AL CAPONE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 74, 28 March 1931, Page 19

AL CAPONE

"THE BOOTLEG BATTLE OF

THE MARNE"

A SEVENFOLD MURDER

(By "Aju.x.")

!A.l Capone: Tho Biography of a Self made Man. i!y Ifrcil. D. Pasley Jscw Yorl;: lve.s Washburn.

[l'inal .Notice.]

The death of Dion O'Banion, thu refined florist and cold-blooded murderer, nmong his flowers, and the daring and admirably organised but futile reprisal of the O'Banion gang,on Capone in his stronghold at Cicero .were described in juy last two articles. Tho course and the objectives of the great campaign which, oddly enough, lasted exactly as Hong as tho World War, are summarised by Mr. Paslcy as follows: — O'iianion's death marked the beginning of the real Bootleg Battle of the Manic. Madison street, extending westward from Lake Michigan and the Loop, and bisecting the geographical centre of the city, was No Man's Land. Across it,, the .struggle deadlocked back and forth for 4 years" and 3 months —from November of W2i until 14th February, 1929, when the killing of seven O'Banions in a North ("lark street garage (the Moran gang mass-acre) led to a truce. In the fullest sense. Mi1. Pasley explains, it was a war for commercial supremacy. Capone's two chief objectives were the "crushing of the O'Banions on the North Side —and their allies on other sectors—and control of the Unione Sicilione (tho alky cooking-guild) Golden Fleece of Prohibition Chicago. It comprises some 15,(100 Sicilians, disciplined like an army;' iinp.^fcable of purpose; swift and silent o£ deed; the Mafia of Italy transplanted to the United States. Capone's ambition here caused endless bloodshed. Every man aspiring to its presidency died by the gun. The record is:— Angelo Genna, one of the six brothers, who sought to succeed Mike Merlo; killed ■ 20th May, 1025. Samuel Samoots Amatuna, the next aspirant: killed 13th October, 1020. Antonio Lombardo, killed 7th September,, iscs. Pasquale Lolordo, wlio succeeded Lomfcardo; killed Bth January, 1929. Joseph Guinta, killed Bth May, 1929. . * a * This Prussian Corps in the great Bootleg Army lost five generals in four years', but through it all Field-Marshal Capone's colours were carried steadily forward to victory. Ouly four meu, says Mr. Pasley, were ever recognised as Big Shots in Chicago gangland—Capone, Torrio, O'Bauion, and Weiss. Two had been murdered before "The Battle of the Marne" began; Weiss was murdered during its progress; and at jts close Capone Was left in undisputed command with no foeman worthy of his steel. Though Mr. Pasley speaks of the "Bootleg Battle of the Marne" as continuous, thero was one remarkable interlude, of which he gives a vary interesting account. The .ide.'i, said .Maxie Eisen, one of the leaders of the underworld to another, is to call the war off. You're a bunch of saps, killing each other this way, and giving the cops a laugh. There's plenty ot jack for anybody, as long as Prohibition lasts. I'll talk to the boys. ■ The result was that what Mr. Pasley describes as "The Gangsters' Peace Conference" was hold on the 20th October, 1926, at tho Hotel Sherman, "in the shadow of the City Hall, across the street from the office of the Chief of Police." A few months later Capone's gunmen were to give even Chicago a turn by surrounding the Detective Bureau in the endeavour to murder Joseph Aiello, but the police made do attempt to surround this criminal "Peace Conference," and under cover of the truce Capone was actually able to attend without his bodyguard. ■ ♦ ♦ * The personnel and proceedings of this gangsters' conference are so vividly described by Mr. Pasley as to suggest that ho may have had the help of his colleague on the "Chicago Tribune," Jake Lingle, who after his murder by gangstors last year was •proved to have been, their friend and. accomplice. Maxie Eisen, who was m the chair, roused the enthusiasm of the meeting when he said in his opening speech: Lot's give each other a-break. The terms of the.Peace Pact which was t virtually dictated by Capone included, a general amnesty, no more murders or. beatings—thero had been 135 murders already—and a partitioning of the city among the various gang-leaders. The immediate effects were excellent. President Coolidge, as Mr. Pasley points out, had placed the full weight of his administration behind the movement to wd Chicago of its gangs. The slaughter had continued. AI spoke and it stopped. For more than two months not a gun barked. Up to 21st October there had been 62 murders. Irom then until 30th December, with the exception pf a nondescript not identified ■with, any faction slain 19th December, -there wasn't a single gangster killing. Chicago had the unique experience oi going 70 days without a bootleg inquest lor tHe Coroner. ♦ * * But the reaction from, the truce seemed to make the fighting fiercer ■when'it was renewed. The year 1927, Ye are told, was "the banner year for «s)ots against Capone'a life," but of bourse he had kept his powder dry and nis men in training. When the police were induced by a series of four mysterious murders to call at his headquarters in Cicero they rfouna his leading gunman skipping. If the reader had accompanied the police to the Metropole, says Mr. Pasley, he would have discovered two rooms equipped with punching bags, horizontal bars, trapezes, rowing machines, and other gymnasium paraphernalia. Capone's gunmen were required to keep conditioned. They followed a schedule ot training as methodical as that of college football athletes. Experience had taught him that their professional value, -based on tha.t quality commonly described as nerve, was in "direct ratio to their physical fitness. It might be only tho imperceptible tremor of a trigger-finger, or theslMitesl wavering of >an eye, or a split 'second of -hesitancy at the crucial moment in any of a score of unforeseenemergencies. Yet the cost of the lapse would have to be reckoned m lives and money. One of the red-letter days in the history of Chicago's crime, and in _ the career of Capone was St. Valentine 8 Day, 1929. Ho was then taking a rest on his Palm Island estate in Florida but he was not so idle or so distant as to be unable to keep his finger j on the pulse of his great machine m Chicago and to direct its operations. On the" night of tho 13th February George Bugs Moran, who after the machine-gunning of Weiss in October, 1026, had succeeded to the leadership of the O'Banions, and had recently madf. himsolf very obnoxious by ' horninff in" among Capone's rackets and] "hijacking" [intercepting] his illicit cargoes, received a telephone call at his

