Valentine’s Day massacre: seven dead at close range and the bloody shadow of Al Capone during prohibition

Few people remember it a drunk italian who raped his pregnant wife -fruit to which it would give birth a child with deformities very similar to Satan according to some, it would be the trigger in the fight for the abolition of alcohol consumption in the United States. For a long time, church members, activists, politicians and various organizations have argued that alcohol only brings backwardness and poverty.

Among those who waved this flag was the Temperance movement, which included thousands of members in the United States and other Anglo-Saxon countries. One of its most radical and fanatic representatives, Carrie Amelia Nation -a fat African-American who has passed the meter eightyHe could smell the smell of breaking into bars with other women, and while they sang religious hymns he smashed barrels of alcohol and all the furniture with his ax. Her first husband had died of alcoholism, she maintained that he received divine orders and thus spent his life breaking bars, while He bailed out his 30 arrests with the money he got from the sale of the model ax he used and for the contributions it has received.

The woman will not see the fruits of her crusade, as she died in 1911. In October 1920, the Volstead Act came into force, banning the sale, production, import or transport of alcohol in the country.

What he hadn’t planned was what was to follow.

The illegal trade in the production and sale of alcohol emerged. And with it the proliferation of illegal distilleries and bars. All run by mafia gangs who fought for spaces of power by shooting.

One of the protagonists was born in Brooklyn in 1899, he was the son of Neapolitan immigrants and by the age of 14 he had already threatened to kill his teacher. His name was Alphonse Gabriel Capone and soon after I would meet the Calabrian John donato torrio, a Manhattan gangster.

Although he tried to hide his criminal activities as a buyer and seller of furniture, he quickly rose through the ranks. While in charge of the Harvard Inn bar, he received cuts to his face with a razor after complimenting a woman. He would have the Scarface nickname, Scarface.

She married, had a child and when the ban was implemented, her protector Torrio – who already lived in Chicago – tempted it with the opportunities offered by the illegal alcohol trade. When Torrio suffered a stroke that had him on the verge of death, and after serving time for violating the ban, in 1925 he withdrew to Europe and Capone has become an all-powerful boss. He ran distilleries, arcades, brothels and even dog races. At the same time, he helped Italian immigrants who were going through difficult times. Among his rivals was George Clarence “Bugs” Moran.

For justice – which had placed him at the top of a list of public enemies – it was difficult to catch him. It was because he had bought judges, politicians and police officers.

One hundred pictures on Valentine’s Day

Those who preached that alcohol brought backwardness and poverty, did not imagine what would happen Thursday February 14, 1929, Valentine’s Day, at 10:30 a.m.. Seven members of the North Side Gang, a group with Irish roots led by Bugs Moran, visited a warehouse located at 2122 North Clark Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. They had to wait for a shipment of Canadian whiskey from Detroit. What they didn’t know was that it was all a hoax from a member of Capone’s gang., which had transmitted the data the day before.

Those waiting inside the SMC Cartage Company garage were James clark (brother-in-law and right-hand man of Moran), Adam Heyer, John may, A. Weinshank, brothers Franc Yes Peter Gusenberg Yes Robert schwimmer.

It must have sounded odd when a police patrol and a private car arrived. The day before, they had paid the monthly fee by force to be able to work with peace of mind. Bugs Moran, who had fallen asleep in his room at the Parkway hotel, arrived late and saw the cops from a distance. He decided to wait in a nearby bar.

The group members were put up against a wall. They put their hands behind their backs, expecting to be handcuffed. They had already been registered. Then, the three people dressed as police officers and the two men in civilian clothes shot them down with Thompson machine guns, shotguns and .45 caliber pistols.

Neighbors saw the unarmed men in civilian clothes come out with their hands raised, followed by police who pointed fingers at them, faking an arrest. They got on the patrol and left the scene.

Some thought they recognized among the aggressors Jack Mc Gun, better known under the name of “Machine Gun”, which would have taken the opportunity to avenge the death of his father, but He insisted that that day he was with his girlfriend, Larise Rolfe, in a hotel room.

When the police arrived at the scene, one of them was still alive. Was Frank Gusemberg. When asked who shot him, he didn’t respond to anyone. He died three hours later in hospital. He had 14 bullet holes and still respected the code of silence.

All eyes turned to Capone. He defended himself by saying he was in Miami. Moran was heard to say that what happened in the garage was typical Capone style. Several theories have been developed, one of them assures that the murderers were indeed police officers and that they avenged the death of the son of one of them.

No one can be accused of this crime. Capone evaded two calls for justice, claiming he was ill, but his days were numbered. It was not until October 1931 that he was sentenced to 80,000 dollars and 11 years in prison for the crime of tax evasion. Living like a king in Atlanta jail, he was transferred to Alcatraz, where his privileges were limited to playing the banjo. The inexorable effects of the syphilis he contracted in his youth deteriorated his health and his sentence was reduced to 6 years and 5 months. When he was released, he was the shadow of the almighty Don of Chicago. He suffered from dementia.

The building where the massacre took place was transformed in 1949 into an antique furniture store. But its owners ended up closing it, as more tourists and curious people came than potential buyers. The local mayor decided to demolish it in 1967. Today. the numbering that had this garage does not exist.

When he got out of prison Capone was isolated at his home in Palm Beach, where he died on January 25, 1947, far from it all. Fourteen years had passed since the repeal of Prohibition, which had made Billy Sunday, a preacher who had given up his brilliant career as a baseball player at $ 500 a week, say in 1920 for the church, that “the doors were closed forever. from hell”.

Unfortunately, others had been opened.

I continued to read:

Al Capone’s return to increasingly violent Chicago

Alcatraz: Wild guards, incredible escape attempts and dark myths of an invincible prison