HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY… WITH A BULLET

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.”

Chicago Irish gangster Dean O'Banion

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.

"JUST LIKE CHICAGO, EH MAYOR?"

The Assassination of Anton Cermak:
When the Mob Killed the Mayor

On February 15, 1933, President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet while giving an impromptu speech from the back of an open car in the Bayfront Park area of Miami, Florida. Roosevelt escaped injury that day, but four other people were wounded. The would-be assassin’s aim was spoiled when Lilian Cross, a doctor’s wife, hit his arm with her purse and spoiled his aim. Two of the gunshot victims died that day, including a female bystander and the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak. The mayor had attended the event to patch up relations with Roosevelt after opposing him for the presidency during the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

After the assassin, a deranged, unemployed bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara, was captured, he told the police that he “hated the rich” but had nothing against the president. He never really explained why he tried to kill Roosevelt – but according to mob legend, he was not the intended target anyway. Zangara, the stories say, had been hired to kill Anton Cermak – revenge by the Chicago Outfit.

Frank Nitti

To understand the story, we have to return to Chicago in 1931, shortly after Al Capone went to federal prison on tax evasion charges. In his place, as head of the Outfit, was a man named Frank Nitti, an Italian immigrant who worked his way up through the ranks of organized crime to work for John Torrio and his successor, Al Capone. Under Capone, Nitti gained a fearsome reputation as an enforcer. Originally working as a bodyguard, Capone began tasking Nitti with the planning and execution of some of the gang’s most notable assassinations, like that of Hymie Weiss in 1926. He also ran Capone's liquor smuggling and distribution operation, importing whisky from Canada and selling it through a network of speakeasies around Chicago. Known as one of Capone’s top captains, he was trusted for his leadership and business skills but he never wanted leadership of the gang.

However, after Capone went to prison, newspaper reporters began looking for a new face for the head of the gang and somehow, Nitti ended up as that man. While an efficient organizer under Capone, it had been his job to make sure that Capone's orders had been carried out, not to give them himself. Nitti was only supposed to be a member of the board of directors of the new Outfit, not the man in charge. When Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky established their national crime syndicate, they dealt with Paul "The Waiter" Ricca as the leader of the Chicago mob and not with Nitti.

However, Ricca and the others used Nitti's high profile with the press to keep the heat off the real inner workings of the Outfit. He became a valuable man to take the heat. Chicago mayor Anton Cermak even dispatched his own police "hit men" to try and take out Nitti so that he could replace him with other gangsters who kept him on the payroll.

Anton Cermak

Anton Cermak, an Austria-Hungarian immigrant, was swept into the Chicago mayor’s office as a reform candidate after the violence of the Prohibition beer wars and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He began his political career as a precinct captain and in 1902 was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. Seven years later, he would take his place as alderman of the 12th Ward. Cermak was elected president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 1922, chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party in 1928, and mayor of Chicago in 1931.

Breaking the hold that the Irish had on Chicago politics, he brought ethnic groups like Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, Jews, Italians, and African Americans to the polling places. Cermak made many enemies among the local politicians. As Cermak climbed the political ladder, the resentment of the Party leadership grew. When the bosses rejected his bid to become the mayoral candidate, Cermak swore revenge. He formed his political army from the non-Irish elements, and even persuaded black politician William L. Dawson to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

After the corruption that had infiltrated William “Big Bill” Thompson’s previous administrations, even the mob couldn’t keep him in office. The voters' disgust with the corruption of his machine and his inability – or rather unwillingness -- to clean up organized crime in Chicago were cited as major factors in Cermak capturing 58% of the vote in the mayoral election on April 6, 1931. Cermak's victory finished Thompson as a political power and largely ended the Republican Party's power in Chicago.

But Cermak turned out to be nearly as corrupt as Thompson – he just wasn’t so visible about it. His plan was to eliminate the Chicago Outfit in favor of mobster Ted Newberry, who had taken over the remnants of the O’Banion / Moran gang and territories.

On December 19, 1932, a team of Chicago police, headed by Detective Sergeants Harry Lang and Harry Miller, raided Frank Nitti's office in Room 554 of the LaSalle Building. Lang shot Nitti three times in the back and neck. He then shot himself in the finger to make the shooting look like self-defense, claiming that Nitti had shot him first. Nitti was badly wounded during the attempt on his life. He lingered near death for a time, but recovered only to end up standing trial for the shooting of one of the cops during the gun battle.

