago.

The gun was first used by Frank McErlane in an attempt on the life of Spike O’Donnell in September 1925. Frank McErlane acquired his "Tommy Gun" from North Side gang leader Dean O'Banion, who had purchased a shipment of submachine guns in Denver, Colorado shortly before his November 1924 murder. At any rate, McErlane was to use one in his next attempt to kill Spike O'Donnell (one of 10 recorded attacks on O'Donnell's life!). On September 25, O'Donnell was talking to a beat cop in front of a drugstore at Sixty-Third and Western streets. A car pulled up and someone yelled, "Hello, Spike!" The gang boss saw what was coming and hit the deck; a submachine gun began drumming from the car, stitching neat lines of bullet holes on the storefront before the would-be killers sped away. Police were so unfamiliar with the Thompson, they thought that either shotguns or a "machine rifle of some kind" had done the damage. It was the first recorded use of a submachine gun in Chicago (or any other major American city, for that matter.)

Spike O’Donnell’s bullet-riddled car after 10 different attempts on his life. He miraculously survived and eventually left Chicago. 

Al Capone, intrigued by the method, co-opted the technique with often bloody results. He had followed McErlane’s exploits with the Tommy gun with much interest. After his failure to take out Spike O’Donnell, McErlane had used the gun on other enemies with better results. Firing the weapon from a speeding car that was going past the Ragen Athletic Club, Ralph Sheldon’s hangout, he had slaughtered Charles Kelly, who happened to be standing outside and seriously injured a Sheldon gang member inside. In an attempt to kill two beer runners from a rival gang, he had used the gun to rip apart a South Side saloon. He wounded the beer runners, but failed to kill anyone inside. Amazed by McErlane’s weaponry (although probably not by his aim) Capone equipped his own arsenal with Tommy guns. Peter von Frantzius, a timid little man who owned Sports, Inc. at 608 Diversey Parkway, became Capone’s chief weapons supplier.

The introduction of the Tommy gun in Chicago turned out to be the highlight of McErlane’s gangster career. After a falling out with both Capone and his former partners, Saltis and O’Berta, he largely faded from sight.

By the late 1920s, though, Chicago was a different place. The The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which took place early in 1929, produced an eerie calm in the city. After that, the Capone organization was firmly in control and few dared to challenge him, even if he was locked up in a prison cell in Philadelphia. By the latter months of 1929, there had been only 53 gangland murders in Chicago, which, while still nothing for city leaders to brag about, were far below the numbers of the previous year. There was, during that summer, even time for relaxing and social life, allowing the gangsters to come out of hiding and mix with their friends and families.

Only a couple of bloody incidents marred the early months of 1930 – and all involved Frank McErlane. McErlane had been recently restless. He had fought over shares with his partner Joe Saltis and had transferred his allegiance to the South Side O’Donnells, which may – or may not have – led to him being shot on January 28.

That evening, McErlane pretty was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the left leg; the bullet had struck above the knee and fractured the leg. Frank claimed that he had accidentally shot himself while cleaning a revolver, but police suspected that his common-law wife Elfrieda Rigus (a.k.a. Marion Miller) may have shot him. They had quite a stormy relationship and often had high-decibel, alcohol-fueled fights.

Another possible suspect was "Dingbat" O'Berta, with whom McErlane had been feuding. On the night of February 24, McErlane was propped up his hospital bed with his healing leg still in traction when two or three gunmen barged in and opened fire. Frank yanked an automatic from under his pillow and returned their fire. While his shots missed, they scared his assailants off; one of them dropped a .45 automatic in his flight. McErlane had been winged three times in the melee, but none of the shots were fatal.

He was interviewed by the police, but of course, did not name his attackers. He shrugged off their questions and said cryptically, "I'll take care of it." Just after McErlane was released from the hospital, on March 5, Dingbat O'Berta was found shot to death in his car on the outskirts of Chicago. The body of O’Berta’s driver, Sam Malaga, was found near the car, face down in an icy puddle of water. The .45 left in McErlane's had hospital room had been traced to Malaga. Frank had, indeed, "taken care of it".

“Dingbat” O’Berta – shot to death in his car. Frank McErlane had “taken care of it” after the attempt on his life in the hospital. 

O’Berta’s funeral was a two-day affair, attended by 15,000 admirers from the Back-of-the-Yards district, where O’Berta had earned a name for himself as an influential young politician. Dingbat’s widow had previously been the wife of Big Tim Murphy, the racketeer controller of the Street Sweepers’ Union. Big Tim had been machine-gunned in front of his Rogers Park home in June 1928. She and O’Berta had met at Murphy’s funeral. She had her second husband buried next to her first in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, each with a rosary in his gun hand. She told reporters, “They were both good men.”

