Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 83

» George “Bugs” Moran, a Capone rival, whose gang was almost exterminated in the bloody warfare. Moran still holds sway as the successor of O’Banion. ROCHE for State’s Attorney, . County, I1L BRUCE CATTON. everything on the North Side. O’Banion was & = he had influence—political influ- ence. I'll tell you a little anecdote to show you how it was. o] jon had two chief lieutenants—Hymie Weiss and Dapper Dan McCarthy. Weiss had risen in the booze racket with O'Banion, and McCarthy had been a labor union slugger. Well, a matter of six years ago or 3o the three of them got wind of a big Chicago warehouse where a lot of bonded liquor was stored. The owner of this booze had to move it to Peoria. He got a Government permit and set out to make the transfer with a fleet of trucks. O‘BANION. Weiss and McCarthy, as I say, got wind of it. They laid for one of the trucks that was carrying a load to the railroad, seized it, drove it away and kidnaped the two drivers. The police caught them with the two men in their car. The trio were arrnigned in Police Court next day on charges of kidnaping and robbery. An open-and-shut case, you'd say—caught with the goods, if any men ever were But that trial lasted only one minute, and ended with all three men being discharged. The two drivers THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 29, 1930, The Story of Al Capone’s Climb to Underworld Power, the Terrible St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 and Other Darihg Gang Exploits Told in Detazil. who had been right in the touring car with ‘em, got up and testified that they couldn't identify the men who had held them up! Influence? Naturally. O’Banion had more pull than you could shake a stick at. Some- body reached those drivers and told them how to testify. And the judge? Well, the American legal theory is that all a judge has to do is hear evidence ¥ and when presented. I was with the Federal men at that time, and we kept after the case. We finally got O’'Banion into Fedewal court and tried him. The first time there was a hung jury, 11 to 1 for convic- tion. We backed up to try it again—but on the motning of the trial O'Banion was murdered. Weiss and McCarthy, incidentally, pleaded guilty and served six months. Then Chicago’s era of ruthless gang wars reaily got started, THER.E was at that time three brothers— Mike, Tony and Angelo Genna—who had a South Side gang. They were allied with the Capone outfit; that is, they had a sort of work- ing agreement or unde:standing with Capone, On the whole, though, they were fairly inde- pendent. Well, one of the Gennas dropped $35,000 in a gambling house that was run by O’'Banion’s outfit-—dropped it, and then welshed on it and wouldn't pay up. O’Banion went around to see about it. He called on the Gennas personally and got pretty hard-boiled and abusive; called them a bunch of cheap. lousy wops, and told them to come clean, and come clean quick. That little bit of oratory cost O'Banion his life. On the morning that O'Banicn was to go to trial for the second time a gang came into his flower shop—that was the blind behind which he ran his business—and put in a big order for flowers. As O’Banion came out from behind the counter to fix the order they pulled their guns and let him have it. That was the end of O’Banion. The end of O'Banion and the be- ginning, as I said, of the gang wars. It was the Genna outfit, of course, that got O’Banion. And back of the Gennas was the Capone gang. So the North Side gang, which was O’Banion’s, prepared to get even. They gave O'’Banion an elaborate funeral—no doubt you remember reading about it, with the $10,000 casket, the 500 automobiles in the funeral pro- cession, the thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers, and all that-—and then they got ready to retaliate. . behind the counter to.fix the flowers shey pulled their gn; ing of gang wars. YMIE WEISS took O’Banion’s place. Al Capone was the man he wanted to get for it. But getting Capone wasn't such an easy job. It never has been and It never will be. For this reason. Capone hasn't got the nerve that the other gansters have had. That's why he's outlived almost all of them. He hasn't got the nerve, or else, maybe, he’s got more sense. But, anyway, Capone never sticks his nose out of doors without a gang of 10 or 12 gunmen clearing the way for him. The other gang leaders would go out alone now and then, but never. Capone. He always laid low. But Weiss wanted to get him, anyway. Ca- pone at that time was living in a hotel out in Cicero. So one morning in broad daylight five automobile loads of North Side gangsters drove John Torrio really started the beer racket, but left it flat when it began to develop its coldly murderous tend- encies. out to Cicero. They drove around and around Capone’s place, riddling it with machine-gun bullets as they drove. They