Court testimony claimed that the murder attempt was personally ordered by newly elected Mayor Anton Cermak, who supposedly wanted to eliminate the Outfit in favor of Ted Newberry and then redistribute Capone’s territories. During the trial, Miller testified that Lang received $15,000 to kill Nitti. Another uniformed officer who was present at the shooting testified that Nitti was shot while unarmed. Nitti’s trial ended with a hung jury.  Harry Lang and Harry Miller were both fired from the police force and each fined $100 for assault.

This was not the end of story, though. Legend has it that the Outfit got its revenge.

Anton Cermak and Franklin D. Roosevelt

On February 15, 1933, Cermak was shot in Bayfront Park in Miami. Cermak was on the reviewing stand and, after President-elect Franklin Roosevelt made a short speech from an open car, he waved over Cermak to join him. As Roosevelt's car was about to start, shots rang out and Cermak and four others were hit.

They were shot by a man named Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant who had come to the United States in 1923. A poorly educated bricklayer, Zangara suffered severe pain in his abdomen, later attributed to adhesions of the gall bladder, possibly originating from an appendectomy performed in 1926. These adhesions were later cited as a cause for his increasing mental delusions. It became increasingly difficult for him to work due to both his physical and mental conditions.

A wounded Cermak being taken to an ambulance

Cermak was rushed to the hospital. As he was taken away by ambulance, Cermak was supposed to have said to the president, "I am glad that it was me instead of you." They became the most famous words that Cermak ever uttered -- or they would have been, if he had really said them. A reporter who was there that day, Ed Gilbreth, stated that the phrase was created by William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Herald-American to make a good headline and sell papers. Cermak never said anything of the sort and his dislike of Roosevelt was well-known.

Meanwhile, Zangara was arrested and charged with four counts of attempted murder. At the Dade County Courthouse jail, he confessed and stated, “I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.” He pleaded guilty to the attempted murder counts and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. As he was led out of the courtroom, Zangara told the judge, “Four times 20 is 80. Oh, judge, don't be stingy. Give me a hundred years.”

On March 6, nineteen days after the shooting, Cermak died at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, partly because of his wounds. A short time later, his personal physician, Dr. Karl A. Meyer, said that Cermak's primary cause of death was ulcerative colitis, commenting, "The mayor would have recovered from the bullet wound had it not been for the complication of colitis. The autopsy disclosed the wound had healed... the other complications were not directly due to the bullet wound."

Giuseppe Zangara

After Cermak’s death, Zangara pleaded guilty to the additional murder charge, and was sentenced to death by Circuit Court Judge Uly Thompson. Zangara said after hearing his sentence: “You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care!” On March 20, 1933, after spending only 10 days on Death Row, Zangara was executed in Old Sparky, the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida. Zangara became enraged when he learned no newsreel cameras would be filming his final moments. Zangara's final statement was "Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere! Pusha da button!"

Anton Cermak was interred in a mausoleum at Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago. The mayor's death was followed by a struggle for succession to his party chairmanship and to the mayor's office. A plaque honoring Cermak still stands at the site of the assassination in Miami's Bayfront Park. It is inscribed with the famous words that Cermak never uttered, "I'm glad it was me instead of you."

The true reason why Zangara fired a gun that day in Miami will likely never be known. His reasons could have been as simple as he claimed – that he wanted to kill rich people – or as complicated as many have suggested over the years. It has been claimed that Zangara was hired by the Outfit, who planned to have revenge against the mayor for his attack on Nitti and his conspiracy to destroy the Outfit. Some versions of this story assert that Zangara was a diversion for a second gunman who was to supposed to shoot Cermak, but this alleged second gunman never made it to the park.

We’ll never know for sure, although some words uttered by a reporter who was standing nearby might have provided more of a clue in the shooting than officials would admit. Just as the shots rang out, a reporter standing nearby allegedly joked to Cermak, "Just like Chicago, eh Mayor?"  And maybe it was.

Want to read the rest of the story? Check out Troy Taylor’s book, Blood, Guns & Valentines: The Haunting of Al Capone and Chicago’s Gangland Ghosts, available autographed as part of the “Dead Men Do Tell Tales” series [Click Here to See the Series and Order Your Copy] and as a Kindle edition from Amazon. 

