The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

February 14th, 1929 in Chicago. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

[Shamelessly stolen from myself, from last year.]

There had been an ongoing gang war between the Irish/German Northside gang run by George "Bugs" Moran, and the Southside gang run by Al "Scarface" Capone. The final straw seems to have been Moran putting a $50,000 price on Capone's head.

Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

So many of Moran's top men died in the Massacre that he lost the ability to control his gang's territory. And Capone would be jailed in 1931. It was the last confrontation between the two Chicago mobsters.

The garage at 2122 N. Clark Street in Chicago was torn down in the 1960s. Today the spot is a parking lot. Some of the bricks from the building were saved before the demolition. The photo above, from WikiMedia Commons, is of one such brick, which is at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. Click the image for a larger view, and more information.