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The Valentine's Day Massacre: When Capone Went Too Far
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Seven men lined up against a garage wall in Chicago, shot in cold blood — and Prohibition's organised crime problem could no longer be ignored. This is the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and what it revealed about Al Capone's grip on a city where the law had already surrendered.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Seven men walked into a garage on North Clark Street on the morning of February fourteenth, nineteen twenty-nine. None of them walked out.
To understand February fourteenth, you need to understand what Chicago had become by nineteen twenty-nine. The Volstead Act had been in force for nine years.
Capone's main rival in Chicago was the North Side Gang. They'd been in conflict for years.
The setup was elegant in its simplicity. Someone lured a group of Moran's men to a garage at two one two two North Clark Street on the morning of Valentine's Day.
Chicago's newspapers had covered gang violence for years. Editors and readers had developed a kind of tolerance for it.
Capone was in Florida when it happened. He made sure of that.
The massacre shifted public opinion in ways that are hard to quantify precisely but easy to trace in the record. Before Valentine's Day nineteen twenty-nine, there was still a meaningful constituency for Prohibition.
Here's the broader frame that the massacre forces into view. The Volstead Act was designed to reduce crime.
Eliot Ness and his Untouchables were working in Chicago during this period, targeting Capone's bootlegging operations. The team was notable specifically because they couldn't be bribed.
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre happened in nineteen twenty-nine.
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is remembered as a sensational crime.
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