A VALENTINE FOR BUGS MORAN: PART FOUR

The Return of Jimmy Clark

Capone remained in Florida during the early months of 1929, staying as far away from the trouble in Chicago that had been caused by the massacre as he could. He finally returned in the early days of May, likely against his better judgment. What brought him back, however, was an unsettling rumor that was making the rounds that claimed that Anselmi and Scalise, the two Sicilian gunmen that had previously been fiercely loyal to Capone, had shifted their loyalties to the new head of the Unione Siciliane, Joseph “Hop Toad” Giunta. Giunta, Capone also learned, had formed an alliance with another of his enemies, Joe Aiello. Worse yet, Capone heard that Scalise had taken to boasting, “I am the most powerful man in Chicago.” With the complex mix of blood oaths and loyalties in the Sicilian culture, such words could only be seen as a direct challenge to Capone’s control over the city’s underworld. Capone had always been careful to keep the volatile Unione Siciliane on his side. Any disagreement with the Sicilians had the possibility of being lethal and Scalise and Anselmi were particularly dangerous. Capone would be lucky to survive any attempt they made on his life.

Al Capone

Before Capone acted on what were only rumors at this point, he decided to test the loyalties of his two assassins. He invited the two men to dinner, along with Frank Rio, a Capone captain of unquestioned devotion. At the dinner, Capone and Rio pretended to get into a fierce argument and to the astonishment of Scalise and Anselmi, the shouting turned violent when Rio actually slapped Capone across the face before rushing out of the restaurant. Impressed by his daring, the Sicilians secretly met with Rio the next day, offering to involve him in a plot they had cooked up to kill Capone and seize control of all of his rackets. They had unwittingly taken Capone’s bait.

Rio spent the next three days negotiating with Scalise and Anselmi and then reported their treachery to the boss. Capone didn’t have to think long about how he would dispose of the two gunmen and their associate, Giunta – he would throw a banquet in their honor.

On May 7, Capone, his inner circle and the three traitors gathered for a banquet at a roadhouse called the Plantation in Hammond, Indiana. That Capone wanted to cross state lines for the gathering should have sent up a red flag to the invited guests; anyone who committed a crime, like murder, in Indiana and quickly slipped across the state line into Illinois would be considerably more difficult to arrest. But the guests were compelled to attend since they knew their absence would be a sign they were plotting betrayal.

The guest list that night was large, consisting of nearly one hundred of Capone’s closest allies in Chicago. Capone had planned the evening as an object lesson for anyone else who might consider betraying him. Eating and drinking went on long into the night, until Al’s jovial mood began to darken. As he addressed his guests – playfully holding a baseball bat to illustrate his lecture on team spirit – he suddenly turned on Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta. “This is how we deal with traitors,” he growled and before the men could move, Capone soldiers bound them into their chairs. Capone beat each of the men to within an inch of their lives with the baseball bat. But he didn’t kill them. As he stepped away, gunmen approached with their weapons drawn and began firing. Scalise threw up a hand to cover his face and a bullet severed his little finger and slammed into his eye. Another bullet crashed into his jaw and he fell out of his chair. Anselmi’s right arm was broken by a bullet. Giunta’s chest opened up with the force of the slugs, showering the table in front of him with blood. When the men fell out of their chairs and onto the floor, their assailants stood over them and fired more bullets into their backs.

It was not a subject open for debate – Capone was still the most powerful man in Chicago.

The next morning, the three broken corpses were found on a road along the shore of Wolf Lake, an isolated area of water, grasslands and swamps on Chicago’s Southeast Side, straddling the border of Illinois and Indiana. In the early 1920s, Wolf Lake was dubbed a “gangland graveyard” by the newspapers and by the police, who frequently found the bodies of gangsters dumped there. The desolate and lonely place was a popular spot for hiding corpses and had earned notoriety in 1924 when the body of kidnapped schoolboy Bobby Franks was discovered there. His killers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, had been tried during a sensational court case just five years before.

Police officers at the site near Wolf Lake where the bodies of Scalise, Anselmi and Guinta were found. The coat -- and white "X" -- is where Anselmi's body was discovered on the ground. 

