Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Gang Rivalries, Public Outcry, and the End of Prohibition
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre exemplifies the bloody clashes between organized crime factions during the Prohibition era, highlighting the impact such violence has on public perception and law enforcement response. This chilling act of gang warfare not only shocked a nation but also prompted significant shifts in societal attitudes towards crime, showcasing the far-reaching consequences of Prohibition and the persistent challenges that remain in combating organized crime today.
• Examination of the Prohibition era and its effects on organized crime
• Detailed recounting of the events leading up to and during the massacre
• Analysis of the public's reaction and misconceptions about gangsters
• Discussion on the aftermath and evolution of law enforcement in response
• Reflection on the cultural relevance and legacy of the massacre in today’s society
• Consideration of broader implications surrounding criminal justice and policy development
www.deviantcriminology.com
So imagine you're taking your loved one out, it's Valentine's Day, you're looking forward to going to that speakeasy because probation's going on, and lo and behold, you find out that earlier that day the supplier for your little speakeasy has been shot up by a rival gang. So this week being Valentine's Day weekend, we wanted to do a special episode, which we will be covering the St Valentine's Day Massacre. I'm Richard.
Speaker 3:I'm Heather.
Speaker 2:And this is Deviant Criminology. So in 1929 Chicago it was a city gripped by gang warfare. So there were rival factions vying for control of the lucrative bootlegging trade. So Chicago is kind of known at this time period as almost one of the biggest hubs in the world or a prohibition era. Alcohol at the this time moving in all across the Midwest and the beginning of the interstate systems kind of helped this. So the two main players in this violent drama were Al Capone's South side gang, known as the Chicago outfit, and the North side gang led by George Bugs Moran, both very known names at this time If you studied anything about Chicago Prohibition era gangs. These are the two big players. So these groups had been locked in a bitter struggle for dominance since the early 1920s, with the rivalry intensifying as Prohibition fueled the rise of organized crime.
Speaker 3:The implementation of Pro prohibition in 1920 created a perfect storm for the rise of gangsters in Chicago. With the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol banned, the massive black market emerged and criminal organizations stepped in to meet the demand. Chicago became a major center of bootlegging, with speakeasies and illegal bars proliferating throughout the city. This illicit trade provided enormous profits for gangs, allowing them to expand their operations and influence.
Speaker 2:And this was a lot of people that were making money in this. Politicians, we see the Kennedys kind of rose out of Prohibition era. A lot of the episodes we seem to do came going back to the 1920s, 30s, 40s, because this was like a really kind of the big era of popularization of criminals. Al Capone probably most famously known for being at Alcatraz and being so able to skirt the laws with corruption and everything that the FBI and IRS had to work together. The only way they could get him was taxes. So Al Capone is kind of a real known figure here. A lot of great movies that are about this time period, and the incident we're talking about today is kind of one that really impacted the development of law enforcement's aggressiveness towards ending these groups of criminals.
Speaker 3:I think it was also where the anti-establishment feelings were greatly exaggerated, because alcohol had been something that was legal. And then all of a sudden, somebody comes in and says, well, that's not legal anymore. And like, why do you get to say that Again? Who are you to decide where the line is for what's moral or immoral, or legal or illegal?
Speaker 2:And I think it's actually kind of an era that helped create the glorification of crime in the United States, because again it did make folk heroes and the media didn't help that of you know. You banned and you start prohibition at the same time that you're having this great depression where you know maybe a couple people want to have a drink and people are seeing these criminals rise up with all this money because of this and it's like you know, I, why am I not doing what these guys are doing? To have money. I'm over here working my ass off and losing my farm or I can just go rob a bank and take my 50-50 chance. So it was very even. Law enforcement wasn't paid well, if paid at all, and it was very easy to turn a blind eye to like, hey, give me a little bit of money, which we see again in this case as we move forward. So in 1929, chicago was a bustling metropolis with a population of approximately 3.4 million people already. But that's insane. I grew up in Indianapolis. We didn't even have a million people in the 90s and 2000s. So I think that even by 1929, chicago was already over 3 million people.
