The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 12 years later (2-14-41)

Reading Eagle (February 14, 1941)

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY RECALLS GANG-DOM MASSACRE IN CHICAGO

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Chicago, Feb. 14 (AP) –
About 10 o’clock on the morning of February 14, 1929, when mailmen were distributing their first batch of valentines, five gangsters delivered a message of death to a garage at 2122 North Clark Street.

Criminal history identifies it as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Seven men were shot to death. It was the most savage outburst of gangsterism in Chicago.

From that time on the number of gangland executions diminished here. Last year there were only nine people slain in gang wars, just two more than were found in one heap 12 years ago.

Col. Henry Barrett Chamberlin, operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission, said that the complexion of the gang feuds changed with repeal. Until that time the shooting was over booze and the privilege of peddling it. In recent years, most of the killings have been traced to the wars between rival gambling syndicates.

Some of the faces haven’t changed, however. Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s “enforcer” and Danny Stanton have been named by State’s Attorney Thomas J. Courtney as the heads of gambling syndicates.

Today is the 12th anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, still listed in police files as “murder by persons unknown.”

No one was ever brought to trial for the slayings, but gangland retribution took care of 22 men whose names were mentioned in the investigation. All met violent death in the years that followed.

Five of those who died in the massacre were members of the Bugs Moran gang, purveyors of beer to Chicago’s North Side. Police laid the crime at the door of the Capone mob, but they couldn’t prove it.

All they knew was that five men, one disguised as a policeman, walked into the garage, lined the loungers against a wall and started shooting with two submarine guns.

There was no sign of resistance. Apparently the victims thought it was a routine police raid when they stood with their faces to the wall, hands raised.

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