I want to resist calling it an average day, but it was a usual gray Chicago February day, a bitter 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The day before an inch of snow had fallen. At a quarter past ten that Thursday morning Elmer Lewis struggled eastbound through traffic on North Webster Avenue. His greatest obstacle was his own bulky Chicago built Nelson-LeMoon delivery truck. As he entered the intersection with North Clark Street (above), a four door Cadillac sedan heading south ran the light in front of him.
Trying to avoid the collision, Lewis swerved onto Clark street, but the truck's (above) solid rubber tires slid on the cold pavement and Lewis' truck tapped the rear steel bumper of the big passenger car. Seeing the Cadillac he had just hit was a police car, Lewis pulled over in front of 2156 North Clark Street, expecting a ticket and an angry lecture.
But the uniform cop driving the big Cadillac just flashing a gap tooth smile, and drove on. No damage done, Relived Elmer Lewis proceeded to complete his delivery for the Beaver Paper Company, while the cop went on to complete his mission of murdering seven men in less than six seconds.
When the technocrat Colonel John Thompson (above) resigned from the U.S. army in 1914, it was with the specific intent to get rich. He immediately found employment building factories for Remington Arms Company, but also found time to form a partnership with John Blish who had invented a unique breech system for an automatic weapon. Together, as the Auto-Ordinance Company, they spent five years in raising money for the development of a new gun.
Their final design was just under three feet long and just under 11 pounds in weight. It fired a heavy .45 caliber lead bullet at 935 feet per second. And it could fire one thousand of those rounds in 60 seconds. The gun was inaccurate at anything over 50 yards, and was nicknamed "The Trench Sweeper". But the design was finished too late to profit from the First World War.
After driving one block further south the sedan pulled to the west side curb in front of 2122 North Clark Street (above). The bottom half of the front window of the nondescript single story building identified the occupants as the SMC Cartage Company. Four men climbed out of the big car. The first two men who walked into the building wore police uniforms and were carrying shotguns. They were followed by two civilians wearing long heavy overcoats.
The uniformed officers purposefully strode through the unlocked front door. Past a tiny office was a second door, and through that was the 110 foot long garage. Parked head-in facing the west wall were three delivery trucks. Scattered beyond were three more trucks, one being worked on by a mechanic, and two cars. The mechanic's German Shepard dog, named “Highball”, was tied to the bumper of a truck. Just inside the door were six men wearing overcoats, smoking, drinking coffee and talking. The cops yelled for the men to put their hands up. This, they announced, was a raid. The seven occupants of 2122 North Clark Street had less than 3 minutes to live.
Initially Auto-Ordinance sold the "Tommy" guns for $200.00 each, with a standard 20 round “stick” magazine, or optionally for an additional 20 or $25, a circular magazine of either 50 or 100 rounds. Because the gun cost almost half of what a new Model "T" Ford did, local police departments, government guards, corporate strike breakers and messengers, even the United States Marine Corps, could not afford to buy very many. Also the supply of World War One surplus Browning Automatic Rifles had depressed the market for automatic weapons.
The company also felt the legal need to provide buyers with a disclaimer: “Thompson-guns are sold you with the understanding that you will be responsible for their re-sale to those on the side of law and order.” By 1925 Auto-Ordinance was reduced to marketing the gun at $175 each to western ranchers and farmers, available at gun shops, hardware stores, and by mail. Still, by 1928, sales were so bad John Thompson was replaced as Chief Executive Officer of Auto-Ordinance.
The police officers ordered the men, including the mechanic, to line up single file and put their hands against the north wall of the garage. While one officer held a shotgun on the seven, a second patted them down for weapons, tossing their handguns to the floor.
The men peacefully complied, probably because police “shakedowns” like this were common. The men in the freezing garage this morning probably assumed once these rouge cops realized who they were rousting, apologies would be offered. They probably thought that - right up until they heard the bolts on two Thompson machine guns being pulled back, in preparation for firing.
In November of 1925 Auto-Ordinance shipped one Thompson Machine gun with the serial number of #2347 to Mr. Les Farmer, a Marion, Illinois sheriff's deputy. He was a known member of a St. Louis mob called “Egan's Rats”. On Monday, 28 March, 1927, two other former “Rats” members, Fred “Killer” Burke (above), and Gus Winkler, used that gun in the ambush of three gangsters in Detroit, Michigan.