Speaker 2:The city had experienced rapid growth in the 20th century, with its population increasing by over 500,000 people between 1910 and 1920. However, by the late 1920s this growth had begun to slow. Part of that definitely had to do with the Great Depression, and the cost of living in Chicago even at that time would have started to be a little rough. The city was very diverse, with large immigrant communities including Italians, irish and Eastern Europeans, many of whom had arrived in the previous decades.
Speaker 2:Little shout out to about this time period. A little bit before here you saw Hull House, which was Jane Addams, who's kind of like the mother of social work and the mother of another area that I study sports social work where she was very big on trying to use sport and community to bring these immigrant groups together. So you saw people at this time trying to provide the resources to these immigrant groups that were being repressed and weren't as well off and people trying to keep them out of crime through these different programs and then social outreaches. So this was a time that, yes, saw the rise of prohibition, saw the rise of criminal organizations, but also saw kind of a rise of the outpouring of social justice and advocates in my field of social work.
Speaker 3:The road to the St Valentine's Day massacre was paved with numerous violent confrontations between rival gangs. One significant event occurred in 1924, when Dean O'Banion was the previous leader of the North Side Gang was murdered in his flower shop. This killing, believed to have been orchestrated by Johnny Torino Torrio, al Capone's mentor, sparked a series of retaliatory attacks. In June 1925, johnny himself was ambushed and seriously wounded, leading him to hand over control of his organization to Capone. Under Capone's leadership, the violence escalated. The period from 1925 to 1926 was known as the Beer Wars, with 133 gangsters murdered in just two years. Gangsters murdered in just two years. Notable incidents included an attack on capone's headquarters at the hawthorne hotel in cicero in september 20th 1926 and the murder of imy weiss, o'bannon's successor, on october 11th of the same year. These events further intensified the hatred between the north and south side gangs these guys are just murdering the shit out of each other.
Speaker 2:Like this was an extremely violent time in Chicago and you know it's kind of weird like studying criminal justice and looking at like murder statistics and right now, like there's a lot of if you didn't look at the media like you would think violent crime was on the rise in the United States right now and actually it's down like almost 16% again this year from the pandemic time. But Chicago, like violence, is just kind of part of their history. So even here this is just 133 gang members from these two gangs that were killed in that time period. This isn't even other homicides that are going on in Chicago at that time. So this is a very bloody time, a very violent time. But the difference is, up until this point, 1926, going into 1927, a lot of these are small attacks. There are one or two people killed here, a retaliatory shooting here and as we see, this continues to escalate up until Valentine's Day, 1929. So the St Valentine's Day massacre itself took place on the morning of February 14th 1929. Obviously there wasn't a lot of love in the air between these two, so it's odd that they chose this day. But the setting was at a garage at 2122 North Clark Street which served as a liquor warehouse for the Moran Gang.
Speaker 2:Capone's men, allegedly including machine gun Jack McGurn, had carefully planned the attack. A lot of people in like the 1920s, the 1940s, involved in organized crime or bank robberies and stuff, had machine gun as their name oddly Like I guess the Tommy gun had really taken over at this point, but you had machine gun Kelly. Now you've got machine gun Jack McGurn. The Italians especially, like I have Italian heritage on my mother's side and stuff, and we're just not really good at nicknames Like Fat Tony is really like the smallest guy in the group and the smallest guys like Slim Joe. It's just really not good at these nomenclatures or acronyms that we give people. So two of the hitmen were dressed as police officers, likely to ease any suspicion from their targets.