   

Scalise and Giunta were found in the back of an abandoned car and Anselmi’s body lay nearby. Dr. Francis McNamara, who examined the bodies, stated that never in his thirty years as a jail physician had he seen that much damage done to a human body. Scalise and Anselmi were sent back home to Sicily for burial while Giunta, like so many other Chicago gangsters and their victims, was laid to rest in Mt. Carmel Cemetery.

The question remains whether these men remain peacefully in their graves.

The numerous deaths in the vicinity of Wolf Lake – from swimmers drowning to the gangsters’ “one-way rides” --- seem to have left a vivid impression on the place. There are many tales of haunting cries in the woods, eerie screams and even the ghost of a woman in a blue dress who has been seen wandering the shoreline. But perhaps the strangest story is that of the “walking man” who has been seen along nearby Avenue O. This long stretch of roadway goes through the most secluded and remote areas on the Southeast Side, passing closer to Wolf Lake than any other road. It offers just about the only access to the lake to fisherman and outdoorsmen ---- and to the swamps that came to be dubbed the “gangland cemetery.”

According to the legend, the ghost of a man in a suit and tie, wearing an old-style fedora, walks the edge of the road, apparently trying to flag down cars that pass by him at night. He is described as looking very ordinary and not ghost-like at all. Most people who have seen him assume that he is someone whose car was broken down on this isolated roadway. The stories say that if a driver stops to offer him assistance, he always disappears.

Who is this mysterious man? Despite the number of other slain gangsters that were dumped in this area during the days of Prohibition, many believe that he may be a member of the treacherous trio that Capone killed at the Plantation roadhouse in May 1929. Could the man be Scalise, Anselmi or Giunta? It certainly seems possible. If anyone had a reason to leave a restless ghost behind, it would be one of these traitorous mobsters, each of whom met death much sooner than he planned.

Three days after taking as baseball bat to Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta, Capone left Chicago, supposedly to attend a prizefight in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The fight served as a pretext to Capone’s real mission, which was to attend a meeting between racketeers from all over the country who planned to form a commission to resolve disputes among members in a peaceful, business-like fashion. At least, this was the stated reason for the gathering. As Capone would discover over the course of the next few days, there was hidden agenda – to strip him of his power and profits because of the publicity and heat that had been generated by what newspapers were calling the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

    

Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano were among those gathered at the Syndicate meeting that took Capone to task for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The guests at this gathering included Capone, Jake Guzik, Frank Rio and Frank Nitti from Chicago; “Boo-Hoo” Hoff and Nig Rosen from Philadelphia; Abe Bernstein from the Purple Gang in Detroit; Leo Berkowitz and Moe Dalitz from Cleveland; John Lazia from Kansas City; Longy Zwillman from New Jersey; and Daniel Walsh from Rhode Island. The New York contingent was the most formidable and the angriest at Capone. It was made up of Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Albert Anastasia, Louis Buchalter, Ben Siegel, Joe Adonis and Frank Costello. They also brought with them Johnny Torrio. All of them were upset with Capone for killing Frankie Yale without permission – and for having the gall to do it on their home territory.

    

The delegates talked for three days, often walking on the beach, where they could be far away from prying ears. They adopted a series of resolutions, some designed to cut Capone down to size and others to lay a groundwork for organized crime after Prohibition. The delegates also formed a commission, with retired Torrio as the head, which would deal with all disagreements between members. Capone managed to maintain his power in Chicago. In fact, the smaller North and South Side gangs were to be merged under his leadership. He did have to agree to some concessions, though, namely that there would be no more killing and that the new head of the Chicago Unione Siciliana would be Capone’s enemy, Joe Aiello.

It was also decided that it would be a good idea for Capone to go to jail. Not only would it allow the heat from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to continue to cool, but it might be just the thing to save Capone’s life. George Moran had not attended the Atlantic City conference. He, along with a few scattered remnants of his gang, was still plotting to kill Capone. Also, as Capone knew, a number of Chicago Sicilians had sworn to avenge Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta. Threatened by killers and harassed by other members of the new Syndicate, he decided on the same course that Torrio had taken when he was in fear of his life from O’Banion and his North Side gang – Capone had himself jailed.

