Editing Saint Valentine's Day Massacre (section)

== The massacre ==
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|label      = <small>2122 North Clark Street</small>
|lat        = 41.9208
|long       = -87.6377
|caption    = Location of the shootings
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At 10:30 in the morning on Saint Valentine's Day, Thursday, February 14, 1929, seven men were murdered at the garage at 2122 North Clark Street,<ref name="cdtsdim">{{cite news |url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1929/02/15/page/1/article/slay-doctor-in-massacre |newspaper=Chicago Daily Tribune |title=Slay doctor in massacre |date=February 15, 1929 |page=1 |access-date=June 28, 2017 |archive-date=February 24, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160224012752/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1929/02/15/page/1/article/slay-doctor-in-massacre/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="tklocty">{{cite news |url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1929/02/16/page/1/article/track-killers-lid-on-city |work=Chicago Daily Tribune |title=Trace killers; lid on city |date=February 16, 1929 |page=1 |access-date=June 28, 2017 |archive-date=January 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200108054249/https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/ |url-status=live}}</ref> in the [[Lincoln Park, Chicago|Lincoln Park]]  neighborhood of Chicago's North Side. They were shot by four men using weapons that included two [[Thompson submachine guns]]. Two of the shooters were wearing police uniforms, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats, and hats. Witnesses saw the men in police uniforms leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage after the shooting.

The victims included five members of [[George "Bugs" Moran]]'s [[North Side Gang]]. Moran's second in command and brother-in-law [[Albert Kachellek]] (''alias'' James Clark) was killed along with Adam Heyer, the gang's bookkeeper and business manager; Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; and gang enforcers [[Frank Gusenberg]] and [[Peter Gusenberg]]. Two associates were also shot: Reinhardt H. Schwimmer, a former optician turned gambler and gang associate; and John May, an occasional mechanic for the Moran gang.

Chicago police officers arrived at the scene to find that victim Frank Gusenberg was still alive, despite having sustained 14 bullet wounds. He was taken to the hospital, where doctors stabilized him for a short time and police tried to question him. When the police asked him who did it, he reportedly replied, "I won't talk. For God's sake get me to a hospital." He died three hours later.<ref name="Boyle">{{cite news| title=Valentine's Day Massacre| publisher=Salem Press Encyclopedia| last=Boyle| first=William| year=2015| url=http://0-search.ebscohost.com.dunnlib.simpson.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=89316685&site=eds-live&scope=site}}{{Dead link|date=February 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
[[File:Bulletfragmentsvalentimesmassacte.jpg|thumb|226x226px|Bullet fragments from the massacre held in the [[Mob Museum]].]]
The massacre was an attempt to eliminate [[Bugs Moran]], head of the North Side Gang. [[Al Capone]], who was at his Florida home at the time, was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the massacre.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/chi-chicagodays-valentinesmassacre-story-story.html| title=The St. Valentine's Day Massacre|newspaper=Chicago Tribune| date=February 14, 2014| access-date=February 26, 2021| archive-date=November 26, 2020| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126220921/https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/chi-chicagodays-valentinesmassacre-story-story.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The impetus for the plan may have been the North Side Gang's hijacking of some expensive whiskey being illegally smuggled by Capone's gang from Canada across the [[Detroit River]].<ref>{{cite book |date=August 1, 1995 |title=Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties: Prohibition on the Michigan-Ontario Waterway |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FiZWrNjIPykC&q=al+capone+prohibition+smugglers+from+canada&pg=PA146#v=snippet&q=al%20capone%20prohibition%20smugglers%20from%20canada&f=false |publisher=Wayne State University Press |location=Detroit |page=146 |isbn=978-0-8143-2583-4 |access-date=October 15, 2020 |archive-date=June 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200607163021/https://books.google.ca/books?id=FiZWrNjIPykC&pg=PA146&dq=al+capone+prohibition+smugglers+from+canada&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiho3SjvDpAhWQct8KHbiXBTsQ6AEIUTAF |url-status=live}}</ref>

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors, [[Hymie Weiss]] and [[Vincent Drucci]], had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of their original leader, [[Dean O'Banion]].<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.bugsmoran.net/| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150903184250/http://www.bugsmoran.net/northsiders/drucci.html| url-status=usurped| title=Vincent Drucci| archive-date=September 3, 2015| website=Bugs Moran}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id111.htm| title=Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci| website=My Al Capone Museum| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140706215903/http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id111.htm| archive-date=July 6, 2014| date=June 2007| first=Mario| last=Gomes}}</ref>