Speaker 3:Around 1030 am, seven men associated with the Northside gang were inside the garage. They included five of Moran's men brothers Frank and Peter Gusenberg, albert Eschlelik, aka James Clark, and Adam Heyer and Albert Weinschenk. Also present were Reinhard Schwimmer, who was an optometrist who frequented gang circles not an association you would necessarily think of and John May, a mechanic who was working on one of the gang's vehicles.
Speaker 2:There seems to be a thing with, like gang members or criminal elements having associates with really bad like medical, because doc holiday was a dentist, I believe.
Speaker 2:I think so yeah, and then this guy is an optometrist hanging out like I really just want to fit in with some group because the medical people don't take me seriously, the gangs don't take me seriously, so I'm just going to hang out at this corner bootlegging place. I just want to feel like I'm part of something. So this was a bad day for him they might also had good pay.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you need to get stitched up and you can't go to the hospital well, but at the same time again now that I'm thinking about this this is just putting this together alcohol was legal if it was used as a medical like, if it was prescription, that's true so, as an automacist, I wonder if he was able to prescribe so, if he was actually maybe even funding or a distributor for booze at that time.
Speaker 2:Now I want to look more into that. So, um, yeah, this guy could be interesting, but that's not today's topic. So the attackers entered the garage pretending to be conducting a police raid, which very well orchestrated. That's actually very genius approach, really hard to get away with now. But at the time it was easy to buy police uniforms. They probably just paid a couple officers off or went in and took them.
Speaker 2:This was a very bad time for law enforcement in chic, as we've talked about in other episodes. Law enforcement at this time wasn't what we think of it now. It wasn't until 1933 in the Kansas City organized crime shootings that killed a couple of federal agents, that you see this rise of organizing law enforcement with stronger trainings and stuff here. It's just very easy to pay off a couple cops, give them some uniforms. So they ordered the seven men to line up against the wall. Then, using two Thompson machine guns and two shotguns, they opened fire, firing their victims with bullets. The attack was brutal and thorough. They continued to fire even after all seven men had fallen, shooting to their corpses as they laid on the ground, and then two shotgun blasts were used to obliterate the faces of May and Clark. So again, this is definitely personal. I don't know what man Clark had done specifically to piss them off, but they were definitely um two main targets.
Speaker 3:Uh, just by the excessive damage it was it made somebody mad enough to shoot them in the face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was definitely sending a message to other people. Um, because even at this time, like you usually didn't want to, just because there was some as like moral, of like respect for the dead respect for the dead and respect like the families, like let them have a funeral. So shooting the face was just an extra like punch to the gut.
Speaker 3:In the immediate aftermath, the killers exited the garage with the men who were in the civilian clothes, pretending to be under the custody of the men who were dressed as officers. The only survivor inside was Frank Gusenberg, who, despite having 14 bullet wounds, managed to survive for three hours but refused to identify the killers before he died.
Speaker 2:Which kind of makes sense again this time, like if he would have talked, they would have gone after his family, and he knew that. So, and he probably did know his killers.
Speaker 3:If he was going to reveal it to anybody, it would have been to his fellow gang members.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely not to law enforcement, because, again, the law enforcement that showed up may have been on the payroll. So you don't you're just giving information and then they just go rat you out. Um, it was just such a volatile time in chicago. Uh, this massacre sent shockwaves through chicago and the entire nation. Uh, it drama, dramatized the intense rivalry for the control of the illegal liquor trade and became a symbol of violence of prohibition eras.
Speaker 2:The brutality of the illegal liquor trade and became a symbol of violence of prohibition eras, the brutality of the killings shocked the public and began to turn opinions against or romanticize images of gangsters that had prevailed in some quarters. So you're talking about going from, like I said, like these one or two hits, like, oh, we'll go pop off one or two guys, to this very well orchestrated broad daylight gunning down way overkill. Like said uh, frank had 14 bullet wounds, they're shooting people in the face just so they can't be identified like. There's obviously such brutality and escalation that this is when you start seeing, as I just said, the turn against gangsters like they were romanticized in these books. We see this again time after time with bonnie and claude and all these others that even into the 1960s and 70s like they were making movies, kind of making them these folk heroes, but it was incidents like this that were starting to turn people like no, they're not folk heroes, they're just killers and murderers.