made a mess of the place and they pretty nearly killed Capone’s wife and kid, but they didn’t get Capone. As I say, he was lying low. They didn't get Capone, but the war was on. The South Side outfit—Capone’s gang—accepted the challenge and set out to get Weiss. They got him, too, but it took some watchful waiting % do it. How they did it was simple enough at that. A couple of them went down and rented rooms in a place right across the street from O’Ban- fon’s flower shop, which was still the head- quarters of the North Side gang. They took a machine gun and revolvers in there with them and sat down to wait, day after day, for their chance. Weiss was being careful, of course. But sooner or later they were bound to get him— and they did. They got him as he strolled calmly out of the door of the flower shop. 'HEY simply turned loose their machine gun and riddled him. They also got one or two sthers who happened to be with him at the time, and they wounded W. W. O'Brien, a prominent attorney. Bugs Moran took Weiss' place as North Side gang leader, and he still has the job. Meanwhile there was a certain West Side gangster named Klondike O'Donnell, who was associated with the O’Banion crowd, and Klon- dike figures in one of the most sensational and puzzling of all the Chicago murders—the murder of William McSwiggin, an assistant State’s at- tornly, who was famous as the “hanging prose- cutor” of Cook County because of the number of men he’d sent to the gallows. McSwiggin’s murder was a tremendous mys- tery, and it caused a tremendous lot of talk. Not all the talk was very complimentary to McSwiggin, since he was shot down while in the company of Jimmy Doherty, a notorious beer runner, while coming out of a Cicero saloon. But I don't believe that McSwiggin was in- volved in anything he shouldn’t have been in. My conviction is that McSwiggin was being duped. He was being' used for a purpose he knew nothing about—and it cost him his life, This Klondike O'Donnell had political influe ence in a big way. Of course, all the other gangsters did, too, but Klondike at that time was boasting that he had a direct pull with the State’s attorney’s office, and he let it be known that he was going to get the beer privileges in Cicero because of this influence. Cicero, of course, was Capone’s greatest stronghold, then as now. And Klondike, you re~ member, was allied with the O’Banion gang, Capone's sworn enemies. So Klondike's state- ment about getting the Cicero beer privileges was carrying the war into the heart of the enemy’s country. McSwiggin, I believe, was being duped. Doherty, wio was one of Klondike’s men, sim= ply invited him out for an evening’'s drinking and sightseeing. McSwiggin accepted, thinking it just a harmless evening’s outing. But Doherty took him through the Cicero saloons as a “front”; that is, he wanted the Capone crowd to see McSwiggin, the assistant State’s attorney, in his company. That, according to Klondike O’Donnell’s strategy, would convince them that he (Klondike) had real influence. BUT it didn't work. Capone had a man shad- owing the party. They went into a saloon for a few drinks, and the man phoned head- quarters. Ten minutes later, when Doherty and McSwiggin and another chap came out, they stepped into a round of machine-gun bullets. That’s the famous McSwiggin murder case as I see it. I don't think that McSwiggin was up to anything he shouldn't have been, except for the fact that it's mighty bad business for an assistant State’s attorney to run around on a drinking bout with gangsters. But I don't believe he was crooked, At all events, the killing of McSwiggin, sen- sationai &< it was, was only one incident in the long gang war, or series of wars, that made Chicago’s history turbulent for many years. From the time that O'Banion was murdered the rival clans have fought. There have been truces now and then. There was one recently, but it was broken a month ago by the murders at Fox Lake of the remnants of the Bugs Maron gang. Always the truces break down sooner or ' later. The expression “taken for a ride,” which has become a popular by-word since the Chicago gangs introduced it, reminds me that a great many people do not understand just how the underworld operates when it talkes a man for a ride. In the first place, the victim is always led to his death by scme one whom he regards as his closest friend—always. But he never knows it, for by the time he realizes what is being pulled off he's dead. Coupled with that, though, is the fact that the men who actually shoot him are always strangers. - Perhaps I'd better explain it in detail: SUPPOSE you and I are gangsters. Suppose you have done something that makes the boss decide to put you out of the way. You and Continued on Thirteenth Page Big Jim Colosimo started out as a street cleaner, ran a string of disorderly houses, got rich. . But a swelled head proved fatal to him. He was murdered.