“They call Al Capone a bootlegger. Yes, it’s bootlegging while it’s on the trucks, but when your host at the club, in the locker room, or on the Gold Coast hands it to you on a silver tray, it’s hospitality.”The above quote shows up in several Al Capone bios, and was paraphrased in the film…
Tag: gangsters
Al Capone Meets the Cops
Ninety years ago this month, in late August of 1922, Al Capone was involved in the first dust-up big enough to get his name into the Chicago paper. They referred to him as Alfred Caponi (they’d keep calling him “Caponi” for years) in the brief item describing an altercation in which he comes off as…
The Death of Machine Gun Jack McGurn (and an era)
The imprisonment of Al Capone and the end of prohibition pretty much spelled the end for the gangster era in Chicago (at least for the time being), but there were still scores to be settled. Capone’s favorite hit mad, Machine Gun McGurn, fell onto hard times and began to receive anonymous valentines in the mail,…
The Death of Hymie Weiss: Al Capone’s revenge
With Torrio out of the way, the trio of Weiss, Drucci and Moran made Capone their target and launched one attack after another on him. Capone was repeatedly lucky to escape with his life. Naturally, he fought back. Weiss, somewhat remarkably, lived for nearly two years after the gang war started before being shot right…
The Death of Dean O’Banion
While gangs moved right into the the liquor business as soon as prohibition went into effect, things were fairly quiet for the first few years – the gang’s territories were well carved. But in 1924, things began to go sour. Dean O’Banion, head of the North Side gang, called Johnny Torrio of the south side…
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
At the beginning of our tours, I often ask if there are any places people especially want to see. The most common request is probably the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the spot where 7 gangsters working for Bugs Moran and the North Side gang were lined up and shot, presumably by people…
Meanwhile, down in the tunnels
So, in the mid 1920s , the police were hot on the trail of teh Genna brothers (as you know, if you’ve been reading this)> Shortly after the death of Tony, the third to be killed in six weeks, the remaining Gennas wisely went into hiding. Around this time, a couple of workers in the…
The Terrible Gennas Part 3
Very shortly after the lavish funeral of Angelo Genna, the war was back on. It wasn’t long at all before Mike “The Devil” Genna was killed in a shoot-out with the police. Shortly thereafter, Tony Genna got a call to come to a meeting at a grocery store at Grand and Aberdeen (where the Mark’s…