Capone had become friendly at the Hialeah racetrack the year before with a Philadelphia detective named James “Shooey” Malone, so as soon as the conference ended on May 16, he telephoned a friend in Philadelphia and asked him to get a message to Malone. He and Frank Rio then drove to the city and decided to go to the movies at a theater on Market Street. When they came out around 9:00 p.m., Malone and another detective, John Creedon, were waiting for them.

“You’re Al Capone, aren’t you?” Malone asked.

“My name’s Al Brown,” Capone replied, “but you can call me Capone if you want to. Who are you?” The detectives flashed their badges. “Oh, bulls, eh? Ah, here’s my gun.” He handed over a .38 caliber revolver, thereby establishing the grounds to arrest and convict him for carrying a concealed weapon. He elbowed Rio, who also handed over a revolver.

The police magistrate before whom they were arraigned shortly after midnight fixed bail at $35,000 each. They only had a few thousand bucks between them and the two lawyers that Capone had sent for, Bernard L. Lemisch and Cornelius Haggerty, Jr., accused the police of railroading their clients into jail. Capone just smiled – railroading was exactly what he wanted.

The judge imposed the maximum sentence of one year. As Capone was led off with the unlucky Frank Rio to Philadelphia’s Holmesburg County Prison, he took a diamond ring from his finger and handed it to his attorney, instructing him to get it to his brother Ralph. Between arrest and imprisonment, only sixteen hours had passed.

Holmesburg, with more than 1,700 prisoners jammed into cells built to hold 600, was one of the country’s worst county jails. A few weeks before Capone entered it, the prisoners, rioting over bad food and brutal guards, set fire to their mattresses. The word went out from Chicago that a $50,000 fee awaited any attorney that could get Capone out of Holmesburg. None succeeded. The same fee was offered to the district attorney in Philadelphia, John Monoghan, as a bribe to procure Capone’s release, but he turned it down.

Eastern State Penitentiary

Luckily for Capone, he was transferred in August to the city’s larger and more orderly Eastern State Penitentiary. There, Warden Herbert B. Smith made him more comfortable, giving him a private cell and letting him furnish it with Oriental rugs, pictures, a chest of drawers, double bed, bookshelf, lamps and a $500 radio console. As his work assignment, he drew the comfortable job of library file clerk. Capone continued to conduct business from prison. He was allowed to make long-distance telephone calls from the warden's office and to meet with his lawyers and his brother, Ralph, along with Frank Nitti and Jake Guzik, all of whom made frequent trips to Philadelphia. For ordinary inmates, visiting hours were limited to Sunday, but Capone’s family and friends could come and see him any day. He also met often with reporters, who kept their readers up to date on Capone’s schedule, daily life and reading habits.

Capone's cell at Eastern State was luxurious in comparison to the rest of the prison, boasting a radio, armchair, writing desk, private meals and a number of amenities.

He bought $1,000 worth of arts and crafts made by his fellow inmates and mailed them to friends as Christmas presents. He also donated $1,200 to a Philadelphia orphanage. Such seemingly good-hearted deeds aroused a great deal of sympathy for Capone. A civil engineer from Chicago, a total stranger to Capone, who was in Philadelphia on business, got permission to visit him. He warmly shook his hand and told him, “Al, we’re with you.”

Shortly after arriving at Eastern State, Capone had to have his tonsils removed. The surgeon who performed the operation, Dr. Herman Goddard of the Pennsylvania State Board of Prison Inspections, could barely contain the admiration that he felt for his infamous patient. “In my seven years experience,” he said, “I have never seen a prisoner so kind, so cheery and accommodating.”

But Capone was not always “cheery and accommodating” at Eastern State, especially at night, after the lights had gone out. It was at Eastern State Penitentiary, during those dark nights while he tossed and turned in the cot in his cell, that a terrifying memory of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre came back to visit Al Capone.

Capone came to believe that James Clark, one of the seven victims of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, haunted him for the rest of his life.  

That memory’s name was James Clark.

It was while he was incarcerated at Eastern State that Capone first began to be haunted by the ghost of James Clark, a member of the North Side gang and one of the men killed during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. While in prison, other inmates reported that they could hear Capone screaming in his cell, begging someone whom he called "Jimmy" to go away and leave him alone. No one had any idea what he was talking about; Capone was alone in his cell. During the daylight hours, he refused to speak about it.