Speaker 3:And just like with Mad Dog, where that child was hit by a stray bullet and killed, I think that this type of escalation made people start to worry. Well, how is this going to impact the rest of us? Are one of us going to get caught in the crossfire?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this kind of and we're going to talk about it in a second as well but really is what got the FBI focusing on Al Capone specifically? The FBI focusing on Al Capone specifically because this incident A showed the power he had and the connections he had and the links he was willing to go to, but showed that he was probably the most powerful in the time in Chicago. So they really focused on going after him.
Speaker 3:In the aftermath, police initially focused their attention on Detroit's Purple Gang, based on eyewitness accounts from landladies who had rented rooms to suspicious men just before the massacre. However, this lead ultimately went nowhere. The case remained unsolved for four months until a breakthrough came in December of 1929, when Fred Killer Burke was identified as a suspect in the murder of a police officer in Michigan.
Speaker 2:When police raided Burke's home, they found two Thompson machine guns that were later linked to the massacre and I would really like to know how they linked them to the massacre, because I don't really think ballistics were at the height of anything at that time, but I mean, maybe they were. But to me that just seems like oh, we have two Tommy guns, how do you know those are the right ones? But despite this evidence, no one was ever successfully prosecuted for the St Valentine's Day massacre. Al Capone widely believed to have ordered the hit and again, this makes sense because these two gangs have been going at it for almost 10 years now. He had the most to gang from it, but he was in Florida at the time of the killings and had a solid alibi, which of course he's the. He's the head of the, the gang. He's not going to do everything he can to not be associated with such a massive massacre.
Speaker 2:Uh, jack mcgurn, another prime suspect, was arrested but later released due to lack of evidence. And there's kind of depictions of this in different gang movies and stuff. Um, I think probably the untouchables is the most well-known. That depicts Al Capone and the battle that Al Capone had with the FBI as they were really starting to close in on him.
Speaker 3:States. It marked a turning point in public attitudes towards gangsters, where they once had been seen as some exciting or glamorous figures. The brutality of the killing shocked the nation and began to erode any remaining public sympathy for the organization. The event also spurred law enforcement to take more aggressive action against organized crime. Federal authorities, including the Bureau of Prohibition and the Bureau of Investigation, which was the predecessor to the FBI, intensified their efforts to bring down major crime figures. The increased pressure would eventually contribute to Capone's downfall, as he was convicted of tax evasion in 1931.
Speaker 2:And this is kind of what the FBI originally was Like. The original head of the Bureau of Investigations was a tax person Hoover I believe it was Hoover when he was brought over actually came from like the libraries section. Like these weren't law enforcement people, these were actually people more trained to do taxes and investigate financial issues. So even at this time in 1931, when they talk about the Bureau of Investigations like doing these things, these were unarmed, untrained law enforcement officers. They were really trying to use the laws more civil side and these financials and they were like going after criminal activity. So it's very interesting to read it and look at this and they're talking about like the Bureau and the Bureau of Prohibition was the ones that brought them down. But the FBI and even the depictions in some movies show the FBI is like armed guys taking that. That was not who they were at this point. They were just kind of like pencil pushers.
Speaker 3:Well, it kind of makes sense as far as the pencil pusher aspect of it and going after the tax evasion side of it. You know, when you have this huge crime and the guy's alive with 14 bullet wounds and refuses to identify who did it, how are you going to make a case on that? You can't. And on the flip side of it, well, al Capone has all this money. He never reported any of his taxes. It obviously came from somewhere. That's an easy case to make, because now, all of a sudden you have all this money and you didn't declare it on any tax form anywhere. You know as a pencil pusher. Well, it's all numbers. Numbers are easy to show, to show improve.
