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.

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

A VALENTINE FOR BUGS MORAN: PART TWO

The Suspects

In the minds of many Chicagoans, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the final blow to the city’s already-bloody reputation. Mortified and angry, the Chicago Association of Commerce (which had founded the Chicago Crime Commission in 1919) posted a reward of $50,000 for the arrest and conviction of the killers. Finally having had enough of the mobsters in their midst, the angry public collected another $10,000 for the reward. The city council and the state’s attorney’s office each added $20,000, bringing the total to $100,000, the biggest price ever put on the heads of gangsters.

But no agency wanted a swifter solution to the case than the police department because many people believed just what the killers wanted them to believe: that police officers had carried out the murders. This was the kind of reputation that the Chicago Police Department had earned by the end of the 1920s – a corrupt, scandal-ridden, law-breaking organization. Even the local Prohibition administrator, Frederick D. Silloway, spoke out against the department. “The murderers were not gangsters,” he said. “They were Chicago policemen. I believe the killing was the aftermath to the hijacking of five hundred cases of whiskey belonging to the Moran gang by five policemen six weeks ago on Indianapolis Boulevard. I expect to have the names of these five policemen in a short time. It is my theory that in trying to recover the liquor the Moran gang threatened to expose the policemen and the massacre was to prevent the exposure.”

Russell, by that time police commissioner, was likely unsure about what illegal activities many of his men were involved in, joined in: “If it is true that coppers did this, I’d just as soon convict coppers as anybody else.” Chief of Detectives John Egan added, “I’ll arrest them myself, toss them by the throat into a cell, and do my best to send them to the gallows.”

 

The next day, Silloway retracted the accusation that he made against the department, claiming that he had been misquoted. To ease tensions with the police, his bosses in Washington transferred him to another district. By then, however, the damage was done and suspicions lingered for many years.

   

The investigation proceeded under John Egan, the state’s attorney’s staff and Cook County Coroner Dr. Herman N. Bundeson, each working different angles of the case. Egan and his men searched the SMC Cartage Company warehouse and recovered the empty .45-caliber machine-gun cartridges.

Police detectives re-enact their version of the massacre's events for newspaper reporters during the investigation that followed the murders.

Assistant State’s Attorney Walker Butler and his detectives canvassed the neighborhood and found two corroborating stories at 2119 and 2125 North Clark Street, rooming houses run by Mrs. Michael Doody and Minnie Arvidson. Ten days before the massacre, three young men showed up, looking for rooms to rent along North Clark Street. Mrs. Doody was able to accommodate two of them and Mrs. Arvidson took in the third. They said that they were cab drivers who worked the night shift and they insisted on rooms in the front, overlooking Clark Street. The three men rarely left their rooms. When either landlady went in to clean, the tenant was almost always at the window, looking outside. All three of them vanished on the morning of the massacre. Butler suspected that the Purple Gang was somehow involved in the murders and he showed the landladies photographs of sixteen members. They identified three of them as the mysterious lodgers. But when questioned, at Butler’s request, by the Detroit police, all three of the men produced unshakable alibis, people who swore that they had been nowhere near Chicago.

   

On February 22, a fire broke out in a garage behind a house at 1723 North Wood Street, about three miles west of the crime scene. The firemen who answered the call discovered a black Cadillac touring car that had been partially demolished by an acetylene torch, axes and hacksaws. The torch, it was believed, had accidentally started the blaze and the men wrecking the vehicle had fled before its destruction was complete. Egan examined the remains of the Cadillac and the still-legible engine number allowed him to trace the car to Cook County Commissioner Frank Wilson, who had sold it to an auto dealership on Irving Park Road. The car dealer stated that he had then sold the car in December to a man identifying himself as “James Morton of Los Angeles.”

The chopped-up and burned remains of the car that were found in the North Wood Street garage -- just around the corner from the headquarters of Capone allies, the Circus Gang.

From the owner of the Wood Street property, a neighborhood grocer, Egan learned that a man who gave his name as “Frank Rogers” had rented the garage on February 7. He gave his address as 1859 West North Avenue, which was right around the corner. The house was now deserted but, significantly, it adjoined the Circus Café, the headquarters of Claude Maddox and the Circus Gang, whose ties to Capone, the Purple Gang and Egan’s Rats of St. Louis were well known. Even more significant was the fact that one of Maddox’s gang members, “Tough” Tony Capezio, had recently been badly burned in a fire. It has been suggested that Capezio had been cutting up the car to get rid of evidence and had accidentally started the fire by using the acetylene torch too close to a can of gasoline. The police could never prove it, however.

