Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

By: Emily Eade

February 14th, 1929, was a normal Chicago Valentine's day. Love was all around, it was seen through the many boxes of chocolates and bouquets of flowers given between significant others. This precious day of love quickly turned into a day of pain and hatred. This was the day of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. 

In the 1920s, prohibition was a sad face of reality, alcohol was banned from the United States. This caused the beginning of speakeasies, many of these were owned by mobsters, who were the face of gang warfare throughout the country. The most notable mobster of this time period was Al Capone. While being one of the most infamous mobsters, comes with many enemies. One of Capones biggest rivals was Irish mobster George Moran, he was Capones biggest competition during Prohibition. Capone knew he had to eliminate all of his competition. 

It was Valentine's Day, 1929, and seven men were gunned down alongside a garage on North Clark Street. These seven men were known associates of Moran. The story has it that men dressed as police officers gunned them down with 70 rounds of ammunition. By the time, the Chicagos police department had reached the scene of the crime all but one were dead. The only living associate was Frank Gusenburg, who had died shortly upon arrival. It was said that he wouldn’t rat out who did this horrific crime. There were no more living witnesses, this had raised many questions and suspicions. 

George Moran would ultimately go on and put blame on Capone and his people. Capone stated that he was at his home in Florida at the time. But if you think about it he could have contacted his gang associates to do the deed. To this very day, the reasoning is unknown, we still don’t know who did this act. This is the birth of one of the most famous unsolved gang-related mass killings of all time.