brothers killed in return. One can scarcely imagine why anyone would now want the virtual death sentence that was the Unione presidency, but Capone somehow found more candidates. And so Lombardo’s successor turned out to be one Pasqualino Lolordo, who was killed on January 8, 1929. Temporarily, Aiello achieved his goal and assumed the top post.
The Massacre
Those silly Irish bastards. They have more guts than sense. If only we’d hooked up, I could have been president.
-Al Capone, on the St. Valentine’s Day massacre
The war for the Unione - and for that matter Chicago itself - reached its climax in the only manner that was ever really viable: a massacre. It occurred on February 14, 1929, St. Valentine’s Day. Since Bugs Moran had been stealing Capone’s booze, it was decided that he could be lured into a trap by setting up a buy of “stolen” Capone hooch. After disguising a black rental car as a police patrol wagon by mounting a fake siren on its top, four shooters dressed as cops met seven members of the North Side gang in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street at 11 A.M. to make the transfer.
In the garage, the “cops” pointed their “Chicago typewriters” at the heart of the Moran gang. Some seventy rounds were fired with machine guns, and once the victims were motionless, some of them received pointblank shotgun blasts to their faces. Each victim received dozens of wounds, methodically spread throughout each body. The carnage was so brutal that some corpses were said to have been nearly severed at the waist. When the firing ended a full minute later, a river of blood coursed across the dark, oily basement floor. Six were dead at the scene. Incredibly, the seventh, Frank Gusenberg, lingered for a couple hours, before giving investigators the gangster’s response as his last words: “Nobody shot me. I ain’t no copper.” The shooters were never identified. 10 Although Moran was not there, his operation was mortally wounded. Both he and Aiello went into hiding, with the departing Moran telling police, “Only the Capone gang kills like that.”
Although it was quickly learned that Capone was in Miami (meeting with the Dade County solicitor) at the time of the shootings, there was little doubt that he had ordered the slaughter of his sworn enemies. There was simply no one else so vicious and with so much to gain by hitting the North Siders. Capone, of course, proclaimed his innocence, at one point mocking Moran’s own theory when he chided, “The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.”
With the war essentially won, Capone named Joe Guintas to head the Unione. This appointee survived in that post the extremely long span of three months, only to be killed by Capone’s gang. It seems that two of the suspected Valentine’s Day triggermen, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were conspiring with Guintas to take Unione back from Al. On May 7, 1929, Capone and his boys met the three conniving traitors at a prearranged dinner party at a roadhouse in Hammond, Indiana. After a nightlong repast, Capone turned on the three quislings. When their bodies were found the next morning in an abandoned car parked by an Indiana highway, they were unrecognizable, having been beaten unmercifully with baseball bats and then riddled with bullets. The coroner assigned to the case said that in his thirty years of experience, he had never seen human bodies so mutilated.
All told, adding in the preemptive strikes and various retaliations, eighteen gang leaders died in the War for the Unione. Of course, no one was ever so much as arrested. After the Indiana sanctions, Capone headed for Atlantic City to attend the first national meeting of all the major crime lords, aka the Commission.
The conference ran from May 13 to 16, 1929, and was held in Atlantic City’s Hotel President. Thirty gang leaders participated; the roll call read like a Mafia Social Register. Included among the lawless luminaries were Albert Anastasia,
The Massacre
Those silly Irish bastards. They have more guts than sense. If only we’d hooked up, I could have been president.
-Al Capone, on the St. Valentine’s Day massacre
The war for the Unione - and for that matter Chicago itself - reached its climax in the only manner that was ever really viable: a massacre. It occurred on February 14, 1929, St. Valentine’s Day. Since Bugs Moran had been stealing Capone’s booze, it was decided that he could be lured into a trap by setting up a buy of “stolen” Capone hooch. After disguising a black rental car as a police patrol wagon by mounting a fake siren on its top, four shooters dressed as cops met seven members of the North Side gang in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street at 11 A.M. to make the transfer.
In the garage, the “cops” pointed their “Chicago typewriters” at the heart of the Moran gang. Some seventy rounds were fired with machine guns, and once the victims were motionless, some of them received pointblank shotgun blasts to their faces. Each victim received dozens of wounds, methodically spread throughout each body. The carnage was so brutal that some corpses were said to have been nearly severed at the waist. When the firing ended a full minute later, a river of blood coursed across the dark, oily basement floor. Six were dead at the scene. Incredibly, the seventh, Frank Gusenberg, lingered for a couple hours, before giving investigators the gangster’s response as his last words: “Nobody shot me. I ain’t no copper.” The shooters were never identified. 10 Although Moran was not there, his operation was mortally wounded. Both he and Aiello went into hiding, with the departing Moran telling police, “Only the Capone gang kills like that.”
Although it was quickly learned that Capone was in Miami (meeting with the Dade County solicitor) at the time of the shootings, there was little doubt that he had ordered the slaughter of his sworn enemies. There was simply no one else so vicious and with so much to gain by hitting the North Siders. Capone, of course, proclaimed his innocence, at one point mocking Moran’s own theory when he chided, “The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.”
With the war essentially won, Capone named Joe Guintas to head the Unione. This appointee survived in that post the extremely long span of three months, only to be killed by Capone’s gang. It seems that two of the suspected Valentine’s Day triggermen, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were conspiring with Guintas to take Unione back from Al. On May 7, 1929, Capone and his boys met the three conniving traitors at a prearranged dinner party at a roadhouse in Hammond, Indiana. After a nightlong repast, Capone turned on the three quislings. When their bodies were found the next morning in an abandoned car parked by an Indiana highway, they were unrecognizable, having been beaten unmercifully with baseball bats and then riddled with bullets. The coroner assigned to the case said that in his thirty years of experience, he had never seen human bodies so mutilated.
All told, adding in the preemptive strikes and various retaliations, eighteen gang leaders died in the War for the Unione. Of course, no one was ever so much as arrested. After the Indiana sanctions, Capone headed for Atlantic City to attend the first national meeting of all the major crime lords, aka the Commission.
The conference ran from May 13 to 16, 1929, and was held in Atlantic City’s Hotel President. Thirty gang leaders participated; the roll call read like a Mafia Social Register. Included among the lawless luminaries were Albert Anastasia,
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