Another member of the Circus Gang at the time was Tony Accardo, who, according to a police theory formed later, helped plan the massacre. Soon after, he became a Capone gunman and was often seen seated in the lobby of the Lexington Hotel with a Tommy gun across his knees. Most likely, however, Accardo was not directly involved in the murders. He was a small-time member of the gang in those days and was likely tasked with disposing of evidence with Capezio and others.

Unable to pin anything on Maddox and his men, the police continued searching for the elusive “James Morton” and “Frank Rogers” but no trace of them were ever found. As for George Moran, he refused to disclose anything about the hijacker who had telephoned him on the night before the massacre, other than that he had known him for a long time and planned to “pay him back” for his treachery.

The police only had theories, but they developed one that they believed was accurate:

Al Capone knew about the massacre and had requested it, leaving the planning to others. Jack McGurn certainly took part in the planning, as did Jake Guzik, who spoke frequently with Capone from the Congress Hotel. The plan that was conceived called for two men who could persuade their victims to surrender their weapons without a fight, which was the reason behind the police uniforms. These men had to be total strangers to the Moran men, which meant that they had to be imported (likely by Maddox) from either Detroit or St. Louis. They were kept hidden until needed and then provided with the phony police car.

The function of the three Clark Street lodgers was to watch for Moran in exactly the same way that earlier Capone gang ambushes had been carried out. The killers were then informed by telephone when Moran entered the warehouse. What saved Moran’s life was his resemblance to Al Weinshank. Believing that Moran had already arrived, the lookouts gave the word to the killers.

The collision with the truck on Clark Street suggested the route that the killers took – north along Wood Street for a mile to Webster Avenue, then east for two miles on Webster to Clark, which would have taken about fifteen minutes. The men wearing civilian clothes probably waited in the garage’s front office while their uniformed companions relieved the Moran gang of their weapons. After that, they emerged with Tommy guns and ordered the seven men to face the wall. Even though the killers may have realized by then that Moran was not there, they didn’t dare let the others live since it’s possible that they recognized the men in civilian clothing. The killers then staged their final scene to confuse any witnesses as they reappeared on the street posing as policemen after a raid with their prisoners.

The investigators may have figured out the methods of the massacre, but debate raged as to the reasons behind it and just who might have been involved – debate that continues to this day.

Crime historians have named the most likely suspects (even though they number more than the actual number of killers – everyone has their own opinion) as:

Fred “Killer” Burke

Fred Burke, who was born Thomas Camp on a farm near Mapleton, Kansas, in 1893, was an armed robber and contract killer who was responsible for many crimes during the Prohibition era. He first ran afoul of the law at the age of 17 after being duped into participating in a land fraud scheme by a traveling salesman who had befriended his family. Fleeing his home in disgrace, he ended up in Kansas City and became involved with the underworld. By 1915, he was in St. Louis and joined up with the infamous Egan’s Rats.

Fred "Killer" Burke

Under an indictment for forgery, Burke (as he had become known) enlisted in the military at the start of World War I. He served as a tank sergeant in France. After returning home, he was arrested in Michigan for fraud and sentenced to a year in prison, followed by another year behind bars in Missouri for his earlier forgery case.

   

In early 1922, he rejoined Egan’s Rats, along with his best friends, fellow St. Louisians and war veterans Gus Winkler, Bob Carey and Raymond “Crane Neck” Nugent. Burke and his pals were suspected of robbing a St. Louis distillery of $80,000 worth of whiskey in April 1923. During the robbery, Burke disguised himself as a police officer to fool the security guards. He also plotted and carried out the robbery of the United Railways office, the city's streetcar provider, on July 3, 1923. The heist netted $38,000.

After the Egan’s Rats gang fell into disarray with the imprisonment of its leadership in 1924, Burke and his friends moved to Detroit, where they began committing robberies in the region and carrying out contract murders for the Purple Gang. Burke was suspected of introducing the Tommy gun to Detroit’s underworld in March 1927 when he used on to kill three rival gangsters who were suspected of killing his friend, Johnny Reid.

By the summer of 1927, the relationship between Burke’s crew and the Purple Gang had cooled. Burke accused gang boss Joe Bernstein of killing his friend Ted Werner in New Orleans on April 16 and the gang claimed that Burke was kidnapping Purple Gang associates for ransom. The feud turned bloody on July 21 when Burke was accused of machine-gunning a number of gang members as they exited a bar on Oakland Avenue. Three men were wounded and one, Henry Kaplan, was killed. Joe and Abe Bernstein sent word that they wanted to iron out a peace treaty with Burke and Gus Winkler at a downtown Detroit hotel but Burke sent Raymond Shocker in his place – who was almost killed in an ambush.