At 4:45 on the morning of Monday, 28 March, 1927, gangsters Frank Wright, Joseph Bloom and George Cohen knocked on the door of Room 308 of the Milaflores Apartments (above). Abruptly the stairwell door at the end of the hall swung open, and Fred Burke blasted a machine gun down the hallway. Two of the men died instantly, literally cut to pieces. Frank Wright, died 20 hours later. His only comment was, “The machine gun worked. That's all I can remember.”
In the cold Clark Street Garage, and standing about ten feet from the wall, the two men in plain clothes pulled Thompson machine guns from beneath their overcoats. One Tommy gun had a 50 round circular magazine, the second a 20 round stick. When they they pulled the triggers, the two guns fired their 70 combined rounds within six seconds. In that frighteningly short time each of the seven victims received at least 15 wounds.
On the first day of July, 1928, brutal crime boss Frankie Yale, aka “The Beau Brummnel of Brooklyn”, (above) was driving alone on New Urecht Avenue when a Buick sedan pulled up next to him. From the front and back passenger seats gunmen opened fire with Thompson machine guns. The body of Frankie's Lincoln coup was armor plated, but not the windows. Still, he was able to accelerate away from the gunfire. The assailants caught up with him again at 44th street, where shotguns joined the volley of fire.
Frankie crashed into the front steps of an apartment building at 923 44th street (above). When examined by police, Frankie was adorned with a 4 carat diamond ring and a large fresh hole in the back of his head.
Back on Valentine's Day, 1929, the seven men being executed were easy targets. At the left end of the line, 40 year old Pete “Goosy” Gusenberg staggered to his left and fell face down on the seat of a wooden chair (above, left). Forty-two year old James (Kachellek) Clark dropped forward onto his face against the wall (above, center).
Optician and gangster groupie Dr Reinhardt Schwinner, mob business manager Adam Heyer (aka John Snyder), nightclub manager Albert Weinshank, and 39 year old mechanic John May fell onto their backs. The final victim, 37 year old Frank “Hock” Gusenberg, dropped face down as well. One police officer then stepped forward and delivered a double barreled point blank shot gun coupe de grace to John May (above, second from the right) obliterating his half his face.
The four intruders then purposefully strode back out of the front door, pantomiming an arrest. The Cadillac sedan then pulled out into traffic and continued south on North Clark. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was over. From start to finish it had taken less than five minutes.
On 19 October 1928, Auto-Ordinance shipped three Thompsons, (serial numbers #6926, #7580, #7699) with three 50 round magazines to Peter Von Frantzius Sporting Goods, 608 Diversey Parkway, Chicago (above).
The shipment was recorded as received on 23 October, and according to records, were trans-shipped that same day to a Railway Express warehouse (above) in Elgin, Illinois. Here it waited to be picked up by a private customer - Mr. Victor Thompson. However the package lay unopened and unclaimed in the warehouse until authorities opened it in the summer of 1929. The box which should have contained three Thompson machine guns and magazines, was filled with packing material and four bricks. The guns had disappeared.
The first police officer on the scene, Sargent Thomas Loftus, found Frank “Hock” Gusenberg,
trying to climb into one of the straight back chairs next to his brother's body (above, left). Loftus had grown up in the same East Side neighborhood as Frank. His childhood friend was now bleeding profusely from 14 bullet wounds, but still recognized him. Loftus asked, “Who did it?” Gusenberg wheezed “I won't talk,” and then urged Loftus to take him to a hospital.
Hank Gusenberg died three hours later in Akexian Brothers Hospital. Highball, the now abandoned German Shepard, was so terrified and unruly, he could not be calmed and had to be put down. He was the eighth and usually forgotten victim.
From the beginning it was called “The Massacre”. Eight months afterward deputy police commissioner John Stege told a reporter, “When a representative of the Auto-Ordnance company...said he wanted to help me in tracing the guns...I told him the help he could give me was to go back and close the gun factory. The weapons are absolutely of no value to...anyone other than criminals We would never dare use one of them,” he added, because “too many innocent people might be killed.”
