Al Capone: How He Changed Valentine's Day to St. Valentine's Day Massacre - Essay Sample

Introduction

Valentine's Day is a day of celebrating love and comes once every year. It is a time when candy, gifts, and flowers are exchanged between loved ones. However, this was not the case in Chicago where Al Capone changed it in the year 1929 and turned it to St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Al Capone was a known bootlegger in Chicago. When there was someone who tried to interfere, Capon then put an end to it. He had become a crime czar in Chicago running gambling sites, prostitution, and many bootlegging rackets. During the prohibition time, Capone smuggled illegal substances in Chicago and sold them to gangs at a reasonable price, and this made his money. His fortune was estimated to be about $60 million (Cavendish, 2009). Capone expanded his territory by killing the rival gangs and was part of him making money that, in return, gave him the motive of committing murder.

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Several gangs tried to compete with Capone, which he left alone or even killed them. With George Bugs also being one of the leading gangsters in Chicago, Capone felt threatened by his work (Cavendish, 2009). He thought that he had to be stopped and planned to be at Florida in the assassination scene. He left Jack and a machine gun in control of whatever that was going to happen. This could leave Capone out of blame of the assassination McGurn wanted to be kept away from the scene of the crime and took his girl and checked into a hotel and left him with an airtight alibi. McGurn put a team of out of town people to help him to carry out the assassination. They are the ones who lured Moran's men into the garage on 2122 Clark Street at 10.30 am on February 14, 1929. The men were made to believe that they were going to buy whiskey at a reasonable price. Then, McGurn's men thought that they had seen Moran approaching the garage, and they were ready to leave.

Violence had become a new and common way to solve the competition that threatened between the gangs. Rather than settling disputes with conversations or agreements, the groups used guns to resolve their issues instead. Murder, therefore, had spread and was widespread in the 1920"s. The tension among the gangs had grown with the rivalry over which the gang brought profit from the illegal business. During the prohibition error, there were about 700 gang-related killings with a majority of them caused by Capone (Cavendish, 2009). He had committed his first crime at his teen. He murdered a man he was stealing and had refused to give him money and stated that he would turn to him. However, he was arrested and released as his gang had the connections in their alliance. Capone had used to dragging men in the four Deuces basement and tortured them. He could also let the people suffer until they gave him the information that he needed from them. The men were later 23495212788500murdered and dragged to be dumped in the tunnels onto the crossroad.

Four men burst into the garage, where Moran used to carry out the illegal business. They were dressed as police officers, and the quartet announced a raid ordering the seven men in the garage to line up against the wall and opened fire on them. Witnesses on the scene were alerted by the rat-a-tat staccato of the submachine guns and watched the gunmen flee off in a black Cadillac touring car, which looked like a police car with a complete siren, gong and rifle rack (Collins, 2018). The victims were left dying, and others died on the spot, which included Frank Honk Gusenberg, Moran enforcer, and his brother Peter Goosy. The other four were Moran Gangsters, and the seventh was Dr. Reinhardt, an optician who worked with the criminals for some thrills. Capon's prize, Moran, was missing for sleeping in.

Capon also missed the excitement as he vacationed at a retreat at Palm Island, Fla, with an alibi for the whereabouts disclaiming the knowledge of the cold-blooded killings. Very few people believed in him, and no one went to jail for pulling the trigger in the Street garage that was demolished in 1967. Although Moran survived the killings, he was finished by being a big criminal. For decades that followed, only the Capone mob could run organized crimes in Chicago. However, the valentine massacre shocked people and the city that was numbed by the roaring 20's gang welfare as they competed on the control of illegal beer and whiskey distribution. Day was when the gang war had reached the climax (Collins, 2018). When the police arrived at the scene, they found that 70 rounds of ammunition were fired, and only one member of the gang was found alive but died later (Rayns, 2018). The newspapers picked up the crime naming it as the St. Valentine Day Massacre, and the story appeared on the front page for every newspaper in the country and made Capone a national celebrity. Although he craved for being a celebrity, he had to learn new ways to deal with the attention of the federal law and the enforcement officials. George Bug knew that Capon wanted to kill him and therefore pegged the crime on him right away. He said that only Capone could kill like that although there was no concrete evidence to the authority.

The police only found eyewitnesses that concluded that the gunmen were dressed like police officers who entered into the garage pretending to arrest them. Moran, however, immediately blamed Capone on the massacre, a very famous gangster that claimed that he was at his home in Florida at the moment. Although the massacre marked an end to the significant gang that opposed Capone's rule in Chicago, it marked the beginning of his downfall (Collins, 2018). Capone had become the most notorious gangster with his highly effective organization and his impressive income as well as his ruthlessness in eliminating the rivals. The Federal authorities began to investigate Capone after failing to appear before the federal grand jury after the sub opening in March that year later when he appeared in court and testified, he was arrested by the federal agents for contempt of court (Kalgreen et al., 2019). He afterward posted a bond and was released. He was later arrested in Philadelphia that May on charges of carrying concealed weapons. He served nine months in prison and was later released for good behavior.

Capone was found guilty on the contempt charges and was sentenced for six months in February 1931, attending Cook County Jail. Meanwhile, the US treasury department launched an investigation on Capone for tax evasion. There was diligent forensic accounting by special agent Frank Wilson together with other members in the intelligence unit in the internal revenue service and were able to put the case together (Eckert, 1980). This led to the indiction of Capone in June 1931 for evasion of the federal income tax. He was convicted in October in an internationally publicized trial and sentenced to 11 years in prison. First, he was in prison in Atlanta and later in Alcatraz. He was later released in the year 1939, after which he died an invalid recluse at his home in Florida in the year 1947.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the police cured widespread lawlessness and violence in Chicago that ran between 1924 and 1930. It was the reign of the chief lord Capone who had taken over from Jonny Torrio in 1925. Torio retired after an injury in an attempted assassination in 1024 that made him retire back to Brooklyn (Gelman & Gross, 2019). There was a prohibition that was passed and ushered in by the 18th amendment in 1920, leading to an increased number of gangsters through bootlegging or illegal manufacture and sale of alcohol as well as the establishment of illicit drinking, prostitution, and gambling. Over the period, Capone had taken control over most of the Chicago criminal activities by gunning down rivals ruthlessly. In 1924, the authorities had counted about 16 gang-related murders that continued until 1929, which was high recording 64 murders in a year. Some neighborhoods in Chicago are still struggling with gang violence today.

References

Cavendish, R. (2009). The St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago: February 14 1929. History Today, 59(10).

Collins, J. M. (2018). HR Management in the Forensic Science Laboratory: A 21st Century Approach to Effective Crime Lab Leadership. Academic Press.

Eckert, W. G. (1980). The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The American journal of forensic medicine and pathology, 1(1), 67-70.

Gelman, A. N., & Gross, E. K. (2019). A Valentine’s Day Massacre of Liquidated Damages: In re Republic Airways Holdings Inc. The Journal of Equipment Lease Financing (Online), 37(2), 1-19.

Kalgreen, A., Bent, P., Halladay, S., Mesches, A. G., Omer, G. D., Gelman, A. N., & Gross, E. K. (2019). OF EQUIPMENT LEASE FINANCING.

Rayns, T. (2018). THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE.