On February 14, 1929, at about 10:30 a.m., machine gun fire rang out in a garage on North Clark Street in downtown Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Several passersby stopped. Residents peered out of the windows of neighboring houses, “What's all the noise?”
The garage doors opened and two police officers led two men out into the street with their hands in the air. The people who had been alarmed by the gunfire calmed down. The usual Chicago 20's business: the police arrested two gangsters. The cops loaded the gangsters into a black Cadillac and drove away.
Some time later, Mrs. Landesman, the owner of the boarding house across the street, went to the garage: from there for several dozen minutes of heartbreaking dog howls. Determined to give the owner of the animal a beating (Please calm your dog down!), she pushed open the garage door... - and she was no longer concerned about the dog.
When the police arrived, they found a howling dog tied to a car and six bodies riddled with bullets. The seventh was still breathing. A sergeant leaned over him: “Who shot you?” The man opened his eyes (doctors later counted 22 holes in him) and whispered: “Nobody shot at us.” Three hours later, he died.
All seven did not die in the shootout, they were lined up against the wall and shot in cold blood. All had guns, but none used them. Why did they let themselves be finished off like chickens? And for what purpose was this crime done? Nothing was stolen, nothing was taken. The police hoped that the found participants of the massacre would provide answers to all these questions.
Police immediately identified the names of those killed. They were members of George Moran's “Bugs” gang.
As for the killers and the direct customer, Moran was the first to say: “Al Capone did it.” The police had the same opinion.
The introduction of Prohibition in late 1919 triggered a tremendous upsurge in crime in the United States. The trade in contraband alcohol brought insane profits. Bootleggers were waging a real war. Wrestled each other's liquor trucks, smashed rival drinking establishments, divided the city into spheres of influence. And they were firing Thompson submachine guns left and right.
The Tommy gun, invented in the early '20s, was heavy, had low penetration and a lot of other drawbacks. The army wasn't interested in it. But the gangsters loved it. Not caring about aiming, they used it to shoot the police and each other at point-blank range. It became fashionable to wear wide, long-brimmed coats, under which it was so convenient to hide a submachine gun.
By 1929 there were only two gangs left in Chicago, two criminal kings: Bugs Morano and Al Capone, who disliked each other very much.
Calvin Goddard, the first and so far the only ballistics expert in the United States, arrived at the garage. After collecting the shell casings lying on the floor, he issued a conclusion, according to which the gangsters were shot with two Thompson .45 caliber. Al Capone was questioned. Turns out he was thousands of miles away from Chicago in Miami on the day of the murder.
The cops smirked, “I bet Capone didn't have an ironclad alibi.” A few minutes before the murder near the garage saw people from Capone's gang, but it was not enough. On February 22, in one of the garages found burned Cadillac, on which came and went gangsters - criminals cut off the ends.
On December 14, 1929, in Michigan, a police officer stopped an automobile whose driver had violated the rules. When asked to produce his license, the violator grabbed a gun, fired three times and fled. The police officer died that same night, but before he died, he gave the license plate number of the car the offender was driving.
Detectives pulled this string and came to the owner of the car, one Frederick Dane, who turned out to be a gangster Fred Burke. Dane's apartment was searched and two Thompson automatic rifles were found among a pile of weapons. They were sent to Goddard and soon received a reply: it was these machine guns “shone” in the events of February 14 in Chicago.
Burke was picked up a year later. He admitted killing the policeman, but refused to talk about the garage massacre. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he died in prison without opening his mouth. It seemed that the “St. Valentine's Day Massacre” would remain a dark case.
On January 8, 1935, FBI agents surrounded a house in North Chicago where members of the Ma Baker gang were hiding. (Who among Boney M. fans knows that “Ma Baker” is a song about a formidable gang of criminals?) The gangsters responded to the police's offer to surrender with a frenzied firing squad. In the shootout, one of the gangsters was killed, the rest (two men and two women) came out with their hands up.
Interrogations began, and while one of the gangsters was sullenly silent, the other, Byron Bolton, became incontinent. He spilled information without waiting for questions, he told of crimes in which he himself had taken part or of which he had at least heard. Details of unsolved cases, long ago sent to the archives, came to light.
The typist was typing at the speed of Thompson's machine and still could hardly keep up. Having finished his account of another crime, Bolton took a drink of water and continued: “And now for the Valentine's Day Massacre.”
In 1928, Morano and Capone, having outgunned their rivals began to divide Chicago between them. Al Capone had a special brigade - “American Boys”, which “solved problems”. The boys worked for $2,000 a week. Even now that's a lot of money, but for the U.S. in the 20s, it was a fabulous sum.
Bugs Morano was no angel with wings either. There were gunshots and car bombings in the city in broad daylight. Pompous funeral of another dead in the shootout gangster became a familiar sight for Chicagoans.
In November, at one of the meetings Capone and his friends decided to eliminate Moran. The idea with disguise in the police suggested Jack McGurn (“Machine Gun”). In October, Moran's gangsters riddled the phone booth, in which he entered, McGurn survived just a miracle and now burning desire to get even.
Jack Machine Gun organized a team of 6 men (2 “policemen”, 2 shooters and 2 drivers, the eldest being Fred Burke). McGurn specifically selected people who none of Moran's gangsters could identify, otherwise the disguise masquerade could have a very different ending. He found out that Moran's headquarters was in a garage off Lincoln Park. An apartment was rented in the building across the street from which the garage was monitored.
On February 13, a supplier of contraband liquor contacted Moran and told him that a shipment of Old Log Cabin whiskey (a very good whiskey) was coming from the Canadian border and that he was willing to sell it for the ridiculous price of $57 per case. The place of delivery of the goods, as Machine Gun had anticipated, was assigned by Moran to a garage on North Clark Street, the time being 10:30 the next morning.
In the early morning hours of February 14, while the watchers took their places in the rented apartment and watched everyone going in and out of the garage, Burke and his underlings stole a police car. At about 10:15 p.m. the watchers called Burke and reported that Bugs had entered the garage. The gangsters got into the stolen patrol car. The operation to eliminate Moran had begun.
Moran did not actually enter the garage. The observers mistook him for Albert Weinschenk, who really looked like Bugs, especially from a distance. Moran was late for the meeting. He arrived 15 minutes late, but seeing a police car at his headquarters, prudently decided not to enter the garage and drove past.
The first to enter the garage were two of Burke's men dressed as policemen and ordered everyone to raise their hands and line up against the wall. The gangsters didn't resist, let themselves be disarmed. Well, two ordinary “fools” came with the raid, now they'll take them to the station, there everything will be solved - we'll make a deal, pay off, whoever needs to call, and they'll let everyone go. Is it the first time?
They didn't suspect anything when two plainclothes men (undercover police agents, probably) entered the garage. Facing the wall, the gangsters didn't see the plainclothes policemen open their raincoats and pull out Thompson submachine guns.
The longer the Bolton detectives listened, the sadder they became. It was impossible to indict Al Capone or McGurn based on Byron Bolton's testimony alone, and all the common perpetrators had long ago been either shot by the police or killed in the course of internecine strife.
McGurn was one of the last to die in 1936. By that time the gangster had more than 20 dead bodies on his personal account. Machine gun had a signature: in the hand of his victim gangster put a 5-cent coin. And although the police thanks to this “omen” knew whose hands it is a case, none of the murders could not prove.
February 13, 1936 in the institution, where Machine Gun played bowling, two strangers entered and shot McGurn at point-blank range. Police officers who arrived at the scene of the murder found a nickel coin in the palm of the dead man's hand, and on his chest - a holiday valentine. It was a greeting from the past.