The Chicago Tribune interviewed Mr V.A. Daniels, who admitted reselling Thompsons to criminals for two hundred dollars profit apiece. He explained, “It's no problem to buy machine guns. All I had to do was to send to New York for them and they shipped them to me.” Auto-Ordinance was so eager to makes sales, that even after a $180 check from Daniels bounced, they allowed him to continue buying. Peter Von Frantzius, whose store had facilitated the illegal transfer of at least three machine guns to Chicago mobsters, had charged just $2 to file down the serial number on any weapon. He admitted under oath he felt no moral responsibility. He said all he cared about was making money.
On 14 December 1929, 11 months after “The Massacre”, a minor traffic accident in St. Joseph, Michigan lead to the murder of police officer Charles Skelly. The shooter's car was later found abandoned, and the registration traced back to a Mr. Fred Dane (above).
When police searched his home they found Dane gone, but under a bed, in a large trunk, they found two Thompson machine guns (above). A rinsing in acid recovered the ground down serial numbers - #2347 and #7580.
They also found information indicating that Fred Dane was really Fred “Killer” Burke (above), who was identified by delivery driver Elmer Lewis as the officer who had waved him on, after their collision on North Clark Street on St. Valentines' Day morning.
Peter Von Frantzius admitted selling the three missing Thompsons to Frank V. Tompson (above), who claimed to have resold them to James “Bozo” Shupe.
Shupe (above) refused to talk to authorities, and quietly escaped to visit his mother in New York City. It did him no good.
On 31 July, 1929. 'Bozo' and a friend were killed in a "hit" outside of a tobacco store on West Madison Avenue, in New York City. Police never identified his killers.
Once Fred Burke was identified as the fake police officer who waved on truck driver Elmer Lewis, the two Thompson Machine guns found in Michigan were sent to Chicago to be tested by ballistics expert Calvin Goddard (above, left).
In a forensics science first, examining ejection markings on the shell casings removed from the victims (above), Goddard proved that both guns had been used in “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre:. Gun #2347 had also killed Brooklyn's Frankie Yale, and had also been used in the 1927 Detroit “Milaflores Massacre".
In addition, ammunition found at Burkes' home (above), and produced by the United States Cartridge Company during 1927-28, and was also proven to having been used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Eight months after “The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre” the stock market crashed, and with Republicans unable to slow the Great Depression from engulfing the nation, in November of 1933, a Democratic sweep brought Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House, with the Democratic dominated 73rd Congress.
Curiously, the first two pieces of legislation introduced by this reform minded Congress were not geared toward solving the financial crises. First came the repeal of Prohibition, which had funded the gang wars. And second came The National Firearms Act (NFA), to deal with the weapons which had armed the gangsters and bootleggers. Rather than arguing about firing rates or magazine sizes, the Tommy Guns was simply taxed right out of the market place.
Under the NFA any gun that fired more than one bullet with one pull on the trigger, now carried a tax of $200 – thus more doubling the price of the Thompson. When added to the Thompson's weaknesses – its inaccuracy and its weight – the tax drove Auto-Ordinance to the brink of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, since 1934 the money to be made selling guns has prevented the tax on military style weapons from being raised.
It is interesting that ten years after “The Massacre”, as the United States was gearing up for World War Two, a new company, named Savage Arms, took a fresh look at the Thompson design. They discovered that by replacing John Blish's ingenious breech system, the weapon remained fully automatic. But the new simpler breech significantly reduced the price of manufacture.
The garage at 2122 North Clark Street (above) eventually became an antique furniture store, before, finally being torn down in 1967. Today it is a parking lot.
Fred Killer Burke (above) the only man ever tied directly to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, was sentenced to life in prison for his murder of State Police Officer Charles Skelly. Burke would die in a Michigan state prison in 1940, an over weight untreated diabetic. No one would ever be charged with the seven brutal murders in a Chicago garage.
And the gun made infamous on that lovers' holiday is still sold by Auto-Ordinance and Savage Arms, who are both still profiting from selling a weapon of mass destruction which in comparison to modern assault weapons is now seen as a romantic historical anomaly. And no one seems to remember the cost of all that profit.
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