McErlane spiraled into obscurity after that. Years of excessive consumption of Prohibition-era booze had taken its toll on Frank's mental state. On June 8, 1931, an intoxicated McErlane swept a South Shore Drive block with shotgun blasts, shooting at imaginary foes. Police ultimately filed five simultaneous charges against him -- drunk and disorderly, carrying a concealed weapon, firing a shotgun indiscriminately around his neighborhood, driving with forged license plates, and biting his sister on the cheek.

On October 8, 1931, McErlane was driving his car with common-law wife Elfrieda Rigus and her two German Shepherds in the back seat. Police later determined that both were extremely drunk and arguing with each other. At one point, Frank finally snapped. After pulling over in front of 8129 Phillips Avenue, McErlane whirled around and fired four fatal bullets into Elfrieda. Tired of the yapping dogs, Frank shot and killed them as well.

After this episode, McErlane's remaining underworld associates raised a "retirement fund" of several hundred dollars in order to get rid of the dangerously unstable gunman. Frank thus retired to a lavishly furnished houseboat located on the Illinois River in Beardstown, Illinois. In the fall of 1932, Frank fell ill with pneumonia. In his delirium, he was convinced that rival gangsters were coming to his hospital room to kill him; it took four attendants to hold him down in his rage. Frank McErlane died at the age of 38 on October 8, 1932, a year to the day after he killed Elfrieda Rigus.

When a reporter interviewed one of Frank's former associates after his death, he had this to say about McErlane, "I don't remember that he ever did anything good in his life. I don't believe he had a friend left."

O'Banion's Right Hand

O’BANION’S RIGHT HAND

Earl “Hymie” Weiss

This post is sort of a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the attempted assassination of John Torrio by elements of the Dean O’Banion mob during Chicago’s bloodiest years. This date, January, 25, 1898, was the birthday of O’Banion’s closest friend and most bloodthirsty avenger, Earl “Hymie” Weiss.

Earl “Hymie” Weiss

During his brief period of power on Chicago’s North Side, Dean O’Banion gained a reputation as a reckless, dangerous and eccentric gangster – and a man not to cross. But O’Banion surrounded himself with men who were just as eccentric as he was. Perhaps one of the most colorful was Earl Wojciechowski, the son of a Polish immigrant who was better known as Earl “Hymie” Weiss. Hymie coined a term that would become one of gangland Chicago’s best-known traditions when he murdered a fellow gangster named Stephen Wisniewski in 1921 – the “one-way ride.” After Wisniewski hijacked some of O’Banion booze, Weiss was tasked with teaching him a lesson. He took the gangster for a ride along Lake Michigan and somewhere along the way, Wisniewski was murdered and his body dumped on the roadside. Afterwards, Weiss was said to have bragged, “We took Stevie for a ride, a one-way ride!”

Weiss was born on January 25, 1898, the son of Walenty and Mary Wojciechowski, who Americanized their names to William and Mary Weiss. He had two brothers, Bruno and Frederick and a sister named Violet. Two other siblings died as children and Weiss’ parents separated while he was still young. Weiss began his criminal career as an “auto pirate,” stealing cars and cutting them up for their parts. In May 1919, after two stolen cars were found at 128 North Cicero, police captured Weiss, along with James Fleming and Alfred Marlowe, as they drove up in a third stolen car. They had been chopping up the cars at 317 North Avers, where they kept tools to dismantle car chassis, strip them for parts and then sell the stolen license plates. Weiss later became friends with O’Banion and the two of them went into the burglary and safecracking business.

Like O’Banion, Weiss attended Holy Name Cathedral and always wore a crucifix around his neck and kept a rosary in his pocket. Thin and wiry with coarse, dark hair, hot black eyes and a notoriously short temper, he was easily the smartest member of the gang and the most arrogant. Many people told stories of his kindness but those who disliked him shuddered in fear at his very presence (Rumor had it that he was one of the only men whom Al Capone feared). Weiss’ frequent mood swings may have been caused by the fact that he suffered from severe migraines. A sofa was installed for him in an upstairs office at Schofield’s flower shop (the North Side gang’s headquarters) and he would sometimes lay there for hours, wracked with pain and completely immobilized in the darkness.

