Valentine's Day Massacre
February 14, 1929
On February 14th, 1929 one of the most notorious mob hits in history orchestrated by crime lord Al Capone occurred.
Al Capone, along with his associate Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn had a meeting earlier in the year to discuss what to do about Bugs Moran, a rival gangster in Chicago. Both had survived direct or sponsored attempts by Moran against their lives and they had had enough.
After locating where a contingent of the Moran gang held up, a plan was hatched to utilize a stolen police car and uniforms to infiltrate the location. On the morning of February 14th, Valentine’s Day, the plan went into effect.
There are conflicting a report as to whether Bugs Moran was near the scene or not but one thing is certain -- around 10:30am, 4 men, two of whom were wearing stolen police uniforms, entered the SMC Cartage Company located at 2122 North Clark Street and carried out the plan hatched by Capone and McGurn with lethal expediency. Six of the 7 men inside died at the scene, while Frank Gusenberg managed to stay alive for several hours but refused to assist police and died later that day.
While the events on that Valentine morning did in fact weaken the Moran gang and pushed Capone further into the books of gangster lore, it did not have the ultimate conclusion which was the assassination of Bugs himself. As I hinted at earlier, there are conflicting reports as to whether Bugs was at the scene that day. Some say he was simply running late and never arrived, while others say he showed up but saw the police car out front so stayed away. The hit occurred when it did because a lookout thought he saw Bugs but it appears to simply be a case of mistaken identity as one of the men inside had a similar build and features as Maron.
Watch a quick video blog posting someone did regarding these events below.