Several factors contributed to the timing of the plan to kill Moran. Moran and Capone had been vying for control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging trade. Moran had also been muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, and he had taken over several saloons that were run by Capone, insisting that they were in his territory. Earlier in the year, North Sider Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter unsuccessfully attempted to murder [[Jack McGurn]]. The North Side Gang was complicit in the murders of [[Pasqualino Lolordo|Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo]] and [[Antonio Lombardo|Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo]]. Both had been presidents of the [[Unione Siciliana]], the local [[Italian-American Mafia|Mafia]], and close associates of Capone.

The plan was to lure Moran to the SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street on February 14, 1929, to kill him and perhaps two or three of his lieutenants. It is usually assumed that the North Siders were lured to the garage with the promise of a stolen, cut-rate shipment of whiskey, supplied by Detroit's [[The Purple Gang|Purple Gang]], which was associated with Capone. The Gusenberg brothers were supposed to drive two empty trucks to [[Detroit]] that day to pick up two loads of stolen Canadian whisky.

All of the victims were dressed in their best clothes, with the exception of John May, as was customary for the North Siders and other gangsters at the time.
[[File:Saint Valentine's Day Massacre wall at the Mob Museum.jpg|thumb|left|The victims were lined up against this wall and shot.]] Most of the Moran gang arrived at the warehouse by approximately 10:30&nbsp;a.m., but Moran was not there, having left his Parkway Hotel apartment late. He and fellow gang member Ted Newberry were approaching the rear of the warehouse from a side street when they saw a police car nearing the building. They immediately turned and retraced their steps, going to a nearby coffee shop. They encountered gang member Henry Gusenberg on the street and warned him, so he too turned back. North Side Gang member Willie Marks also spotted the police car on his way to the garage and ducked into a doorway and jotted down the license number before leaving the neighborhood.

Capone's lookouts likely mistook one of Moran's men, probably Albert Weinshank, who was the same height and build, for Moran himself. The physical similarity between the two men was enhanced by their dress that morning; both happened to be wearing the same color overcoats and hats.

Witnesses outside the garage saw a Cadillac sedan stop in front of the garage. Four men emerged and walked inside, two of them dressed in police uniform. The two fake police officers carried shotguns and entered the rear portion of the garage, where they found members of Moran's gang and associates Reinhart Schwimmer and John May, who was fixing one of the trucks. The fake policemen then ordered the men to line up against the wall, then signaled to the pair in civilian clothes who had accompanied them. Two of the killers opened fire with [[Thompson submachine gun|Thompson sub-machine guns]], one with a 20-round box magazine and the other a 50-round drum. They were thorough, spraying their victims left and right, even continuing to fire after all seven had hit the floor.  Two shotgun blasts afterward all but obliterated the faces of John May and James Clark, according to the coroner's report.

To give the appearance that everything was under control, the men in street clothes came out with their hands up, prodded by the two uniformed policemen. Inside the garage, the only survivors in the warehouse were May's dog "Highball" and Frank Gusenberg, despite 14 bullet wounds. He was still conscious, but he died three hours later, refusing to identify the killers.

=== Victims ===
* Peter Gusenberg, a front-line enforcer for the Moran organizations 
* Frank Gusenberg, the brother of Peter Gusenberg, also an enforcer
* Albert Kachellek (alias "James Clark"), Moran's second in command
* Adam Heyer, the bookkeeper and business manager of the Moran gang
* Reinhardt Schwimmer, an optometrist who had abandoned his practice to gamble on horse racing and associate with the gang
* Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; his resemblance to Moran is allegedly what set the massacre in motion before Moran arrived, including the clothes that he was wearing
* John May, an occasional car mechanic for the Moran gang<ref>{{cite book| title=Organized Crime in Miami| publisher=[[Southern Illinois University Press]]| last=Bash| first=Avi| year=2016| isbn=978-1-4396-5884-0| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d8OpDQAAQBAJ&q=seven+dead+john+may+schwimmer+valentine%27s+day+massacre&pg=PT34| access-date=November 20, 2020| archive-date=February 4, 2021| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204041353/https://books.google.com/books?id=d8OpDQAAQBAJ&q=seven+dead+john+may+schwimmer+valentine%27s+day+massacre&pg=PT34| url-status=live}}</ref>