It happened just a few minutes away from Wrigley Field at the S.M.C. Carting Company (2122 N. Clark St) on February 14, 1929. The intended target was North Side crime boss Bugs Moran (a Cubs fan).
It looked like an ordinary police raid at first (sadly, a common sight on the streets of Chicago in 1929). But this was no ordinary raid. The men dressed as policemen lined up the gangsters, facing the wall. Once they were all lined up, they were machine-gunned to death.
(This has been a scene in many films over the years, several of which are edited together in this VIDEO)
Ironically, Bugs Moran, was not among the dead. He arrived late. He just happened to see the suspicious arrival of the police car on his way to the garage that doubled as a gang hideout, and got out of there unscathed. The men who died were Reinhold Schwimmer (an optometrist who had met Bugs because they both lived at 2100 Lincoln Park West), 41-year-old Bugs accountant Adam Heyer, 39-year-old James Clark, 40-year-old safe-cracker Johnnie May, 36-year-old speakeasy owner Al Weinshank, and hired guns Frank (40) and Pete (36) Gusenberg. (Photo: Bodies being hauled out)
Frank Gusenberg was still alive when the police arrived. This is the conversation Sgt. Tom Loftus transcribed in his police report:
Loftus: Do you know me Frank?
Frank: Yeah, you’re Tom Loftus
Loftus: Who did it?
Frank: I won’t talk.
Loftus: You’re in bad shape.
Frank: For God’s sake get me to the hospital.
Loftus: Who did it?
Frank: I refuse to talk.
Loftus: A wagon’s on the way, Frank.
The only thing he admitted in the hospital before he died was that the killers wore police uniforms. Al Capone's henchman Machine-Gun Jack McGurn was arrested but his girlfriend (Louise Rolfe) claimed he never left her side. He married her so she couldn’t testify against him. No one was ever prosecuted.
To say that Chicago was a rough town in 1929 is to understate the level of violence, crime, and vice. The Cubs team that played at Wrigley Field that summer, however, fit the mood of the town perfectly.
Some of the Cubs were pretty comfortable running in these circles, particularly centerfielder Hack Wilson (photo) and pitcher Pat Malone. Both were heavy drinkers, and in the Prohibition era, the only places to drink were illegal speakeasies run by the very same gangsters who perpetrated the massacre. Machine Gun Jack McGurn, for instance, ran the Green Mill jazz club on the north side, and Capone's Cicero speakeasies were favorite destinations of both Wilson and Malone. (Drinking eventually ended both of their careers and lives--they each died in their 40s.)
The Cubs were the toast of that unbelievably rough and tumble Chicago during the summer of 1929, as they made it all the way to the World Series. They lost to the Philadelphia A's in 5 games, and it was an error by Hack Wilson that cost them Game 4 in Philadelphia, just as it looked the Cubs were going to tie the series at 2 games apiece. (Read more about the 1929 series here)
The Cubs made it to the World Series two more times during the life of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre gunman (in 1932 and 1935), but Machine Gun Jack McGurn (shown here with Louise) wouldn’t be around to see the World Series of 1938. McGurn, by then abandoned by his fellow gangsters, was assassinated exactly seven years after his most notorious act--on February 14, 1936, at the Avenue Recreation Bowling Alley (805 N. Milwaukee Avenue). McGurn, wearing rented shoes, was shot and killed by two men with machine-guns. They left a note near his body that read:
"You've lost your job, You've lost your dough, Your jewels and handsome houses, But things could be worse, you know, You haven't lost your trousers."
It is not known for certain who McGurn's killers were, but it's likely it was either George "Bugs" Moran, the very man Jack had tried to kill years before, or it was ordered by Frank Nitti (Capone's successor) because McGurn had become a source of constant bad press and embarrassment to the mob.
Bugs Moran’s gang was eventually absorbed by the Chicago Outfit toward the end of Prohibition (after a national meet arranged and moderated by Johnny Torio—then in New York). After that, Moran turned to bank robbery, and ended up being sent to Leavenworth. He received his Last Rites in prison and died on February 25, 1957, twenty eight years and nine days after the day he was so lucky to be late for work.
