Transcript
Lindsey Graham (0:00)
There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily ad free. Listen with Wondry plus in the Wondery app as a member of Noiser plus at noiser.com or in Apple Podcasts. Or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at IntoHistory.com It's February 14, 1929, on a bitterly cold winter's morning in Chicago. A group of six men wearing pinstripe suits and fedoras have gathered inside a garage on the north side of town. A seventh man, a mechanic, lies on his back beneath the chassis of a truck. These men are all members or associates of a criminal organization called the Northside Gang. They used this garage as a safe house to receive shipments of bootlegged whiskey smuggled down from Canada. One of these men is a young mobster named Frank Gusenberg. Frank checks his watch. Today's shipment is almost 20 minutes late. Impatient, Frank taps the concrete floor with the polished toe of his wingtip. Prohibition went into effect nine years ago. The constitutional ban on alcohol made it illegal to sell, manufacture, or transport booze, but it said nothing about drinking it. And after Prohibition went into effect, Frank, Americans still craved their alcohol. They just needed to find a way to get their hands on the stuff. The sudden demand for illegal alcohol led to the proliferation of organized crime here in Chicago and across the country. With multiple groups vying for control of Chicago's lucrative bootlegging operations, fierce competition quickly emerged. The biggest rivalry is between the north side gang and the Chicago Outfit, an organized crime syndicate run by a notorious gangster named Al Capone. Frank Gusenberg is no fan of Capone, and neither are his fellow gang members. If given the chance, Frank would gladly put a bullet between Capone's eyes. But today, Frank isn't worried about Capone. Instead, he's focused on the task at hand, picking up this shipment of whiskey. Then finally, at 10:50am the garage doors open and four men walk inside, dusting snow from the shoulders of their jackets. It takes Frank a moment to realize that two of the men wear police uniforms. One of them calls out, this is a shake up. And before the gangsters can make a run for it, the cops open their jackets to reveal submachine guns and point them directly at Frank and his associates. The cops tell Frank and the other men to stand facing against the wall. They do as they're told, but Frank knows something's not right with these officers. Cops carry sidearms, not machine guns. Every bone in Frank's body is telling him to run, but instead he decides to try and reason with these men, whoever they are. But just as Frank clears his throat to speak, bullets tear through fabric and flesh and ricochet off the brick walls. All seven men fall to the floor in a haze of dust and gun smoke. By the time the air has cleared, the assailants have vanished and Frank's six companions, including his older brother Peter, are dead. The St Valentine's Day massacre, as this bloody event will come to be known, will have far reaching and unexpected consequences, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to the end of the Prohibition era. And it will be the beginning of the end for organized crime kingpin Al Capone, the man who many believed orchestrated this brutal killing that took place on February 14, 1929.