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

for dead, they hurried back to Moran with the good news.
Unfortunately for them, McGurn lived.
    He
also knew the Gusenbergs represented Bugs' Northside Gang. When he
recovered, he went to Capone to get permission to eliminate the
Northsiders once and for all. With Capone's blessing, McGurn planned
the massacre.
    A
hit team was assembled that consisted of Fred Burke; James Ray,
another Egan's Rats gunman; Joseph Lolardo; and two of the Capone
organization's top killers, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. Burke
and Ray were to wear police uniforms so they wouldn't be recognized
by Moran's boys.
    These
gangsters had walked in each other's territories for years but now
they'd come together for one of the most sensational killings in
organized crime's history. The first and only clue to the identities
of the killers was the result of a traffic accident in Michigan at
the end of the same year.
    On
the evening of December 14th, 1929 Forrest Kool was driving south on
U.S. 12, headed for St. Joseph, Michigan, when a Hudson coupe heading
in the opposite direction veered into his lane. Kool swerved hard to
avoid a collision, but the Hudson coupe struck him and drove on.
    Another
driver who'd witnessed the accident followed the Hudson with Kool on
the running board. Just up the road the men spotted it on the
shoulder. Kool might've kept on going that night had he realized the
driver of the coupe was Egan Rats' gunman Fred "Killer"
Burke.
    Burke
had recently bought a hideout in the area, and he and his girlfriend
had been there for several months. He was already wanted for robbery
and murder. Most of the law enforcement agencies in the Midwest were
looking for him.
    When
the men approached him, they noticed that he was drunk. He agreed to
go look at the damage he'd done to Kool's car. He offered twenty-five
dollars for the damages, but said he did not have anything smaller
than hundreds. Kool wanted to call the police.
    Burke
replied, "Well, if that's what you want it suits me!" He
actually helped straighten out the fender and then got back in his
car. When he pulled onto the road, Kool followed him.
    Just
down the road, Burke pulled off again and waved Kool around him, then
followed behind. As they arrived in St. Joseph Burke began blowing
his horn as if to get Kool's attention. Hoping Burke had decided to
settle for damages he pulled over, but this time Burke fled.
    As
Kool was describing the accident to an officer, the gangster drove
by. The officer jumped on the running board of Kool's vehicle and ran
down to Burke's at a stop light. He leaped onto the running board and
rode for several blocks until Burke stopped at a light, waited for it
to turn green, and shot him at point blank range.
    The
officer collapsed in the street while Burke's car roared away. Burke
wrecked the coupe further down the road and left the car. Police
found his drivers license inside.
    A
raid of his hideout produced an arsenal of weapons: two machine guns,
two automatic rifles, a sawed-off shotgun, several revolvers, and
several hundred rounds of ammunition. Inside a bedroom closet was a
valise containing $310,000 in stolen negotiable securities. Burke,
meanwhile, had disappeared.
    Headlines
screamed Burke's Detroit underworld background and his role in the
Milaflores Apartment Massacre in March of 1927. His membership in
Joseph "Red" O'Riordan's Irish gang of violent kidnappers
had made him famous years earlier, now he was suspected of the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
    The
new science of Ballistics had just gained credence by the time of the
massacre. Major Calvin Goddard had proven that every firearm leaves a
distinctive series of marks on the bullet as it passes through the
barrel. No two weapons mark ammunition in the same pattern.
    Each
Valentine killer had provided a set of uniquely different mechanical
fingerprints. The machine guns in Burke's hideaway were sent to
Goddard's Chicago laboratory where he compared the bullets and shells
to those collected at