The Gusenberg Brothers and The Chicago Gang Wars
Frank Gusenberg participated in the gargantuan drive-by shooting in the North Side performed on Capone's headquarters, the Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero, Illinois, riddling it with thousands of bullets on September 20, 1926. According to many accounts, the second to last car stopped in front of the hotel restaurant where Capone was cowering and Frank's brother Pete emerged, clad in a khaki Army shirt, brown overalls, and carrying a Thompson submachine gun fitted with a 100-round capacity drum. Kneeling in front of the doorway, Gusenberg emptied the entire drum into the restaurant, and then casually strolled back to his car, which then sped off to safety.
The attack worked. Capone was very shaken and requested a sitdown between the two gangs. However, it failed. Hymie Weiss was murdered three weeks later, and over the next couple of years, the North Side Gang continued to weaken. The North Siders especially wished to kill Jack McGurn, as he was rumored to have been the machine-gunner who killed Weiss. On at least two occasions, the Gusenberg brothers made attempts on his life. Despite receiving several wounds, McGurn survived these attempts. Al Capone had Pasquale "Patsy" Lolordo installed as head of the influential fraternal organization Unione Siciliane. By late 1928, the leader of the North Side Gang, Bugs Moran, struck an alliance with Al Capone's rival Joe Aiello. The latter, assisted by the Gusenberg brothers, killed Antonio Lombardo and Pasqualino Lolordo, presidents of the Unione Siciliane. It was as a result of these murders that Capone plotted to eliminate Bugs Moran.
Read more about this topic: Frank Gusenberg
Famous quotes containing the words brothers, chicago, gang and/or wars:
“They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs;
They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;
They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;
On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. It’s the Chicago way and that’s how you get Capone.”
—David Mamet, U.S. screenwriter, and Brian DePalma. Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“There’s in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)