Gang War
On September 20, 1926, Peter Gusenberg participated in the infamous drive-by shooting on the Hawthorne Hotel, Capone's Cicero, Illinois headquarters. The North Siders riddled the hotel with thousands of bullets. According to many accounts, the second to last car stopped in front of the hotel restaurant when Peter Gusenberg emerged, clad in a khaki Army shirt and brown overalls, and carrying a Thompson submachine gun. Kneeling in front of the doorway, Gusenberg emptied the entire 100-round capacity drum into the restaurant, and then casually strolled back to his car, which then sped off. The attack left Capone terrified and he offered a truce between the two gangs. Peace talks faltered on the concessions that the North Siders demanded.
As the gang war continued, the North Side Gang started to weaken. Three weeks after the Hawthorne Hotel attack, Hymie Weiss was murdered by a Capone hit squad. Moran now took over the gang. The North Siders especially wanted to kill Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, as he was rumored to have killed Weiss. On at least two occasions, the Gusenberg brothers tried to kill McGurn. Despite wounding him several times, McGurn survived these attempts on his life.
By late 1928, Moran struck an alliance with Capone rival Joe Aiello. Aiello and the Gusenberg brothers first killed Antonio Lombardo and then Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo, two successive presidents of the Unione Siciliane and both Capone allies. It was these murders that motivated Capone to eliminate Moran and the North Side Gang in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Read more about this topic: Peter Gusenberg
Famous quotes containing the words gang and/or war:
“We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)