St. Valentine’s Day massacre was one of Chicago’s most notorious mass killings. On Feb. 14, 1929, seven men were shot to death at a trucking garage on the city’s North Side. All but one of the men were members of a North Side Irish criminal syndicate ( gang ) led by George “Bugs” Moran , a Prohibition Era bootlegger. The Prohibition Era was a time during the early 1900’s in the United States when laws banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages were in effect. Bootleggers were smugglers of alcohol. Moran himself narrowly escaped death in the massacre.
Moran used the garage on north Clark Street to store illegal liquor. Many historians believe that members of his gang were lured to the location with the promise of a delivery of Canadian whiskey . The men included six of Moran’s gangsters—John Clark (whose real name was Albert Kachellek), Frank Gusenberg, Peter Gusenberg, Adam Heyer, John May, and Albert Weinshank—and an eye doctor named Reinhardt Schwimmer, who reportedly derived excitement from his mob association.
The killers arrived in a Cadillac car disguised as a detective’s police car. Some of the hit men (appointed killers) wore police-style uniforms. Pretending to carry out a police raid, the heavily armed gunmen lined the victims up against a brick wall and sprayed them with bullets fired from two Thompson machine guns and at least one shotgun.
Historians believe that Moran was supposed to be the target of the shooting. Police initially thought he had been kidnapped by the gang, and that his dead body would eventually be found. However, while en route to the garage, Moran had seen the disguised “police officers” arrive in what he thought was a police car. Suspecting they were there to make an arrest, Moran never entered the garage.
In the aftermath of the killings, law enforcement authorities in Chicago and other cities mounted a renewed crackdown against speakeasies (unlicensed saloons), stills, breweries, and places selling illegal alcohol. A nationwide alert was posted for the prime suspect in the attack, the notorious Chicago criminal syndicate boss Al “Scarface” Capone . Capone managed to avoid both police capture and being killed by members of the mob syndicate seeking revenge for the massacre.
Although historians have generally pointed to Capone as the mastermind behind the murders, the charge was never proved. There were also other theories. Some claimed the shooters were not police impersonators, but actual corrupt members of the Chicago Police Department. Others asserted that Moran himself arranged the hit, or blamed the Purple Gang, a Prohibition Era organized crime gang in Detroit, Michigan. Yet another theory stated that the killings may have been the outgrowth of a bar fight. The murders were never officially solved.
