Chicago's Record

It was 10:20 o'clock on St. Valentine's morning. Chicago brimmed with sentiment and sunshine. Peaceful was even the George ("Bugs") Moran booze-peddling depot on North Clark Street, masked as a garage of the S. M. C. Cartage Co., where lolled six underworldlings, waiting for their breakfast coffee to cook. A seventh, in overalls, tinkered with a beer vat on a truck. Two of the gang drifted aimlessly into the front office where ink wells stood dusty dry.

Ten minutes later they glanced at each other, startled. Was that a police gong? Into the curb eased a car, blue and fast, like the Detective Bureau's. Through the office door strode four men. Two, in police uniforms, swung submachine guns. Two, in plain clothes, carried stubby shotguns.

The gangsters in the office raised their hands. Their visitors marched them back into the garage, prodding their spines with gun muzzles. Tin coffee cups clattered to the stone floor. Snarled orders lined the six gangsters up along the north wall, their eyes close to the white-washed brick. The visitors booted the overalled mechanic into the line and "frisked" away hidden guns.

One of the men at the wall said: "What is this, a ..."

"Give it to 'em!" was the answer. The garage became a thunder-box of explosions.

From the four guns streamed a hundred bullets. Only eight of them ever reached the brick wall behind the seven targets. One man, all blood, tried to crawl away. A volley at six inches ripped away his head above the ears. The others toppled over into the careless postures of death.

A Mrs. Alphonsine Morin, across the street, saw two men, hands over head, walk out of the garage, followed by two uniformed policemen with leveled guns. Obviously a raid and an arrest. She watched captors and captives enter the blue car, which flashed down the street, passed a trolley on the wrong side, melted away in traffic.

Real police came jostling through the gabbling crowd that quickly collected. They counted the neat row of bodies by the wall--six dead, one dying. It was a record, even for Chicago.

"Bugs" Moran, the proprietor of the garage, was not among the dead. He was spending St. Valentine's Day in Detroit. Moran inherited the North Side mob from "Schemer" Drucci, who inherited it from "Hymie" Weiss, who inherited it from the late great Dion O'Bannion. The perforated bodies were those of Moran's brother-in-law and co-leader, James Clark; No. 1 Gunman Peter Gusenberg, Con-Man John Snyder, Gorilla Al Weinshank, John May, the man in overalls, and Reinhart Schwimmer. Frank Gusenberg, Pete's "Kid" brother, carrying 20 bullets, lived for three hours after the shooting but gangland's curious code of honor sealed his lips against police proddings. Besides him, the only living thing in the garage when the slaughterers left was the Gusenbergs' police dog, a fierce animal raging on its chain.

There were many possible reasons for the massacre but only one motive--jungle justice. Chief Gangster Alphonse ("Scarface Al") Capone's West Side mob was under suspicion. Tony Lombardo, Capone's good friend, wilted last summer under a spray of bullets at Madison and Dearborn Streets (TIME, Sept. 17). And a shipment of Canadian whiskey from Detroit's "Purple Gang" to Capone was hijacked last fortnight, presumably by Moran men.

Gangster Capone was reported to be lolling innocently in Miami Beach, Fla., on St. Valentine's Day.

Chicago's police commissioner, William F. Russell, who lately staged a spectacular round-up of the Chicago underworld--and then released his catch--professed great fury. "It's a war to the finish!" he cried. "I've never known a challenge like this. . . . We're going to make this the knell of gangdom in Chicago." Between Chicago's police and the Federal agents assigned to make Chicago dry, exists a state of feeling not unlike the inter-gang hatreds of the underworld. Assistant U. S. Prohibition Administrator Fred D. Silloway was quick to make capital of the Clark Street scene, with the flat accusation that real policemen had done the "job" as a disciplinary measure to gangsters who had failed to pay up promised "hush money."