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In reply to the discussion: When did systematic thread-jacking become acceptable? [View all]panader0
(25,816 posts)February 14, 1929, five members of the North Side Gang, plus gang collaborators Reinhardt H. Schwimmer and John May, were lined up against the rear inside wall of the garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago's North Side, and executed. Two of the shooters were dressed as uniformed police officers, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats and hats, according to witnesses who saw the "police" leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage after the shooting. John May's German Shepherd, Highball, who was leashed to a truck, began howling and barking, attracting the attention of two women who operated boarding houses across the street.
One of the women, Mrs. Landesman, sensed something was wrong and sent one of her roomers to the garage to see what was upsetting the dog. The woman ran out, sickened at the sight. Frank Gusenberg was still alive after the killers left the scene and was rushed to the hospital shortly after real police officers arrived at the scene. When the doctors had Gusenberg stabilized, police tried to question him but when asked who shot him, he replied, "I'm not talking," despite having sustained fourteen bullet wounds.
George "Bugs" Moran was the boss of the long-established North Side Gang, formerly headed by Dion O'Banion who was murdered by four gunmen five years earlier in his flower shop on North State Street.[4] Everyone who had taken command of the North Siders since O'Banion's rule had been murdered, supposedly by various members or associates of the Capone organization. This massacre was allegedly planned by the Capone mob in retaliation for an unsuccessful attempt by Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter to murder Jack McGurn earlier in the year and for the North Side Gang's complicity in the murders of Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo and Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo both had been presidents of the Unione Siciliana, the local Mafia, and close associates of Capone. Bugs Moran's muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, his takeover of several Capone-owned saloons that he insisted were in his territory, and the general rivalry between Moran and Capone for complete control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging business were probable contributing factors to this incident