George Moran
George Moran
Chicago gangster George "Bugs" Moran was born to French immigrants on August 21, 1893 as Adelard Cunin in St.
Paul, MN. He left St. Paul at age 19 and moved to Chicago,
where he soon hooked up with several of the city's street gangs and got
a taste of the criminal underworld. He took to it readily, and before
he was 21 he had been jailed three times.
Moran, like most gang bosses of the 1920s, came into his own with the advent of Prohibition in 1920. He became the head of a very successful bootlegging outfit known as the North Side Gang. In that capacity he came into conflict with Chicago mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio, who only used violence when absolutely necessary, worked out an agreement with Moran and another gangster, Charles Dion O'Bannion, but that didn't last too long. Moran and O'Bannion detested Capone, often calling him by his nickname "Scarface"--Capone was extremely sensitive about the big knife scar on his face and was known to have killed men who used that nickname in his presence--and O'Bannion eventually paid the price for his defiance of Torrio and Capone: he was assassinated by Capone/Torrio gunmen. Moran attended O'Bannion's funeral--as did Capone and Torrio--and vowed to avenge his friend's murder.
Moran's mob, and the remnants of O'Bannion's gang, engaged in a bloody war with the Torrio/Capone outfit. They tried to kill both Torrio and Capone, once when Capone was spotted getting out of his car on the street and another time when he and his associates were dining in a restaurant. Capone escaped both attempts uninjured, but Torrio was not so luckily. A carload of Moran's gunmen spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire, hitting Torrio at least five times. He survived, but shortly afterward decided to retire and turned over the reins to Capone.
Capone and Moran eventually reached a truce, of sorts. While there were no bloody gun battles as there had been in the past, the two continued to take potshots at each other--Moran would hijack some of Capone's bootlegging trucks, Capone would burn down one of Moran's legitimate businesses, etc. However, it wasn't long before this escalated into full-scale violence, and Moran had several of Capone's friends and associates killed. Two of them were Antonio Lombardo and "Patsy" Lolordo, who had been longtime friends of Capone. He vowed to wipe out Moran once and for all. To that end, he engineered an elaborate assassination plot against Moran and his mob at their headquarters on Clark Street in Chicago. On Feb. 14, 1929, Capone sent a squad of killers dressed as police, complete with police car, to the building, expecting to find Moran and his gang there. Unfortunately, they mistook one of Moran's gangsters for him, not realizing that Moran was in fact walking toward the building when he saw the "police car" outside of it, and he turned around and walked away. Capone's killers lined up the seven men they found in the building and machine-gunned them to death, an incident that became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Moran, when asked by reporters who he thought was behind it, replied, "Nobody but Capone kills like that". His organization remained intact, but when Prohibition was repealed, his gang's fortunes declined, and a few years later Moran decided to leave Chicago. He didn't completely forgo the gangster life, however. In 1936, seven years after the St. Valentine's massacre, a hitman named Jack McGurn--aka "Machine Gun" McGurn--who was widely suspected of being the main triggerman in the massacre was murdered in a bowling alley by a squad of gunmen, and a valentine's card was left near his body. A rhort rhyming limerick about McGurn was also left with the body, and since both Moran and his mentor O'Bannion were known to favor pranks and limericks, it was widely assumed that it was Moran who had McGurn killed as payback for the 1929 killings.
Moran's fortunes declined in the 1930s. He spent several stretches in prison, for relatively penny-ante crimes like mail fraud and robbery. He was eventually sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Federal Prison on a bank-fraud charge, and it was in Leaenworth that he died of lung cancer on Feb. 25, 1957. He was buried in the pauper's section of the prison cemetery.
Moran, like most gang bosses of the 1920s, came into his own with the advent of Prohibition in 1920. He became the head of a very successful bootlegging outfit known as the North Side Gang. In that capacity he came into conflict with Chicago mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio, who only used violence when absolutely necessary, worked out an agreement with Moran and another gangster, Charles Dion O'Bannion, but that didn't last too long. Moran and O'Bannion detested Capone, often calling him by his nickname "Scarface"--Capone was extremely sensitive about the big knife scar on his face and was known to have killed men who used that nickname in his presence--and O'Bannion eventually paid the price for his defiance of Torrio and Capone: he was assassinated by Capone/Torrio gunmen. Moran attended O'Bannion's funeral--as did Capone and Torrio--and vowed to avenge his friend's murder.
Moran's mob, and the remnants of O'Bannion's gang, engaged in a bloody war with the Torrio/Capone outfit. They tried to kill both Torrio and Capone, once when Capone was spotted getting out of his car on the street and another time when he and his associates were dining in a restaurant. Capone escaped both attempts uninjured, but Torrio was not so luckily. A carload of Moran's gunmen spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire, hitting Torrio at least five times. He survived, but shortly afterward decided to retire and turned over the reins to Capone.
Capone and Moran eventually reached a truce, of sorts. While there were no bloody gun battles as there had been in the past, the two continued to take potshots at each other--Moran would hijack some of Capone's bootlegging trucks, Capone would burn down one of Moran's legitimate businesses, etc. However, it wasn't long before this escalated into full-scale violence, and Moran had several of Capone's friends and associates killed. Two of them were Antonio Lombardo and "Patsy" Lolordo, who had been longtime friends of Capone. He vowed to wipe out Moran once and for all. To that end, he engineered an elaborate assassination plot against Moran and his mob at their headquarters on Clark Street in Chicago. On Feb. 14, 1929, Capone sent a squad of killers dressed as police, complete with police car, to the building, expecting to find Moran and his gang there. Unfortunately, they mistook one of Moran's gangsters for him, not realizing that Moran was in fact walking toward the building when he saw the "police car" outside of it, and he turned around and walked away. Capone's killers lined up the seven men they found in the building and machine-gunned them to death, an incident that became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Moran, when asked by reporters who he thought was behind it, replied, "Nobody but Capone kills like that". His organization remained intact, but when Prohibition was repealed, his gang's fortunes declined, and a few years later Moran decided to leave Chicago. He didn't completely forgo the gangster life, however. In 1936, seven years after the St. Valentine's massacre, a hitman named Jack McGurn--aka "Machine Gun" McGurn--who was widely suspected of being the main triggerman in the massacre was murdered in a bowling alley by a squad of gunmen, and a valentine's card was left near his body. A rhort rhyming limerick about McGurn was also left with the body, and since both Moran and his mentor O'Bannion were known to favor pranks and limericks, it was widely assumed that it was Moran who had McGurn killed as payback for the 1929 killings.
Moran's fortunes declined in the 1930s. He spent several stretches in prison, for relatively penny-ante crimes like mail fraud and robbery. He was eventually sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Federal Prison on a bank-fraud charge, and it was in Leaenworth that he died of lung cancer on Feb. 25, 1957. He was buried in the pauper's section of the prison cemetery.
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