When feeling well, Weiss was described as “generous to a fault.” Like O’Banion, he often helped out poor people in the neighborhood, contributing food and money to those who fell short on their grocery bills. He not only paid all of his parents’ food bills and expenses, but he took care of their friends and neighbors, as well. Once while staying overnight with the family of a fellow gangster, he heard a noise in the kitchen and went in to find his friend’s son trying to get into a cookie jar on the kitchen counter. Weiss laughed and lifted the boy up so that he could snag a snack, a welcome favor that the child would remember many years later as an adult. Weiss made many friends growing up and a number of his classmates from St. Malachy’s School, which he attended as a child, were honorary pallbearers at his funeral. He shared an apartment with a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl named Josephine Libby, who called him “one of the finest men in the world.”

But Weiss, like so many other gangsters of his era, had a dark side. On election days, he worked hard for whatever political party he had been hired to support, clubbing his way from polling place to polling place with a revolver. He seemed to relish beating up election officials while his thugs stole the ballot boxes. One example of his fiery temper occurred in June 1921 when he shot his brother. Fred had just returned from France after completing his military service and made an unwise comment to his brother about the fact that he had failed to serve his country. Earl whipped out a gun and shot him. The Weiss family tried to cover up the incident and Fred pleaded with his doctor at Washington Boulevard Hospital not to tell the police. Everyone claimed it was an accident. The truth of what really happened did not come out until after Earl’s death, when Fred finally admitted that his brother shot him.

After the assassination of Dean O’Banion, Hymie Weiss became a man motivated by revenge. After O’Banion’s death, he became the head of the North Side gang that O’Banion had founded. However, Weiss seemed less interested in making money and more concerned with wrecking the operations of Capone and his allies – and wiping them out. Weiss and his men had wounded John Torrio and caused him to flee Chicago. They had attacked Capone twice, killed Angelo Genna, and wounded and murdered dozens of enemy gunmen.

But Capone retaliated next. He marked Weiss and fellow gang member Vincent Drucci for death and assigned gunman Louis Barko to carry out the murders on August 10, 1926. The event became known as the “Battle of Michigan Avenue.”

Drucci had a suite at the Congress Hotel, four blocks north of the Standard Oil Building at Ninth Street and Michigan Avenue. On the morning of August 10, following a late breakfast in Drucci’s eighth floor suite, Weiss and Drucci walked toward the Standard Oil Building, where they were supposed to meet with Morris Eller, a Sanitary District Trustee, and John Sbarbaro, owner of gangland’s favorite funeral home. Eller was the mobbed-up boss of the Twentieth Ward and a cheap racketeer who offered a presentable face as a politician. Drucci was carrying $13,500 in cash in his pockets, which was allegedly a down payment on a piece of real estate, but was more likely bribe money for the North Side gang’s Twentieth Ward sponsors.

As Drucci and Weiss were about to pass through doors of the building, Louis Barko and three other men jumped out of a car on the east side of Michigan Avenue and opened fire on them. Windows shattered and bullets chipped the stone walls as Drucci scrambled for cover behind parked cars. Weiss managed to get into the lobby of the building, shaken but unhurt.

Drucci pulled out his own gun and returned fire before jumping onto the running board of an automobile driven by C.C. Bassett, a startled motorist who had been trapped in the crossfire. Drucci’s escape was interrupted by the arrival of the police, who dragged him off the car. The attackers ran back to their car and when one of them fell behind, the others drove off without him. The affair turned out to be bloodless and it was over in less than two minutes. The police officers on the scene recognized Barko as one of Capone’s gunmen and assumed this was an attempted mob hit. However, Drucci denied it. When questioned by the police at the South Clark Street station, he claimed that he didn’t know Barko and dismissed the whole thing as an attempted robbery. “It was a stick-up, that’s all,” he told the cops. “They were after my roll.” Hymie Weiss’ mother posted the necessary bond and freed her son’s friend from behind bars.

Their luck continued five days later. On August 15, Drucci and Weiss were driving south on Michigan Avenue and as they passed the Standard Oil Building, a car that had been trailing close behind them suddenly raced ahead, swerved to the right and rammed them. The men in the other car opened fire and bullets smashed all of their windows. Drucci and Weiss ducked down and scrambled out of the passenger side of the sedan. As they ran for the shelter of the closest building, they fired back over their shoulders with their own handguns. Miraculously, once again, no innocent bystanders were killed in the attack. As bullets slammed into the attacker’s car, they roared away down Michigan Avenue.

It was incidents like this that caused Charles “Lucky” Luciano, after visiting Chicago, to remark, “It’s a real goddamn crazy place! Nobody’s safe in the streets.”

Soon after, Weiss and George Moran led a hasty assault on the Four Deuces at 2222 South Wabash. Capone somehow escaped unhurt but his driver, Tony Ross, died behind the wheel.