After the falling out with the Purple Gang, Burke moved his crew to Chicago, where they joined up with Capone’s organization. Burke and Winkler, especially, grew close to the Chicago crime boss, who referred to them fondly as his "American Boys."

Over time, Fred Burke and his crew were suspected of robbing banks and armored cars in St. Louis, Louisville, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Los Angeles and Ohio. The Ohio job, on April 16, 1928, resulted in the murder of a Toledo police officer. Burke and his partners were also linked by ballistic evidence and informants to the murder of Brooklyn mob boss Frankie Yale in July 1928. 

The Burke crew became the leading suspects in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and Burke was even named publicly as a suspect by the Chicago Police in the weeks after the murders. Burke has never been “officially” linked to the massacre but he was convincingly fingered by Byron “Monty” Bolton in 1935.

Bolton was an expert machine-gunner in the U.S. Navy before turning to a life of crime and kidnapping and stated that the planning for the massacre was carried out at a resort owned by Fred Goetz on Cranberry Lake, six miles north of Couderay, Wisconsin, in October or November of 1928. Capone was present, as was Gus Winkler, Burke, Goetz, Louis “Little New York” Campagna and William Pacelli, a North Side politician who was later elected to the Illinois state senate. Bolton also involved Claude Maddox in the plot. Bolton himself claimed to be one of the lookout men on Clark Street, a claim that seems backed up by the fact that a medicine bottle and a letter, both with his name on them, were found in one of the rooming houses during the neighborhood canvass. Bolton claimed that Burke and Fred Goetz were the men disguised as police officers during the massacre and Maddox, Carey and Winkler were the shooters in plain clothes.

Bolton was under arrest in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the ransom kidnapping of Edward Bremer, along with members of the Barker Gang, when he made the confession. Informed of his statement, Chicago police captains John Stege and William Shoemaker, probably the most honest crime fighters in the city during the Prohibition era, believed Bolton. “The first suspect I sent for was Maddox,” Shoemaker said. “I felt sure he was one of the executioners but I could not prove it. I had to let him go.” Lieutenant Otto Erlanger of the homicide bureau added that he thought Bolton’s story was “true in every word.”

Bolton's claims were later corroborated by Gus Winkler's widow, Georgette. Bank robber and Barker Gang member Alvin Karpis later endorsed Bolton's story to Capone biographer John Kobler.

But not everyone was convinced. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who had Bolton in custody on the federal kidnapping charge, dismissed his claims. He stated that the massacre was a “Chicago matter for the local police to resolve.” Claude Maddox was brought in for another round of questioning in 1935 but he was let go. Nothing was done to follow up on the story and as the press lost interest, it faded away and was mostly forgotten.

As for Fred Burke, his downfall came after he hit a motorist in St. Joseph, Michigan, on December 14, 1929. Burke had been drinking and tried to flee the scene. A police patrolman named Charles Skelly overtook him and forced him to the curb. As Skelly jumped onto the car’s running board, Burke shot him three times and sped away. Skelly died at the hospital and Burke’s car was found on U.S. Highway 12, cracked up against a telephone pole. The registration papers in the glove compartment bore the name “Fred Dane” and listed an address on the outskirts of St. Joseph. When police raided the bungalow, they found a bulletproof vest, bonds recently stolen from a Wisconsin bank, two Thompson submachine guns, pistols, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Ballistics tests conducted by nationally renowned expert Calvin Goddard revealed that both of Burke's Tommy guns had been used in the St. Valentine's Day massacre. The same tests showed that one of them had been used to murder gangster Frankie Yale -- a murder allegedly arranged by Capone. 

The arsenal found inside of Burke's home included two tommy-guns that were used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and one that had been used to kill mobster Frankie Yale. 

Burke became America’s most wanted man but he didn’t stay on the run for long. He managed to elude the police for just over a year, until he was arrested at a farm near Green City, Missouri, on March 26, 1931. The Chicago authorities wanted him for his possible role in the massacre but Michigan refused to surrender him, preferring to try him for the murder of Patrolman Skelly. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Michigan State Penitentiary and died there of heart disease at the age of 47.

Fred “Killer” Burke is the only man who has been tied by evidence to the massacre, but he certainly didn’t act alone and the list of his possible accomplices is a long one.

