Say It With Flowers ... or Bullets - February 14, 2007

Most friends and lovers send their Valentine's greetings in the usual way: candy, flowers, cards. But Al Capone was anything but a "usual" guy.  In 1929, when he wanted to make his feelings for rival George "Bugs" Moran known, his Cupids didn't use arrows. They used Thompson submachine guns loaded with kisses, not covered in chocolate, but in lead.  Seven members of the Moran gang met their ends that day, including one who refused to turn stool pigeon, insisting, "Nobody shot me." The garage where the massacre took place was torn down in 1967, and the bricks were sold to a businessman who used them in the men's room of his restaurant.  When that building was demolished, he tried selling the bricks individually, but buyers kept returning them, claiming they were cursed. (300 of them ended up in Las Vegas, of all places. Hard to imagine mob relics turning up there ...) And the vacant lot in Chicago that had been the site of garage turned murder site? Passers-by still report strange noises and feelings of fear. One assumes those whispers are something other than sweet nothings. Suggested Sites... FBI: Al Capone - the Feds' biography of Alphonse Capone, also known as "Snorky." Wikipedia: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre - summing-up of a rubbing-out. Chicago Detours: Five Sites Al Capone Actually Knew - walk in the steps of Scarface and his gang. Crime Library: Eliot Ness - biography of the man who led the team that brought Capone to justice. Al Capone vs. George Moran: - the man Capone thought was too dangerous to leave alone.