Prohibition gave organized criminal gangs the opportunity to make barrels of money by giving American citizens what their government tried to deny them: alcohol. There was more than enough potential illicit business to keep everybody happy but greed quickly set in as competing gangs each wanted the entire pie for themselves and sought to eliminate the competition through corrupt police, politicians, judges and street violence. Prohibition was what made the Roaring Twenties roar.
There was a steady toll of killings and it is estimated that Chicago alone, where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred, would see more than a thousand gang related killings during the 13 years of Prohibition (1920-1933). Most of these killings remain officially unsolved.
Chicago’s South Side gang, under control of the infamous Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was at war with Bugs Moran’s group, or the North Side gang. Capone sought to wipe out the North Side gang with a hit that finally awakened government and the public to the gang menace.
Moran’s men were using a warehouse known as SMC Cartage, 2122 N. Clarke Street, as their hangout and headquarters. At approximately 10 AM on February 14th, a Capone confederate hidden in an apartment overlooking the warehouse mistook one of Moran’s gang members as Moran himself and gave the signal to attack.
The massacre has been depicted many times in gangster movies about that era but the moviemakers take considerable license with the known facts. Yes, two of Capone’s hit men posed as police officers in uniform so that North side gang members would assume it was just another police shakedown. The soon-to-be victims were disarmed and lined up against a wall. Two of Capone’s gang members then produced Thompson sub-machine guns from under their long winter coats. According to Max A. Collins and Brad Schultz, authors of “Scarface and the Untouchable, a scholarly and definitive treatise on the Capone era, one Thompson was fitted with a 50-round mechanical drum magazine while the second Thompson, to be held as a backup or reserve gun, was fitted with a 20-round stick magazine. Perhaps through practice or experience, the gunmen didn’t trust the reliability of the drum magazine and felt they needed extra insurance at the scene in the form of a second Thompson. Whatever signal was given, the first machine gunner with the drum-equipped Thompson, opened fire on the seven Moran men lined up and facing the wall. The drum did not malfunction and all fifty rounds within the drum were fired. This was not a clean killing. Despite the firepower, victims were soon writhing and moaning on the floor. At this time, the gunman with the second Thompson opened fire, discharging his entire twenty-round magazine into the fallen men. A shotgun was also used on at least one of the victims. The hit team members in police uniforms then pretended to have arrested the gunmen and marched them outside and into waiting vehicles. Passersby assumed they were witnessing an arrest and the entire hit team escaped.
Later in the year, police raided the home of Fred Burke, in Stevensville MI, believed to be one of the machine gunners, where they recovered two Thompson sub-machineguns. Ballistics investigations was then in its infancy. Calvin Hooker Goddard, an army officer and widely considered the father of forensic ballistics, used the 70 recovered shell casings from the crime scene to first rule out police-owned firearms and then to establish that the two recovered submachine guns were the actual weapons used in the massacre. At the time, police involvement was suspected because two Capone hit men were wearing the aforementioned uniforms. To my knowledge, the guns are kept in secure storage by the Berrien County (MI) Sheriff’s department.
The intense negative publicity generated by the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre spelled the beginning of the end for Al Capone. He was eventually convicted of income tax evasion, served time and died in 1947 from pneumonia following a stroke. For photos of the murder weapons and other objects recovered during the Burke Raid, please see: The St. Valentine Massacre guns today
There was a steady toll of killings and it is estimated that Chicago alone, where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred, would see more than a thousand gang related killings during the 13 years of Prohibition (1920-1933). Most of these killings remain officially unsolved.
Chicago’s South Side gang, under control of the infamous Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was at war with Bugs Moran’s group, or the North Side gang. Capone sought to wipe out the North Side gang with a hit that finally awakened government and the public to the gang menace.
Moran’s men were using a warehouse known as SMC Cartage, 2122 N. Clarke Street, as their hangout and headquarters. At approximately 10 AM on February 14th, a Capone confederate hidden in an apartment overlooking the warehouse mistook one of Moran’s gang members as Moran himself and gave the signal to attack.
The massacre has been depicted many times in gangster movies about that era but the moviemakers take considerable license with the known facts. Yes, two of Capone’s hit men posed as police officers in uniform so that North side gang members would assume it was just another police shakedown. The soon-to-be victims were disarmed and lined up against a wall. Two of Capone’s gang members then produced Thompson sub-machine guns from under their long winter coats. According to Max A. Collins and Brad Schultz, authors of “Scarface and the Untouchable, a scholarly and definitive treatise on the Capone era, one Thompson was fitted with a 50-round mechanical drum magazine while the second Thompson, to be held as a backup or reserve gun, was fitted with a 20-round stick magazine. Perhaps through practice or experience, the gunmen didn’t trust the reliability of the drum magazine and felt they needed extra insurance at the scene in the form of a second Thompson. Whatever signal was given, the first machine gunner with the drum-equipped Thompson, opened fire on the seven Moran men lined up and facing the wall. The drum did not malfunction and all fifty rounds within the drum were fired. This was not a clean killing. Despite the firepower, victims were soon writhing and moaning on the floor. At this time, the gunman with the second Thompson opened fire, discharging his entire twenty-round magazine into the fallen men. A shotgun was also used on at least one of the victims. The hit team members in police uniforms then pretended to have arrested the gunmen and marched them outside and into waiting vehicles. Passersby assumed they were witnessing an arrest and the entire hit team escaped.
Later in the year, police raided the home of Fred Burke, in Stevensville MI, believed to be one of the machine gunners, where they recovered two Thompson sub-machineguns. Ballistics investigations was then in its infancy. Calvin Hooker Goddard, an army officer and widely considered the father of forensic ballistics, used the 70 recovered shell casings from the crime scene to first rule out police-owned firearms and then to establish that the two recovered submachine guns were the actual weapons used in the massacre. At the time, police involvement was suspected because two Capone hit men were wearing the aforementioned uniforms. To my knowledge, the guns are kept in secure storage by the Berrien County (MI) Sheriff’s department.
The intense negative publicity generated by the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre spelled the beginning of the end for Al Capone. He was eventually convicted of income tax evasion, served time and died in 1947 from pneumonia following a stroke. For photos of the murder weapons and other objects recovered during the Burke Raid, please see: The St. Valentine Massacre guns today