A week later, on September 20, 1926, Weiss pulled one of his craziest stunts yet. He sent a caravan of automobiles, each carrying a trio of machine gunners, to Capone’s Cicero headquarters, the Hawthorne Inn. Hundreds of bullets shattered the front of the hotel, but no one was killed.

On October 4, Capone made a curious move. It was one that would have pleased his old mentor John Torrio, but was uncharacteristic of the more hot-headed Capone: he proposed a peace talk. Weiss agreed to a meeting at the Morrison Hotel, but Capone himself did not attend. He sent Tony Lombardo in his place and, to placate his enemy, he authorized Lombardo to offer Weiss exclusive sales rights to all of the beer territory in Chicago north of Madison Street, an outrageously handsome concession.

But Weiss wouldn’t have it. His thirst for revenge overrode his business interests. The only price that he would accept for peace was the deaths of the men responsible for O’Banion’s murder. Lombardo telephoned Capone for instructions. When he gave Capone’s answer – “I wouldn’t do that to a yellow dog” --- Weiss stormed out of the hotel in a fury.

Capone realized that there was no negotiating with Weiss. With this realization, the man’s days were numbered. Weiss had been a thorn in his side for too long.

October 11, 1926 was a day like any other in downtown Chicago. Workday crowds and shoppers shuffled up and down the pavement and automobiles moved back and forth on the busy streets. Across State Street from Holy Name Cathedral, at 738 North State Street, was the old flower shop that had been run by Dion O’Banion, and now operated solely by John Schofield. Hymie Weiss continued to maintain an office on the second floor.

One of the buildings used by Weiss’ assassins -- the window of the apartment where the shooters waited is marked with a white “X” in the photograph.

Next door, at 740 North State Street, was a three-story rooming house that was kept by Mrs. Anna Rotariu. Early in October, a young man who called himself Oscar Lundin, or Langdon, rented rooms from Mrs. Rotariu. He wanted a room on the second floor, facing State Street, but all of the front rooms were occupied so he agreed to take one in the rear until something in front opened up, as one did on October 8. It was a small, rather dismal room furnished only with two straight-backed wooden chairs, an old oak dresser, a brass bed, a tin food locker, a gas ring and a shelf that held a few mismatched cups, cracked plates and tarnished cutlery. In spite of this, Lundin appeared to be delighted with the room.

On the same day that Lundin moved into his new quarters, a pretty blond woman, who gave her name as Mrs. Theodore Schultz of Mitchell, South Dakota, rented a front room on the third floor of an apartment building at 1 Superior Street, which ran at a right angle to State Street, south of the flower shop. Lundin’s windows offered an unobstructed view of the east side of State Street from Holy Name Cathedral to the corner, while Mrs. Schulz’s windows overlooked both the front and rear entrances of the flower shop. Anyone approaching or leaving the immediate area in any direction had to pass within range of one or the other ‘s windows.

Lundin occupied his new room for only one day. After paying a week’s rent in advance, he vanished. Two men, who had visited him during his short stay, moved into the room. Mrs. Rotariu described them as an older man who wore a gray overcoat and fedora, and a younger man who wore a dark suit and light cap. Mrs. Schultz of Mitchell, South Dakota, also vanished after paying a weeks’ rent. Two men also moved into her room. The landlord later said that they looked like Italians.

In Early October, Hymie Weiss was attending the murder trial of Joe Saltis and Lefty Koncil, two former Capone allies that had defected to Weiss and the O’Banion gang.

In Early October, Hymie Weiss was attending the murder trial of Joe Saltis and Lefty Koncil, two former Capone allies that had defected to Weiss and the O’Banion gang.

During that week in early October, Hymie Weiss spent most of his time at the Criminal Courts Building, four blocks from his headquarters above the flower shop. He was watching the jury selection in the trial of Joe Saltis and Lefty Koncil for the murder of Mitters Foley. The trial held special interest for Weiss, as evidenced by the list of officials and witnesses that was later found in his office safe. These documents would give substance to the rumor that he had paid out more than $100,000 to guarantee an acquittal in the case.

When court recessed for the day on October 11, Weiss left the building with four friends – his driver Sam Peller, a bodyguard and part-time beer runner, Patrick “Paddy” Murray, a Twentieth Ward politician and private investigator named Benny Jacobs, and William O’Brien, one of Chicago’s top criminal attorneys, who was leading the Saltis-Koncil defense team.

