Casts from the Past

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929 St. Valentine’s Day, Al Capone sent a bloody .45 caliber Valentine when five members of George ‘Bugs’ Moran’s gang were lined up against a brick wall of the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side by Capone’s men and slaughtered with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns. Al Capone ordered the massacre to wipe out “Bugs” Moran and his North Side Gang, which was muscling in on Capone’s bootlegging operations. You can read the story at the official Wikipedia page.

Here is some Michigan tie-in trivia: The two Thompson submachine guns used in the massacre, seized by police when Fred Burke (a Moran North Side gang member) shot and killed Charles Skelly, a policeman in St. Joseph, Michigan, are currently being held in the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan.

Also, I found this cool video made by jwuestling on YouTube illustrating what happened.

Technorati Tags: Al Capone, alcohol, bootlegger, capone, Chicago, Eliot Ness, FBI, mob, mobster, moran, thompson, tommy gun, valentine's

Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 7:43 am by Scott under This Day in History and tagged: Al Capone, alcohol, bootlegger, capone, Chicago, Eliot Ness, FBI, mob, mobster, moran, thompson, tommy gun, valentine's. Subscribe to the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.