Speaker 2:No, and I think another like takeaway for me from this is you've, if I had been shot 14 times, I would want justice Like you've, got three hours to think about this. He was conscious. I would want justice Like you've got three hours to think about this. He was conscious. He feared the gangs even knowing he was going to die more than he trusted law enforcement to get justice. And I think that even there was kind of a turning point in America and that was a small example of why At the time, people just didn't trust the government. They were more fearful of the gangs than they were thinking that law enforcement and the government was going to do anything to protect them. And I think there's still a lot of cynicism like that that exists today. But that's just a small example of a much wider problem at the time, which is why you were seeing big figures like bank robbers and gangsters be romanticized, because there was a lot of this no trust that the government, law enforcement, everybody was going to be there to protect you.
Speaker 3:And I think, like you said, it even goes to today. And you see that, because if you have somebody who turns on a gang or you know, as they say, turn states evidence and is going to testify against somebody, how do you protect that person? Typically, long term, that means something like witness protection, which means you give up everything.
Speaker 2:You give up your friends, your family, your life and move someplace else and start over, and it's not a fun experience people that went into witness protection in the 70s, 80s and 90s because they turned state evidence against these organized crime organizations that are now just like leaving witness protection, writing books and kind of like just being left alone because over time they kind of became folk heroes in their own route about being willing to turn coat and turn state's evidence and then somehow come out and not be targeted. I can't there's so many examples but I'm so focused on like this concept I can't think of their names right off the bat, but it is kind of interesting if I can read those stories now that those people have come out. And, um, the guy from the goodfellas is based on I can't remember his name, but he's one of them like went into witness protection and then just when they came out and just started telling the truth, uh, and gave up witness protection because he was like you know what, I'm gonna get killed. I'm gonna get killed, but might as well try to make some money off of it if I can. So yeah, but back at this time this guy would rather die than tell the police because he just didn't see that it was going to be beneficial to him. That's. That says a lot about the time frame.
Speaker 2:So the saint valentine's day massacre remains one of the most famous events in american criminal history. It has been the subjects of numerous books, films and documentaries, cementing its place in popular culture. The garage where the killings took place became a macabre tourist attraction until its demolition in 1967, which surprises me that they demolished it, because dark tourism I guess maybe in the 60s and 70ies wasn't as popular as it is now. But I today that would become like a historical landmark. Nobody would let that go. Dark tourism is just such a thing now where people like to go to these old murder houses, old murder scenes and stuff A little odd to me, but at the same time just somebody that investigates this stuff. I enjoy going for the investigative side, like looking at the scene trying to get a better understanding of it, not like, oh, I want to stand where this person stood, creeps me out.
Speaker 3:And I think there's also a big difference between when you're actually at an active crime scene versus being someplace where something happened happened. It's, at least in my opinion, not very fun when you're actually at an active crime scene, seeing what has happened, versus a historical context of something happened here 50 years ago that my grandparents talked about and now I actually get to see what this place looked like when they were describing it.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting because I've have been to both. But when you go to like the ones that like Lizzie Borden's house and stuff and they still are original, like with over 150 years ago, like the original furniture and stuff in years, it's like there's so many things about this that are creepy to me, like to me there's not a sense of like, oh ah, it's more of like. This is like sadness and just trying to understand what happened. Yeah, being on a real crime scene, I think people, the gawkers, think it's cool to come and kind of see what's going on. A don't fucking do that, you're getting in the way in law enforcement, you're making it harder on them to do their jobs. But on the flip side, when you're there, it's not like a glamorous situation. It's not like this fun, exciting. It's usually a lot of standing around waiting for crime techs to do their job and everything else. So even back then, like this crime scene would have been a nightmare to try and process. Try and process where things and they weren't doing nearly the level we are today. But this just became like a torch point for things and in the decades since, the massacres continued to fascinate the public and historians alike.
