The Worst Murders In History: St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
FPG/Getty ImagesOne of the grisliest photos of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which shows five of the victims.
In the late 1920s, Chicago’s gang war came to a crescendo with the deaths of seven men. It was a bloody scene that would live on in infamy as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
This grisly mob hit was organized by Al “Scarface” Capone as a way to get rid of his rival George “Bugs” Moran once and for all and cement himself as the top dog of the Chicago mob scene.
On the morning of Feb. 14, 1929, four of Capone’s men arrived at Moran’s warehouse where he illegally distributed liquor. It’s believed that Capone lured Moran to the warehouse by pretending that one of his bootlegging ventures in Canada needed assistance.
Five of Moran’s men answered Capone’s call, accompanied by two car mechanics. They filed into the warehouse, never imagining that Capone’s men were lying in wait.
As Albert Weinshank, the last of Moran’s men to arrive, exited his Cadillac sedan on the street and made his way into the warehouse, he was accosted by two police officers, who forced him inside. Moran’s men, believing they were being arrested, lined up against the wall, their backs to the police, all remaining silent so as to not out their boss.
The men who’d stopped them, though, weren’t police officers at all. They were two of Capone’s men in disguise.
Once Moran’s men were lined up against the wall, two more of Capone’s thugs, dressed in plain clothes, stepped inside with submachine guns in their arms. They riddled the men with bullets. Six of them died on the spot; but one lingered on painfully for hours until he slowly bled out on a hospital bed.
The plan’s original target, Bugs Moran, was never hit. The men had mistaken Weinshank for Moran; a mistake that saved Bugs Moran’s life.
Capone was the obvious suspect, but he ended up evading justice. No one was ever brought to trial for the murders. Capone never took credit for the violence and bloodshed during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
