WAR IN CHICAGO.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 61, 13 March 1929, Page 9

WAR IN CHICAGO.

GUNS IN GANG LAND. A WHOLESALE EXECUTION. UNARMED VICTIMS LINED UP AND SHOT. BODIES RIDDLED WITH BULLETS (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAX FRANCISCO, February 20. Although the World War officially ceased on Armistice Day, November 11, 1018, Chicago has been waging a war ever since prohibition was uahered in on Uncle Sam's territory and hundreds of lives have been lost amon" the rival factions in a veritable warfare winch has been in progress for the last few years.

Tins armed offensive flared up afresh ill a most sensational manner recently anion? rival gangsters who deal in the sale of liquor smuggled over the Canadian border. A desultory murder or two in Chicago nowadays attracts very slight attention, but matters reached a climax when Chicago gangsters, posing as policemen, invaded the North Side stronghold of the George "Bugs" Moran gang, lined up seven helpless, unarmed victims with their faces to a white brick wall and mowed them down with automatic pistols and machine guns. Tho wholesale execution—the like of which has never been equalled in the annals of the United States crime—was carried out at 10.30 o'clock in the morning, with all the precision of an army firing squad. It was an innovation in Chicago gang history, which brought the total gang victims to more that 135 in the last few years.

The wholesale slaughter, unlike any killings ever before attempted in the gang war of annihilation, created a furore in official circles. William F. Russell, Police Commissioner, went to the scene, as did Coroner Herman N. Bundesen and several assistant State's Public Prosecutors. Russell, who a few weeks previously rounded up 3000 persons in a drivi. against crime, declared vehemently that that day's killings meant a war to the death between gangs and police with no quarter asked or given. The wholesale raids would be nothing to what would follow, he said. Deadly Warfare. Five men drove up to Moran's headquarters in a garage at North Clark Street after putting through a telephone call inquiring whether certain members of the gang were there. They rushed into the garage with drawn pistols and machine guns, informing the seven men they were police officers. Some of them flashed policemen's stars and others wore parts of police uniforms. Withovit ado they herded the to a courtyard in the rear.

Overhead gleamed a powerful electric light to make the work of the firing squad easier. Whether the victims realised they had been trapped by a clever ruee will never be known. There was a word from the leader, and the clatter of machine guns and pistols and the mass-acre wae completed. A few minutes later the firing squad, etill carrying the pistols and machine guns, sauntered out, climbed into an automobile, stowed the weapons in the rear and drove away. Apparently few persons heard the firing. A woman told a policeman that someone had been hurt in the garage and he entered to verify thU prosaic report. Six victims he found lying where they fell, feet to the wall, their faces turned to the incandescent light overhead. A seventh victim, mortally wounded, was found in another room. He lived for two houre, but stoically maintained the gangland code of silence. A Ghastly Spectacle. The garage, conducted as a blind for the North Side liquor running BJ ndi ; cate, resembled a shambles.. Blood spattered the walls. Scores of bullet holes pockmarked the bricks. The victims, killed by their merciless executioners without having a chance to escape, sprawled grotesquely on the floor, the hate of some of them fitill at the same cocky angle affected by gangsters and hoodlums. Police quickly determined the main facts in the wholesale killing. Some of the victims were identified ately. Two were Peter Gusenberg, a notorious gunman and gangster and hie brother, Frank, both in the Dearborn Street Station mail robberv a few years ago. lietjlhmit Al Weinshank, underworld rouetabout, and James Clark, law, were two others. A U*™ 3 ™ May, garage employee f he ° Ul ,?' aa nowhere to be found, and it wasknown miles the day's slaughter, O'Ban.on we executed in his fiori-t -hop. few year, ago, and soon thereafter Weiss fell on the same street wheni a machme gun nest belched death to his and Wβ followers from an apartment buridin across the street from Holy Name C M h^ r n al gathcred up the remnants of the gang, headed by these two leaders, and constituted himself the new leader The present massacre left ix m virtually bereft of man power-should he be still alive. . ~ troraee The only living thing m the gar age when the police arrived, as.de from the mortally wounded man, was * *j^ of the victims. The Death House. The death house itself was a. onestorev garage set between higher .structures. In the front was »J office. About 150 feet to the rear the building turns at an angle until only .lout forty feet Jo o°* side is a runway for * rue *r or ;, the from an alley. To the other is the court—the execution chambeimassacre revealed tnat ea\.u shot from six to ten times. A Jj *, expensive jewellery and *»25V ,- for one piatol with several f*P<J ™ b hers, not a weapon was f°«» J 1 ™ &i place. This pistol, police believed. *«- discarded by one of the killera.

Gangster Dion O'Banion, father of the North Side bootleg combination, little knew and perhaps cared less how much blood would be spilled and how many czars" would "go out" in their attempts to follow in his footsteps when he passed along the privileges, hazards and enmities he created in Chicago s den of iniquity. There hav«s been thirty-eight sensational gang killings.since the assassination of O'Banion in his North State Street florist shop w.November, 1924. The names of ÜBanions successors who became heirs to his murders, vendettas, briberies and beer runnings, all spelled power in their time, and when the machine-gun smoke waited away a new claimant was always