Fred Samuel Goetz

Goetz, also known as “Shotgun” George Zeigler, was a long-time mobster who was also believed to have been involved in the massacre. Born in Chicago, the son of German immigrants, he was stationed at Langley Field, Virginia, during World War I and served as a pilot in the U.S. Army’s aviation branch, where he rose to the rank of second lieutenant. After graduating from the University of Illinois, in 1922, Goetz worked as a lifeguard at Clarendon Beach until he was charged with sexually assaulting seven-year-old Jean Lanbert, after luring her into an alley with a promise of candy. Goetz denied the charges and jumped bail on June 10, 1925. Four months later, Roger Bessner implicated Goetz in the failed robbery of Dr. Henry R. Gross, in which the family driver was killed.

During the next several years, Goetz would become associates with underworld figures such as Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil and Morris Klineman, as well as participating in several armed robberies, including the robbery of $352,000 from the Farmers and Merchants Bank, in Jefferson, Wisconsin, with Fred Burke, Gus Winkler and others, in 1929. His connections with Burke and his crew possibly led to his inclusion in the massacre hit squad. According to Byron Bolton, he was one of the men dressed as police officers.

After the massacre, Goetz left Chicago and began bootlegging operations in Kansas City, Missouri before becoming associated with the Barker Gang. He later participated in several bank robberies with Alvin Karpis, Fred and Doc Barker and took part in the kidnapping of St. Paul millionaire Edward Bremer in 1933. Goetz was the gang member who collected the ransom and released Bremer.

Goetz was killed on March 20, 1934. He had returned to Chicago and was murdered in a drive-by shooting outside of a closed Cicero restaurant, the Minerva. The murder remains unsolved, although a number of his former associates, including the Barker Gang, had reasons to kill him. Alvin Karpis believed that Outfit boss Frank Nitti ordered the murder.

Robert Carey

Born in St. Louis, Carey joined the Egan’s Rats gang when he was in his early twenties. By 1917, he had become close friends with Fred Burke and after serving in the Army during World War I, continued on as a low-level associate in Egan’s Rats. At this time, while Burke was serving prison time, Carey became associated with a Cincinnati gunman called Raymond “Crane Neck” Nugent. Both men were suspected of robbing a Cincinnati bank messenger in December 1921 and trying to fence the bonds through the Egan's Rats.

Carey was known for being exceptionally smart but he was also an alcoholic who took great risks and became violent when he drank. In spite of this, he was the mastermind behind the St. Louis distillery robbery and Fred Burke’s policeman disguise in 1923.

After the collapse of Egan’s Rats in 1924, Carey went with Burke to Detroit and was arrested in March for the robbery of the John Kay jewelry store. While Carey was suspected of being part of the crew, only Isador Londe was convicted of the crime and received a 10- to 20-year sentence.

Cary continued to run with Burke and his crew through the 1920s. He was specifically charged by the Detroit authorities for the murder of two freelance gunmen, James Ellis and Leroy Snyder, on March 16, 1927, after he caught them cheating at poker. On April 16, 1928, Carey, along with Winkler, Goetz, Nugent and Charlie Fitzgerald, took part in an American Express armored car robbery in Toledo, Ohio. The robbers made off with $200,000 and a Toledo cop named George Zientara ended up dead.

Even though he was never publicly named as a suspect, Carey was sought by the Chicago police after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Nothing could be pinned on him, although Byron Bolton did name him as one of the men involved.

With most of his closest associates locked up or dead by early 1932, Carey left Chicago for the East Coast. He and his girlfriend, Rose, ended up in Baltimore, where they began blackmailing well-to-do businessmen and politicians. The marks would bed Rose and Bob would discreetly take pictures. This operation had dead-ended by summer and they moved north to New York. Carey, now using the alias of Sanborn, rented a flat on 104th Street and started a high-quality counterfeiting racket. Despite his newfound success, Carey was drinking heavily – with fatal results. According to NYPD reports, on the night of July 29, 1932, a drunken Carey went berserk and shot Rose to death, after which he turned the gun on himself.

Ray "Crane Neck" Nugent

Ray Nugent was born in Cincinnati around 1895 and came to St. Louis during the heyday of Egan’s Rats. He managed to talk himself into the gang’s good graces and became friends with fellow war veteran Bob Carey. Nugent was heavily built, with a strong jaw, muscular shoulders and no neck to speak of. For reasons that no one can fathom (except, perhaps, irony), he was nicknamed “Crane Neck.” Although no one actually called him that, the moniker followed him on police records for the rest of his life. Ray also sometimes used the alias “Gander.” He and Carey shared similar voracious appetites for booze and violence.