At about 4:00 p.m., Peller parked Weiss’ Cadillac coupe in front of Holy Name Cathedral, across from the flower shop, and the five men started across State Street. The two men in Mrs. Rotariu’s rooming house had been waiting for two days with their chairs drawn up to the windows, guns in hand. Dozens of cigarette butts littered the floor. The two men in the side-street apartment had also been keeping watch since October 9, smoking and drinking wine, but now saw they were no longer needed. As they hurried out of the apartment, they left behind a shotgun and two bottles of wine.

As the five men reached the center of the street, the deafening sound of rattling Tommy guns pierced the air. Pedestrians scattered as bullets poured out of the windows of the rooming house. Weiss died instantly but Patrick Murray was hit ten times and survived long enough to be pronounced dead at Henrotin Hospital without regaining consciousness. Peller, hit fifteen times, fell dead in the street.

Patrick “Paddy” Murray in repose

Sam Peller’s Body is taken away by the police

O’Brien, with bullets in his arm, thigh and abdomen, dragged himself to the curb. The first policeman on the scene found him begging people in the growing crowd to take him to a doctor. Jacobs was hit once in the leg, and managed to drag himself to safety. The bullets that killed Hymie Weiss tore away portions of the inscription on the church's cornerstone and left bullet holes as a graphic reminder of the event. The church tried to have them removed years later but the chips and marks remain. They can still be seen on the corner of the cathedral today.

Meanwhile, the assassins fled their third-floor lair, ran down a back staircase, exited the building through a ground-floor window into an alley and disappeared into the crowd. A discarded Tommy gun was found atop a dog kennel in an alley off Dearborn Street but it couldn't be traced back to the killers. On a bed in the rented room the police found a fedora with a label a label from a store in Cicero near the Hawthorne Inn. No record of the owner was ever found.

Although one has to wonder how hard the police actually looked for it. Chief Morgan Collins issued a gruff statement: "I don't want to encourage the business, but if somebody has to be killed, it's a good thing the gangsters are murdering themselves off. It saves trouble for the police.”

A gruesome photograph of Hymie Weiss in the Morgue.

While Weiss was being prepared for burial at the Sbarbaro Funeral Home, Capone was holding a press conference at the Hawthorne Inn. “That was butchery,” he lamented over the course of several interviews as he handed out drinks and cigars to the reporters. “Hymie was a good kid. He could have got out long ago, taken his and been alive today. When we were in business together in the old days, I got to know him well and used to go often to his room for a friendly visit. Torrio and me made Weiss and O’Banion. When they broke away and went into business for themselves, that was all right with us… But then they began to get nasty. We sent ‘em word to stay in their own backyard. But they had the swelled heads and thought they were bigger than we were. Then O’Banion got killed. Right after Torrio was shot – and Torrio knew who shot him – I had a talk with Weiss. ‘What do you want to do, get yourself killed before you’re thirty?’ I said to him. ‘You better get yourself some sense while there are a few of us left alive.’ He could still have got along with me. But he wouldn’t listen to me. Forty times I tried to arrange things so we’d have peace and life would be worth living. Who wants to be tagged around night and day by guards? I don’t, for one. There was, and there is, plenty of business for us all and competition needn’t be a matter of murder, anyway. But Weiss couldn’t be told anything. I suppose you couldn’t have told him a week ago that he’d be dead today. There are some reasonable fellows in his outfit, and if they want peace I’m for it now, as I have always been.”

One of the reporters asked if Al had any idea who might have killed Hymie Weiss. He shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry Hymie was killed, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. I phoned the detective bureau that I’d come in if they wanted me, but they told me they didn’t want me. I knew I’d be blamed for it. There’s enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street. I don’t want to end up in a gutter punctured by machine gun slugs, so why should I kill Weiss?”

The question brought a grunt of disgust from Chief of Detectives Shoemaker when he read the interview in the newspaper. He had his own statement for reporters, one much more succinct than Capone’s. “He knows why,” Shoemaker said, “and so does everyone else. He had them killed.”

Chief Collins agreed. When he was asked why Capone was not arrested for the crime, he replied: “It’s a waste of time to arrest him. He’s been in before on other murder charges. He always has his alibi.”

Hymie Weiss’ funeral was a sad affair, not only for his friends, but in comparison to other gangster funerals. A group of his boyhood classmates from St. Malachy’s School served as his pallbearers and with the last rites of the church denied to him, he was buried in unconsecrated ground at Mt. Carmel Cemetery, not far from the resting place of his friend, Dion O’Banion. The floral tributes fell far below the usual gangland standards and the only underworld figures in attendance were Vincent Drucci and George Moran, who now ran what would be the doomed gang together.

Want to know more about the North Side mob and the history of the Chicago’s Beer Wars? See my book BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES, available here in an autographed print edition or as a Kindle book from Amazon.com