headquarters in Heyer/s garage, North Clark street. A truck-load of liquor "right off the river," on its way from Detroit to Chicago, had been "hijacked" and could be had at a reasonable price. The voice was evidently familiar to,Moran from previous dealings of the same kind, and he arranged to purchase the liquor at 57 dollars tho case aud to take delivery at the garage at 10.30 next morning. Seven of the O'Bauion "boys," in- 1 ('.hiding apparently a l;irgo Teutonic majority in Wciushnnk, Heyer, Schwiminer, and two Gunsbergs, had assembled m tho rendezvous, fully armed," fit tho appointed hour. But as Moran himself and two others approached tho garage from tho south a car with curtains drawn stopped two doors away on. tho north side, and live men, two or three of whom appeared to bo police, got out, walked to the door, and entered. Regarding them as "coppers," Moran decided to keep clear till the "heat" was off. The seven O'Banions inside were evidently of the same opinion, for they presently emerged with the supposed police. Two of the crew, said the official report, were in, policei-uniforms, _ and the seven victims, thinking it was only another routine raid—with perhaps an arrest and a quick release on bonds—readily yielded to disarming and obeying the command to stand iv a.row, 50 feet from the Clark street, door, facing the north wall. • * • The denouement must be told in Mr.. Pasley's vivid words:; — The whole success of the plot, then, devolved on the men in uniforms, who performed faultlessly. _ While they did, the real executioners,, in civilian clothes, remained in the passageway. One carried a Thompson sub-machine-gun, with a. drum of one hundred .45-calibre cartridges; the other a twelve-gauge, double-barrelled, sawed-off shotgun. Coming from the car to the garage, these had been concealed under their overcoats. ■As soon as the Morans had been disarmed and stood up against the wall, the machine-gunner stepped forth. East to west, his victims were Schwimmer, May, Clark, Heyer, Weinshank, Pete and Frank Gusenberg. Presumably the pun was adjusted for rapid fire. If so, the job was completed in ten seconds. At the inquest on the seven bodies — there would doubtless have been ten if Moran and his two mates had not been a few- minutes late —the coolness and the skill of the executioner -n-ei-e testified by the evidence that the fire had been accurately sprayed "between the ears and the thighs; all were wounded in the head and vital organs." But spectators had to bo deceived no less than the victims, or the murderers might :iiot have got away. What one witness saw after the shooting was two men coming out of the garage, holding their hands well up and followed by three others in police uniforms. They had guns' on the first two men. They were walking slow, easy-like. I thought an arrest had been made. I watched them get into the squad car. This final detail, which in spite of the shooting enabled the murderers to escape quietly and without suspicion, was surely a stroke of genius. The artistic perfection of the whole performance makes me wonder whether my admiration was not- too liberal in the superlatives it applied to the O'Banions' raid on Capono last week. * # * Mr. Pasley's last: word on the subject is as follows: — . Some day the Chicago Historical Society may be minded to erect a tablet at 2122, North Clark street, and posterity "will read:— "Here Ended the Bootleg Battle o£ the Marne." ' And how? George Bugs, last 'o£ the O'Banions, was a leader without a gang. General-Al the Scarface had won the war to make the world safe for the public demand—in and around Chicago.