Nugent also became closely associated with other suspected massacre gunmen like Burke, Winkler and Goetz and took part in the distillery robbery in April 1923. When the remnants of the gang left St. Louis for Detroit in 1924, Nugent went with them. He was involved in a number of robberies with elements of Burke’s crew, including a home invasion on Halloween night 1926. Nugent, Carey and another crew member named Tony Ortell broke into the home of real estate broker Edward Loveley and made off with about $40,000 in diamonds, furs, and antiques. Carey and Nugent, identified from mug shots, dumped the loot and fled west to Los Angeles, where they were arrested on suspicion of robbing a jeweler. Both were extradited to Detroit to stand trial for the Loveley caper but the charges didn’t stick.

In the spring of 1927, Nugent, Carey and Gus Winkler kidnapped popular Detroit gambler Mert Wertheimer with plans to bring in a six-figure ransom. They drove him to Chicago and kept him in a North Side apartment on Grace Street. It turned out that Wertheimer was not only protected by the Purple Gang but was also a good friend of Al Capone. Winkler and his wife, Georgette, had just moved into the Leland Hotel when Winkler was contacted by an emissary of Capone, who wanted to have a meeting.

Knowing that Wertheimer was stashed only a couple of blocks away, Winkler nervously told Carey and Nugent that Capone wanted to meet with them. Not surprisingly, they had no interest in accepting an invitation to their own murder and wanted nothing more than to get out of Chicago as soon as possible. Winkler talked them into coming with him to the meeting and, hoping to make a good impression on the crime boss, cleaned up his partners and gave them a crash course in manners.

In May 1927, the three men met with Capone at the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero. Capone was his often-charming self and explained to his guests how the kidnapping racket was no place for talented men. He suggested that they get into a real business. Winkler enjoyed the evening chatting with Capone but, to his dismay, both Nugent and Carey drank too much and began talking loudly and laughing. Surprisingly, Capone ignored their antics and generously offered the three men some cash to replace the ransom that they were going to lose by releasing Wertheimer. Winkler declined but his pals eagerly snatched up the money. Shaking his head, he was pleased about how the evening had gone but less than thrilled with the behavior of Nugent and Carey.

Mert Wertheimer was immediately released and Carey and Winkler settled in Chicago. Nugent went back to Ohio where his wife, Julia, was living with their two children. His partners began hanging around Capone, hoping to ingratiate themselves with the mob boss and his men. Capone began calling the crew his “American Boys” and after the almost disastrous robbery in Toledo, he gathered them all back to Chicago.

Nugent became one of the leading suspects in the massacre, mostly because of the company that he kept and the fact that he was dangerously violent. Many believe that he was one of the plainclothes killers, who machine-gunned the North Side gang members to death.

After the massacre, Nugent remained a low-level member of the Capone gang. In April 1930, he was arrested for drunk driving with Ralph Capone in the Miami area. About a year later, Nugent disappeared. Rumor had it that he had become a liability to the Outfit and had been taken out into the Everglades and fed to the alligators. Whatever happened, he was never again seen. In 1951, his wife filed a petition in Cincinnati to have him legally declared dead so that she could claim his pension as the widow of a World War I veteran.

Gus Winkler

Born August Henry Winkeler in St. Louis in 1901, Winkler was a member of the St. Louis-based Cuckoo Gang during his teenage years. After a stint as an Army ambulance driver in World War I, Winkler joined up with the Egan's Rats before moving to Detroit with Burke and the other remnants of the gang in 1924.

Gus Winkler

Working with the Purple Gang until 1927, he and Burke were often hired out for freelance work and began their own crime spree holding up banks, armored cars, and mail trucks. After moving to Chicago, Winkler and the others began working almost exclusively for Al Capone and are believed to have been directly involved in the massacre. It is widely believed that Winkler was the fifth man in the murder team, the one waiting behind the wheel of the black Cadillac while the others murdered the North Side gang members.

   

Winkler and Burke's crew broke up during the fallout from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and Winkler was suspected of planning and later taking part in the robbery of two million dollars from a bank in Lincoln, Nebraska in September 1930. However, he gave evidence against his partners and returned his share of the loot in exchange for clemency, damaging his reputation in the underworld. In spite of this, he was able to carve out a lucrative position in the rackets of Chicago’s North Side, mostly based on the close friendship that he had maintained with Capone.

Upon Capone's 1931 imprisonment, Winkler was surrounded by gangsters who didn't trust him, in particular Frank Nitti. However, he still remained a force in post-Capone Chicago, controlling rackets on the North Side independent from the Outfit.

In June 1933, a close friend of Winkler’s, Verne Miller, was accused of helping gun down three policemen and a federal agent in an attempt to free bank robber Frank Nash during the Kansas City Massacre. Winkler, who was trying to sever ties with the violent end of the business so that he could concentrate on his gambling and nightclub operations, was seen going into the Banker’s Building office of Melvin Purvis, the head of the FBI’s Chicago field office, likely to give him a tip on where to find Miller. The fact that Winkler seemed to be getting cozy with the cops again – once a snitch, always a snitch, in the standard underworld credo – was too much for Frank Nitti to handle.

