Early Years
Born Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski in Chicago, he grew up on the North Side with his Polish-American family. He was nicknamed "Hymie", "Hymie the Polack" and "Hymie the Pole", later in his career. He was Roman Catholic, despite the "Jewish-sounding" moniker. As a teenager, Weiss became a petty criminal (after he upset a fragrance shelf during a botched burglary as a youth, police dubbed him 'The Perfume Burglar') and ultimately befriended an Irish-American teen named Dean O'Banion. With Weiss and George "Bugs" Moran, O'Banion established the North Side Gang, a criminal organization that eventually controlled bootlegging and other illicit activities in the northern part of Chicago.
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