On February 14, 1929, Capone ordered
the murder of George Bugs Moran the leader of a rival bootlegging operation.
The hit was orchestrated by one of Capone’s top associates, Jack Machine Gun McGurn. McGurn put together an assassination squad comprised of several out-of-towners. He had a
bootlegger, Fred Burke, lure the Moran gang to a garage to buy some very good whiskey at an
extremely attractive price. The other members of the squad, two were dressed in stolen police
uniforms and two wearing trench coats, entered the garage as though it were a raid. The
bootleggers, assuming it
was a raid; dropped their weapons, lined up against the wall, and awaited further
instructions. The crew opened fire on the seven men killing all of them.
To further perpetuate this charade, the two "policemen" in trench coats put up their
hands and marched out of the garage in front of the two uniformed policemen. .Anyone
who watched this show believed that two bootleggers in trench coats had been arrested by two policemen.
The four assassins left in the stolen police car.
Unfortunately for Capone, Bugs Moran was not one of the men murdered. Moran, running late to
the meeting at the garage, spotted the approaching police car and avoided the scene; not
wanting to get caught in what he assumed was a raid.
Although he was never charged, Capone was credited with what would be deemed one of the most
famous mass murders in American history, the... St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
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On lookers watch as authorities remove the bodies
of the seven men from the garage |
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Victims of the St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre. Pictured left to right; Bugs Moran (the head of the gang and intended victim), Frank
Gusenberg, Dr. Schwimmer, James Clark, Albert Weinshank, John May, Adam Heyer, Pete Gusenberg. |
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