At 1:40 p.m. on October 9, 1933, as Winkler was going into the beer distribution office of Charles Weber at 1414 North Roscoe Avenue, a green delivery truck cruised by and its occupants opened fire with shotguns. Winkler was hit with 72 shotgun pellets and succumbed to his wounds a half-hour after arriving at a local hospital. He managed to gasp out the Lord’s Prayer before he died. His murder remains officially unsolved. 

Claude Maddox

“Screwy” Claude Maddox was born John Edward Moore in St. Louis in 1897. Little is known about him prior to his founding of the Circus Gang, which had a beer and booze concession on the western edge of Dion O’Banion’s territory during Prohibition. His headquarters, the Circus Café, was a dive bar on North Avenue and would figure prominently in the theories regarding the massacre. Maddox was a former member of Egan’s Rats and for this reason, he welcomed Burke and his crew to the city and likely offered them assistance covering things up after the massacre. If Byron Bolton’s story is to be believed, Maddox also took part in planning and carrying out the murders.

After the black Cadillac touring car that had been driven by the massacre killers was found in the burning garage on Wood Street, the police traced the renter of the garage, “Frank Rogers,” to an address that adjoined the Circus Café. The bar was jointly owned by Maddox and “Tough Tony” Capezio, who had recently suffered burns. Detectives were excited about what they saw as a new lead, connecting the massacre to the Circus Gang. In addition, the address given by “Frank Rogers” was also directly across from the apartment of the late Patsy Lolordo and had apparently been used as an indoor shooting range. The café itself had been recently closed and was being stripped of its fixtures, but at the address listed by “Rogers,” police found guns and overcoats flung down in such a way that seemed to indicate that the occupants had fled in a hurry as soon as the garage caught on fire.

Maddox had very basic living quarters at the café, but he had given his home address as 1642 Warren Avenue on the West Side. He had a reputation as a Capone man, his territory offering a safe place between the Aiellos in Little Italy and Moran on the North Side. Members of the Circus Gang included gunmen like Jack McGurn, Tony Accardo, Rocco de Grazia and assorted hoods from the “Patch,” an area of fluctuating boundaries on the West Side that comprised nearly a dozen different European immigrant communities. It was also a hangout for Maddox’s St. Louis friends, Al Capone’s so-called “American Boys.”

Maddox was almost immediately suspected as being part of the massacre, but the cops could never make anything stick. After Byron Bolton’s 1935 confession, he was picked up once again but investigators had to let him go since Hoover and the FBI refused to cooperate with the Chicago police.

Maddox stayed involved with the Outfit after Capone went to prison and his effectiveness in union racketeering spared him the fate of Gus Winkler when Frank Nitti began cleaning house in the early 1930s. Those skills, along with his partnership in a semi-legal gambling equipment firm, allowed him to rise high in the mob before his death in 1958. Maddox quietly passed away at his Riverside, Illinois, home – one of the few men connected to the massacre who did not die a violent death.

The theories about who was involved in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre are as numerous as the theories as to why the massacre took place. There have been scores of theories put forth by crime historians over the years and just about any of them can make sense if they are presented in just the right way. Many of them are preposterous and impossible and others seem to make a cunning bit of sense. Logically, the massacre was ordered by Capone (but planned by his henchmen) in an effort to eliminate George Moran and bring an end to the harassment by the North Side gang once and for all.

There were a number of reasons why Capone would want Moran and his gang out of the way, not the least of which was the constant hijacking of Capone’s liquor trucks and the undercutting of his business interests in the city. It could have also been retribution for the murders of Tony Lombardo and Pasqual Lolordo, Capone’s presidents of the Unione Siciliane. Moran’s backing of Joe Aiello would have also increased Capone’s hatred for the man. Capone was also being hampered by Moran in his takeover of the Cleaners’ and Dyers’ Association, which was a powerful racket into which Capone wanted to expand. There was also the matter of revenge for the attempted murder of Jack McGurn by the Gusenbergs, something that likely figured into McGurn’s thoughts as he helped plan the massacre.

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. While the identities of the killers will most likely always remain a mystery – the reason behind the massacre has never seemed very puzzling.

