Generally, Valentine’s Day is all about love, hearts, friends, and cheesy stuff, right? Well, not for the Mafia. For them, this was just the perfect day to end their enemies and make history. Known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, February 14, 1929, marked the climax of a bloody gang war in Chicago, and although it’s a very well-known episode in American history, the case was never solved. So, what exactly happened on that bloody Valentine’s Day? Who led the massacre? And more importantly, why was one of the most important criminal cases never solved?
It was a normal Valentine’s Day morning, when at 10:30 am, dozens of shots were heard from within a warehouse on the north side of Chicago. When the police arrived, all they found were the massacred bodies of seven gangsters lying next to each other, all dead except one, a man who identified himself as Frank Gusenberg. The authorities took him to the hospital, so he could shed some light on the horrible crime. But when asked who had shot him, he simply said, no one had shot him at all (the guy had fourteen bullet wounds).
Foto: Chicago TribuneGusenberg died just three hours later, leaving detectives without their only first-hand witness. Now, the men who had just been horribly murdered belonged to the North Side Gang led by George “Bugs” Moran. This led the authorities to believe that the responsibility of the massacre fell on Moran’s main rival, none other than the famous mobster Al “Scarface” Capone. By then, Chicago had turned into a battleground between multiple gangs fighting to control the city’s bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution businesses, and the feud between Capone and Bugs was very well known.
By February 22, a garage fire was reported to the authorities, and they found a suspiciously disassembled car. When they traced the information of the garage, they found out it had last been rented by a man named Frank Rogers, but not only that, his registered address was the Circus Café, owned by a thug associated to Capone. But this was just the beginning of a long investigation.
Foto: Chicago TribuneBesides the identities of the “victims” and the connection to one of Capone’s acolytes, the police found two eyewitnesses willing to testify. One of them was a truck driver who had stopped right in front of the warehouse minutes before the massacre. He claimed he saw the police patrol outside, and that one of the officers had a missing tooth. The other witness also mentioned the toothless cop; both agreed that the police officers entered the warehouse, shots rang, and then they came out with four men who were arrested. Soon, the police identified the “cop” as Fred “Killer” Burke, a member of Egan’s Rats gang, an Irish organization operating in Missouri. The other man was thought to be his wingman, James Ray; they were both known to disguise themselves as police officers during their heists.
This would be the police’s last clue for months, until December, when the Michigan Police Department conducted a raid in the bungalow of a man called Frederick Dane. When they arrived, Dane saw them and escaped in his car. After a long chase, he managed to get away by shooting one of the police officers. In his home, the police found a bulletproof vest, two machine guns, several pistols, tons of ammunition, and about 320,000 dollars belonging to a recently robbed bank in Wisconsin. In addition, they also discovered that Dane was no other than Fred Burke, a man wanted by the Chicago police for his involvement in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Foto: Chicago TribuneBy that time, forensic ballistics was still in diapers, but they managed to link the weapons found in Burke’s bungalow to the crime scene, making it the only strong evidence the police would ever have. Burke was caught a year later in Missouri for another crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in 1940. With Burke dead, it would take about six years after the massacre to gather more information on the case.
In January 1935, the FBI raided an apartment building in Chicago looking for members of the Barker Gang (also quite a bloodthirsty organization). They caught some of them including a man called Byron Bolton, who historians came to know as a “geyser of information.” Without hesitation, Bolton claimed he had been involved in the Massacre along with Fred Burke. However, by that time the FBI had no jurisdiction over gang-related matters per se, and J. Edgar Hoover personally instructed them not to get involved in the case.
Foto: Chicago TribuneStill, Bolton’s declarations somehow got leaked on the newspaper, and curiosity about the case came back after all that time. Bolton claimed the assassination had been plotted since October of the prior year in a hotel resort in Wisconsin, where he met, among others, with Burke and Capone. His job was to watch over the warehouse to alert the others when Bugs arrived. And so he thought he did, until Bugs himself gave a conference blaming Capone on the massacre of seven of his collaborators. Turns out, he had mistaken Bugs with one of his men who looked like him.
At the time, many believed Bolton just wanted attention. However, Georgette Winkeler, the widow of one of the thugs involved in the massacre, confirmed Bolton’s declarations and even added that her husband and Bolton belonged to a special group Capone named “American Boys” in charge of all his high-risk jobs. Not only that, William Drury, one of the detectives who were more involved in the case, also confirmed these facts. This is still the most accepted version of the events.
Over the years, many have tried to find other suspects, including the notorious Cosa Nostra, but the story that best fits is Capone’s involvement. As for him, this might’ve been his biggest move, but it was also the beginning of the end. After years being caught and freed, he ended up spending eleven years in prison and spending his last years of life in terrible health conditions. Regarding the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, no one was ever officially charged for it, and even when the gang war continued for years, we could say this blow was one of the biggest in all Mafia history.
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