Later, that would change. After his return to Chicago, Capone would speak often about the ghost and about the “curse” that haunted his life. He even went so far as to hire a spirit medium to try and convince the ghost to leave. Was the ghost real? Did Capone imagine the whole thing, or was he already showing signs of the psychosis that would haunt him after his release from Alcatraz years later?

Capone certainly believed the ghost was real and over the course of the next few years, the haunting would become more intense, reaching a point when Capone was not the only person to encounter the vengeful spirit of James Clark.

Want to read the rest of the story – and find out why Capone believed the ghost of James Clark haunted him for the rest of his life? Check out Troy Taylor’s book, Blood, Guns & Valentines: The Haunting of Al Capone and Chicago’s Gangland Ghosts, available autographed as part of the “Dead Men Do Tell Tales” series [Click Here to See the Series and Order Your Copy] and as a Kindle edition from Amazon. 

A VALENTINE FOR BUGS MORAN: PART THREE

The Rise and Fall of 2122 North Clark Street

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.

  

The S-M-C Cartage Co. at the time of the massacre and (right) the boarded up building in  summer 1929, after the site had received so much negative publicity in the papers. 

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.

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 (like the one in the basement of the Four Deuces), 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 at 2122 North Clark Street in 1950, when it was the Werner's Storage Company for antique furniture. They also distributed heating oil. 

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.

The infamous wall where the massacre took place during the time when the building was owned by the Werners. They were frequently harassed by people wanting to get a look at the bullet-scarred wall. 

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.

Patey began offering the wall for sale, along with a written account of the massacre but had trouble selling the thing in one large 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. The original lot came with a diagram that explained how to restore the wall to its original form. The bricks were even numbered for 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 and had sold many bricks by the time he died. The remainder of the wall has since been purchased and rebuilt in a mob museum located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

George Patey with the bricks from the massacre wall

The rest of the bricks are in the hands of private owners, who bought them from Patey. Oddly, though, legend has it that Patey actually sold some of the same bricks more than one time. The stories say that some of the bricks were returned to him after they had been sold. 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 themselves had somehow been infested with the powerful negative energy of the massacre. Many have called this story a “journalistic embellishment,” but there are many who maintain that it’s the truth – and that the lingering energy didn’t effect just the bricks from the blood-spattered wall.

The entire warehouse had been built from brick and many of them were carried from the site by workmen and curiosity-seekers during the demolition of the building. It was said that from these bricks, too, come tales of misfortune and bad luck. Many will vouch for the dire events that plagued them after carrying away one of the “massacre” bricks. Are such stories true? The reader will have to decide what they believe.

Whatever the legend of the bricks, and whether or not they were somehow "haunted" by what happened, there is little doubt that the site on Clark Street was haunted – at least for a while.

For many years, people walking along the street, or who lived nearby, reported hearing the sounds of screams, moans, muffled voices and even the 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 citizen development now marks the area where the garage once stood. Five trees are scattered about the area and the one in the center actually marks the point where the rear wall once stood, where Moran's men were lined up and gunned down. The apartment building, where Mrs. Landesman lived and heard the sound of Highball barking in the garage, still stands but all remnants of the S-M-C Cartage Co. have vanished. Or have they?

According to reports, residents of the senior housing complex built on one end of the old 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 and she often complained that, at night, she would hear strange voices, unusual 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 even stated that she saw a dark figure that was wearing an old-style 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 got so used to them that they no longer bothered her anymore.

The site of the S-M-C Cartage Co. today -- an empty lot on Clark Street. A few remnants of the site remain on the wall of the building next door, bricks in the back alley and some say, ghosts. 

Outside, along Clark Street, passersby and the curious 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.

And those who were accompanied by their dogs also reported their share of weirdness, too. The animals seemed to be especially bothered by this piece of lawn, sometimes barking and howling, sometimes whining in fear. Their sense of what happened here many years ago seemed to be much greater than our own.

Johnny May's dog, Highball

However, many believe that what dogs were sensing was not the human trauma experienced at the massacre site, 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 terrified dog.

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, who was one of the first newsmen on the scene, said that the dog was never the same again and his bizarre behavior left the police no choice but to euthanize him. 

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 in the present 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.

To be continued tomorrow -- the Haunting of Al Capone