In spite of this, many writers feel the need to try and shock the public with alternate theories or bizarre twists that really don’t seem to be backed up by the historical evidence. For instance, one claim was that the men were not gathered at the garage that day to await a liquor shipment, but to discuss the presence of a   traitor in their midst and take action against him. It was suggested that Moran would not have come to the warehouse for a mere liquor shipment. However, this angle does not hold up when one takes into account the fact that Moran was a “hands-on” gang manager who often took delivery of shipments. In addition, he was supposed to be there because his presence had been specifically requested by a hijacker whom he knew and trusted. Moran railed against this man so often in the newspapers after the massacre that it’s unlikely that he didn’t exist. It’s also unlikely that Reinhart Schwimmer – essentially a “gangster groupie” – would have been allowed to hang around the garage that day if such an important meeting was going to be taking place. 

Perhaps the most ridiculous theory is one that received some attention in recent years. It asserted that Capone had nothing to do with the massacre at all – that it was a revenge killing by a low-level gunman who was looking to avenge his cousin. The theory was based one of the hundreds of crackpot letters that were received by the police and the FBI after the massacre. This particular letter had been sent by Frank Farrell in January 1935. Farrell, who had a patronage job in the state highway department, wrote about his connection to William Davern, Jr., a former fireman who was shot in a gangster hangout called the C&O Cabaret and Restaurant at 509 North Clark Street. Davern died a month later from his wounds – but not before allegedly getting some startling information. According to Farrell’s letter, William “Three-Fingered Jack” White, who was a cousin of Davern, told Davern (who was visiting him at the county jail) that Davern had been shot by one of the Gusenbergs. In retaliation for Davern’s shooting, White lured the Gusenbergs to the garage at 2122 North Clark Street and then killed them, along with everyone else inside. Farrell waited several years and then sent the information in a letter to the FBI.

While an interesting story, the tale in the letter has a number of fatal flaws. Despite a 2010 book that touted it as the “solution” to the massacre mystery, most historians dismissed the letter (which was easily accessible in the files of the case) because it has no credibility. One of the biggest problems with the letter theory is that it does not explain how Fred Burke ended up with the Tommy guns that were used in the massacre (one of which had killed Frankie Yale in 1928). It also doesn’t explain the need for Byron Bolton as a lookout (remember that physical evidence placed him at the scene), or why Claude Maddox and his gang disposed of the car involved, or most of the other known facts in the case. 

The letter also confuses names and basic details of the case, such as how people are related to one another. For example, Davern’s mother was not the sister of Jack White’s father. Davern’s mother, born Anna Gillespie, was the sister of White’s mother, Mary Gillespie.

Another problem is that, according to the Chicago Police Department, the leading suspect in the fatal shooting of William “Billy” Davern was Jack McGurn. This means that if one of the Gusenberg brothers, or some other North Side gang member, did not shoot Davern, then White would have no reason to kill them in revenge. According to a newspaper account, Davern was likely involved in the March 1928 attempt on McGurn’s life.

It should also be noted that Davern was so serious after being shot that he lingered in the hospital until he died in December 1928, fighting for his life the entire time. It is highly unlikely that he could have gone to the Cook County Jail so that White could tell him that he had been shot by one of the Gusenbergs.

This brings us to the most important problem of all: according to newspaper and police reports, Jack White was in the Cook County Jail when the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place. White was sent to jail in 1926, without bond, for his part in the murder of a police officer. He was not released until July 1929, when his conviction was overturned, months after the massacre took place. Therefore, White couldn’t have been out of jail killing anyone on February 14, 1929. 

How this theory has gained attention in recent times is more puzzling than trying to pin down who carried the Tommy guns into the SMC Cartage building that day. Cook County Coroner Herman Bundeson, who Farrell contacted before writing to J. Edgar Hoover, probably dismissed Farrell's letter as nonsense as soon as he checked the jail records. He rejected the letter as a fraud and so should anyone with a genuine interest in the case.  

Capone gunman, Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn

While Fred “Killer” Burke became a leading suspect in the massacre, he was far from the only one. Almost immediately after the murders, the Chicago police began “rounding up the usual suspects” and one of the first arrested was Jack McGurn. The warrant sworn out for McGurn’s arrest was based on the testimony of a young man named George Brichet who happened to be walking down Clark Street in front of the warehouse on February 14. As he was passing by, he saw the five killers enter and he heard one of them say “C’mon, mac.” He picked out McGurn’s photograph from a police rogue’s gallery and said that he recognized him. Many historians have questioned the identification, although they don’t doubt that Brichet heard what the man said correctly. In those days, “mac” was a casual way for someone to address a man, like “pal,” or “buddy.” It didn’t necessarily have to be someone’s actual name. Brichet heard it and repeated it to the cops, who saw it as a perfect excuse to roust McGurn, whom they felt was undoubtedly tied into the massacre somehow.

