The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Fourmen dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Morans headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago line seven of Morans henchmen against a wall and shoot them to death.The St.Valentines Day Massacre as it is now called was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.George Bugs Moran was a career criminal who ran the North Side gang in Chicago during the bootlegging era of the 1920s.
He fought bitterly with Scarface Al Capone for control of smuggling and trafficking operations in the Windy City.Throughout the 1920s both survived several attempted murders.On one notorious occasion Moran and his associates drovesix cars past a hotel in Cicero Illionis where Capone and his associates were having lunch and showered the building with more than 1000 bullets.A 50000 bounty on Capones head was the final straw for the gangster.
He ordered that Morans gang be destroyed.On February 14 a delivery of bootleg whiskey was expected at Morans headquarters.But Moran was late and happened to see police officers entering his establishment.
Moran waited outside thinking that his gunmen inside were being arrested in a raid.However the disguised assassins were actually killing the seven men inside.The murdered men included Morans best killers Frank and Pete Gusenberg.Reportedly Frank was still alive when real officers appeared on the scene.
When asked who had shot him the mortally wounded Gusenberg kept his code of silence responding No one nobody shot me.The St.Valentines Day Massacre actually proved to be the last confrontation for both Capone and Moran.Capone was jailed in 1931 and Moran lost so many important men that he could no longer control his territory.
On the seventh anniversary of the massacre Jack McGurn one of the Valentines Day hit menwas killed him in a crowded bowling alley with a burst of machine-gun fire.McGurns killer remains unidentified but was likely Moran though hewas never charged with the murder.Moran was relegated to small-time robberies until he was sent to jail in 1946.He died in Leavenworth Federal Prison in 1957 of lung cancer.
