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It was a chilly snowy winter’s day

In old Chicago on February 14, 1929

A very cold young boy was twelve years old

As he stood outside waiting for the city bus line

Inside an extremely dark gigantic warehouse nearby

Seven men with not a care in the world patiently sat

Waiting for their eager liquor customers to arrive

When the boy heard a very loud ‘Rat A Tat Tat’

Soon six of these men now lay very dead

Sprawled on the floor of the old warehouse

The young boy nervously listening to it all

Crouched in a doorway as quiet as a mouse

A huge police paddywagon had pulled up

Five men with machineguns had gone inside

The boy knew that this was more than an arrest

The boy knew that he had to find a place to hide

A dog in the warehouse began mournfully howling

As the police paddywagon sped off down the street

The hiding boy began running away as fast as he could

The boy kept running until he had huge blisters on his feet

This was one St. Valentine’s Day

That was etched inside this boy’s brain

Until the very day that he passed away

The sound of those machineguns would remain

©2006, Ed Kostro

It was 10:30 AM, February 14, 1929, at the S.M.C. Warehouse Garage located at 2122 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois.  And it was supposed to be just another illegal liquor transaction by the mob.

Inside the warehouse, seven men belonging to Bugsy Moran’s gang sat waiting for their customers, and for their tardy boss, to arrive.

But instead of Bugsy or their liquor customers, several men soon arrived in a Police Paddywagon. Five men quickly got out of the police vehicle, three of them in uniform and two in civilian clothing, and they quickly burst into the building with shouts of, “This is a raid.”

These seven men in the old warehouse probably never expected that two of the men dressed as policemen would soon open fire with their .45 caliber Thompson machine guns, and then quickly flee the scene.

Almost instantly, six of these men were dead, and one lingered for about an hour before dying. A dog inside the warehouse began howling after the intruders hurriedly left, and when neighbors went to see what was going on, they discovered the gruesome bloody murder scene above.

During the subsequent police questioning, Bugsy Moran insisted that “Only Capone kills like that.”  And Al Capone was, indeed, Moran’s rival in the lucrative illegal liquor business in Chicago.

But notorious gangster Al Capone had an air-tight alibi; he was at his beach house in Miami, Florida when this massacre took place.

And witnesses that morning could only say they saw men who looked like police officers coming and going immediately before and after the sounds of the rapid machinegun fire.

No one was ever charged for these seven brutal murders; it was just another bloody day in the history of my hometown. And it was a St. Valentine’s Day that my father never forgot, for the rest of his natural days.

My father’s stories of the old days in Chicago also truly sparked my lifelong interest in history.