When the police showed up for McGurn, they found him at the Hotel Stevens with a blonde woman named Louise Rolfe. He was indicted for seven murders and his bail was set at $50,000. He raised that amount using a hotel that he owned that was valued at over one million dollars as collateral. McGurn said he was with Miss Rolfe when the killings took place, causing newspapermen to dub her “the Blonde Alibi.” He swore that he had never left her side at the Hotel Stevens between 9:00 p.m. on February 13 and 3:00 p.m. on February 14. The state’s attorney had him indicted for perjury but before McGurn could be tried on that charge, he married Louise Rolfe. A wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband.

Louise Rolfe, the bombshell that reporters dubbed the "Blonde Alibi." McGurn later married her so that she didn't have to testify against him in court. 

As the investigation into the massacre dragged on, McGurn’s lawyer began calling for his client to be brought to trial. Under Illinois law, if the accused demanded to be tried at four separate terms of court and the state was not prepared to prosecute him, the state had to dismiss the case. Between the spring and winter of 1929, McGurn made four demands for a trial. None of them were met and on December 2, he walked out of the courtroom a free man. By then, the authorities had revised their version of his role in the massacre and concluded that although he did not take part in the murders, he definitely had a role in their planning. They had no evidence of this, however, and McGurn was never charged with anything relating to the crime.

Later, he and Louise were convicted of conspiring to violate the Mann Act, which prohibited interstate transport of women for “immoral purposes” when they were visiting Capone in Florida. The convictions were later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

McGurn was not the only one arrested and indicted for having a possible role in the massacre.

During Coroner Bundeson’s inquest, he summoned every gun dealer in Cook County that he could find, including Peter von Frantzius, the reputed weapons source for all of Chicago gangland. He admitted that he had recently sold six Tommy guns to a man named Frank H. Thompson, who was allegedly acting as a buyer for the Mexican consul general, whose government wanted the weapons to help put down revolutionaries. The police knew that Thompson was an ex-convict, a safecracker, a hijacker and lately, an arms dealer. He was then wanted for attempting to machine-gun his wife and her lover in his hometown of Kirkland, Illinois.

Thompson surrendered to Bundeson. He admitted that he had purchased the guns but claimed that he had sold them to James “Bozo” Shupe, who was killed soon after. Shupe, detectives knew, was a close associate of Capone gunmen Scalise, Anselmi and Joseph Giunta, the current, Capone-backed president of the Unione Siciliane. With these thin connections, the police arrested the three Sicilians, mostly on the basis that if Capone had ordered something violent and bloody to be carried out, these men were probably involved. Giunta, with no actual evidence against him, was immediately released, but new witnesses placed Scalise and Anselmi in the fake police car. They were indicted and then released after posting a $50,000 bond.

Unfortunately, they didn’t live long enough to ever stand trial for the massacre murders.

Two days after Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta were arrested, the state’s attorney added four more names to the list of alleged assassins, bringing the total to seven, instead of five. The first was Joseph Lolordo, a natural suspect since his brother had been murdered in a plot likely engineered by Moran. During World War I, he had served with a detachment of machine-gunners and many believed he had been behind the actual murders. He had since disappeared. Another suspect was Frank Rio, a Capone bodyguard and gunman.

The disclosure of the third and fourth names followed eyewitness testimony furnished by prominent Chicagoan H. Wallace Caldwell, president of the board of education. Caldwell had been one of the witnesses to the accident on Clark Street between the truck and the Cadillac. As he glanced over, he happened to see that the driver in the police uniform was missing an upper front tooth. This distinguishing mark fit Fred “Killer” Burke and soon after, he became one of the most wanted criminals in the country.

The other indictment issued was for “James Ray,” alleged to be a constant companion of Burke. James Ray may have been an alias used by Gus Winkler or Ray Nugent, but a mug shot of Ray that was published in the March 6, 1929 edition of the Chicago Tribune shows a large, square-jawed man with hard eyes and thinning hair. “James Ray” was neither Winkler, Nugent, nor anyone else known to be in the Burke crew. His identity remains a mystery.

So, who really carried out the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre? Thanks to the ballistics evidence that tied Fred Burke to the crime, it seems likely that he and his former Egan’s Rats companions performed the hit at the behest of Al Capone. But for whatever reasons – indifference, corruption, or lack of hard evidence – the murders were never officially solved.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre marked the end of any significant gang opposition to Capone, but it was also the event that finally began the decline of Capone’s criminal empire. The massacre had simply taken things too far and the authorities – once content to let gangsters kill gangsters – and even Capone’s once-adoring public, were ready to put an end to the bootleg wars. The massacre started a wave of reform that would eventually send Capone out of power for good.

To be Continued...