Free The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 by Paul R. Kavieff

police
records on reported property losses through
1928 totaling $161,000. This did not include cases that went
unreported.
    The
Purple Gang trial did have one positive outcome. It ended the
Cleaners and Dyers War. The Purple Gang, however, came through
unscathed and lived to fight another day.

    Chapter
/
    The
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
    "The
Purple Gang was a hard lot of guys, so tough they made Capone's
playmates look like a Kindergarten class . . . Detroit's snooty set
used to feel it was really living to talk to them hoodlums without
getting their ounce brains blown out."
    — Milton
"Mezz" Mezzrow
    "/ will
give you 24 hours to kill
at least three and no more than six or else bring them in here. We
don't care if you kill them off. The best crook is a dead crook!"
    Detroit
Police Commissioner William P. Rutledge
    On
February 14th, 1929 a siren-fitted black Cadillac carrying five men
pulled to a stop in front of the S.M.C. Cartage Company in Chicago.
Two Police Officers and two men in overcoats climbed out and walked
briskly into the Cartage Company garage carrying riot length
shotguns.
    The
fifth man remained behind the wheel. In the back of the unheated
garage, six well-dressed gangsters huddled around a coffee pot. A man
in grease stained overalls worked on one of the trucks. A German
Shepherd tied to a bumper barked as the patrolmen burst throught the
door.
    The
gangsters were ordered to face the wall. The men, members of the
George "Bugs" Moran Northside Gang, grudingly complied,
assuming a routine police shakedown. Either someone hadn't been paid
off at the station or the raid was for good police publicity. They
might even be honest cops who didn't know any better.
    After
confiscating their weapons, the uniformed men took several backward
paces. In a flash of metal the detectives pulled Thompson submachine
guns from their overcoats and took positions on either side of their
prey. In an instant, all four men opened fire, spraying their
victims' heads, backs and legs. Six gangsters were dead before their
bodies hit the floor, falling straight back from where they stood.
    The
trench-coated killers then handed their smoking weapons to the
uniformed men, raised their hands above their heads, and left the
garage at gunpoint, "escorted" by the officers. They got
into the waiting police car and tore off, siren screaming. Witnesses
thought they'd seen a police raid—a common sight in Prohibition
era Chicago.
    It
was the howling of the dog that drew attention. Those who had the
nerve to peek inside found the aftermath of the worst gangland
slaughter in U.S. history. Its victims were identified as Pete and
Frank Gusenberg, brothers and main enforcers of the Moran Gang;
Albert Kashelleck (supposedly Moran's brother-in-law); Adam Heyer,
the gang's accountant and business manager; John May, a safecracker
and mechanic; Albert Weinshank, a racketeer; and Dr. Reinhart H.
Schwimmer, an optometrist and sometime bootlegger.
    These
men represented the heart of Chicago's once powerful Northside Mob.
They'd been waiting that morning for Moran to join them. When the
police arrived Frank Gusenberg was still barely alive.
    He
had more than 22 bullet wounds in his body. When asked who shot him,
Gusenberg whispered, "No one—nobody shot me." He died
in a hospital three hours later.
    The
S.M.C. Garage had been the liquor distributing center for the
Northside Gang. Its members had gathered that cold St. Valentine's
morning awaiting a large shipment of whiskey. It had been offered to
Moran by an anonymous source for a bargain price.
    The
load was scheduled for 10:30 A.M., but the mobster was late to the
rendezvous that morning. Moran had missed death by only minutes. As
he and two gunmen walked to the garage they'd seen the siren-fitted
Cadillac pull up and stayed away.
    The
killing was as clever as it was well-planned. It was as though
members of the Chicago police force had actually been responsible for
the massacre. It was soon discovered