Speaker 2:It serves as a stark reminder of the violence and corruption that characterized the Prohibition era and the dangers of associating with organized crime and allowing them to gain a foothold in society, kind of like finding strongholds and Chicago is notorious for this of having these like pockets that are so heavily gang affiliated and held down that law enforcement just can't get in there. But it's just a battle that we fought kind of since then. Before that there were little gangs, but not on this scale with this much control. The events also highlighted the challenges by law enforcement in combating well-organized and well-funded criminal enterprises. We still see that Even when we talk about 50, 60 years later. When the federal government was trying to go after organized crime in New York and Chicago, they couldn't do it. When you look at the people that have been prosecuted, besides Gotti, they never got ahead of any of these families. They never really got high up, so it's always low-level people, because these are so well-funded, so well-connected, so well-organized that you're not even today, we're still not able to infiltrate them like we want.
Speaker 3:And you have to look at consequences too. If I turn state's evidence, what happens to me? What's going to happen to me if I don't? You're going to put me in prison and my family's just fine, and I keep my mouth shut and maybe I do my time. Maybe I get out, maybe I don't, but if I do die in prison, it's either going to be from natural causes or something that happens pretty quickly you know before the guards can show up and stop something.
Speaker 2:Exactly, um, and I I think it's interesting because I'm designing courses on organized crime and stuff but just the reach that these organizations had Like the Chicago organizations were connected to the Philly ones, to the New York ones and eventually out to the Vegas ones.
Speaker 2:These were national and international organizations that had far reach. As a local law enforcement, especially in the 1920s, 1930s, you didn't have connections with the department in the city next to you, let alone how organized. It was so easy to commit a crime in Chicago and quickly get out of there and nobody would ever be able to catch you. So when they were talking about linking those guns in Detroit, part of me is like like even now it would be hard, even with our technology sometimes it's hard to land You're linking them a hundred years ago. It's just impossible. And just to think the reach that they had then and how easy it was to get away with stuff like this. And yet they we sit here and like how did they not catch people that did this? Think about the connections and how far that these gangs went.
Speaker 3:The resources. Yeah, so that legacy of the St Valentine's Day massacre extends beyond its immediate impact on the gang's warfare in Chicago. It played a significant role in shaping public perception of organized crime and contributed to the eventual repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Yay for all of us.
Speaker 2:The nature of the killings helped to galvanize public opinion against the lawlessness that had flourished under prohibition, ultimately leading to a reassessment of the policy that you can't have something, especially something that you had, and then you've taken it away. It's like giving a small child an iPad, letting them play for a while and then taking it from them and saying you can't have it. They've gotten so much pleasure and enjoyment from it. It's become part of their lives. They're going to throw a fit In Prohibition. We kind of saw that. But you also gave rise to criminal elements. We saw even an example when I was in the military. You would have chewing tobacco Not illegal in the United States. You could buy it on base and everything else, but you couldn't have it on our ship. So when we deployed, suddenly a black market developed because you couldn't buy it on the ship. We're out to sea for months, so people would have their loved ones send logs of chewing tobacco and people would sell them for $25, for a 10. The back of the states was like two, three dollars at the time at the most. You've created an enterprise when you tell people they can't have something. And one of the odd things to me is we didn't learn from prohibition when it comes to drugs, but like even marijuana. Now, for 100 years there's been this dark black market for marijuana sales and a lot of violence has spawned from it because you've outlawed something instead of regulating it and we continue this cycle and, in a way, prohibition created all these gangs. They wouldn't have had the power if it would all just been legal.
Speaker 2:And there were so many jurisdictions across the U? S and law enforcement that were so small and embraced speakeasies and bootleggers because it was safer for them. We saw that in St Paul Minnesota. It was easier for them to embrace it and almost became safe havens than to try and bust it Cause you risk getting killed. So I think it says a lot about how, in a way, governments and too much overreach and legislation and regulation in certain areas can cause more harm than good. Same thing you see with human sex trafficking now, like if you allow sex workers to do their job openly and not have to fear getting arrested or anything else, would you see almost a decrease in human sex trafficking? Because I can just, people can just go do it. It's not I have to seek it out and to try and get around laws or get around getting busted by going to the streets. Now I can use these sex traffickers to find somebody in a more dark, secretive way.
Speaker 3:Less risk.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:If I have less risk and I can go buy it legally, why would I not do that? Yes, so then you take that profit margin out of the illegal behavior.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and then what's the reason to put yourself out there? What's the reason to put yourself out there? So, in the realm of criminal justice, the massacre underscored the need for more sophisticated and coordinated law enforcement efforts to combat organized crime. It spurred the development of new investigative techniques and led to increased cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. That's something we see with when we we talked about bank robbers at the time. Like you committed a crime in Indianapolis and you just shot right over to Cincinnati, there was no conversation. There was no talking. And even later on, after the 1930s, 40s, up until 2025, there wasn't always good cooperation between local, state and federal. Like there was stepping on each other's toes. Who was in control? So this is since the dawn of modern law enforcement has still been an issue with that jurisdiction.
Speaker 2:But even then, the creation of the fbi's crime laboratories in 1932 was in part of response to the challenges posed by investigating complex, high-profile crimes like the saint valentine's day massacre, like trying to find ways of fingerprinting, like we've now fingerprinting for a while. But the creation of fbi crime laboratory allowed for more storing and large scale analysis of fingerprints. So if you did have a crime in chicago, you could see those fingerprints to um I think it was quantico at the time. I may be wrong. You could send it to this fbi lab and they had an index of all these different fingerprints and they could go through and try and find it. If you've ever seen pictures of that, it's insane. This was a massive room with thousands, of hundreds of cabinets of fingerprints on file and they would go through and have to look through each one to try. It's amazing, but this was something that came right out of that, because we've got to start having better, scientific-based ways of linking people.
Speaker 3:And even sharing information, like we have NCIC now, which they didn't have back then.
Speaker 2:No, and God, we trust everybody else. We run through NCIC.
Speaker 3:The event also had a lasting impact on Chicago's reputation and identity. While the city had already been associated with gangster activity, the massacre cemented its image as the epicenter of organized crime in America. This reputation, while not always welcome, had become an indelible part of Chicago's history and continues to attract interest from tourists and history buffs alike.
Speaker 2:And I think like one of the interesting things about this is like we don't know the victims here. We obviously know the people that gunned them down, but there was also like it was two gangs like. So I think it's interesting at that time that so much attention was given this when it was very easy to say, well, it was just two gangs killing each other, why do we care it? It really did have this impact. So I think it also started to show more humanized that even though you're a criminal, you're still a human being and you didn't deserve to be murdered.
Speaker 2:But as we celebrate this Valentine's Day weekend, I think it's important to also kind of remember the St Valentine's Day massacre as a pivotal moment in the history of organized crime in America.
Speaker 2:It marks the bloody climax of Chicago's gang wars and shock to the nation's conscience and ultimately contributed to significant changes in law enforcement and public policy and would be what kind of led the steps to the formation of the modern FBI, cemented again in that Kansas City shootout.
Speaker 2:But nearly a century later it remains a powerful symbol of the violence and excess of the prohibition era, serving as a cautionary tale about the consequences of allowing organized crime to flourish unchecked. And I do think it's odd that we still romanticize this era, because even now, like there's joking like the roaring 2020s now, where people are throwing like prohibition era parties now and you see a lot of places I go to a couple every time I go to different cities that are old speakeasies and that's kind of their claim to fame like, and people like, oh, we've got to go to that because we still have this kind of romanticized view of that time period when really, in the end, it was just a bunch of criminals killing criminals and a lot of innocent people caught in the crossfire so happy valentine's day happy valentine's day.
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