This week in Michigan history: A tie to crime that shocked a nation
- Al Capone is believed to have set up the St. Valentine's Day Massacre with a gangster in Detroit. -
Although no one was ever charged in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, authorities developed information that it was effectively set up by a phone call from Abe Bernstein, one of four brothers who led Detroit’s infamous Purple Gang.
A brutal bunch, the Purples rose to infamy during Prohibition (1919-33) when illegal alcohol poured into the U.S. from Canada through Detroit, which supplied the speakeasies in Chicago. Capone ran the south side joints, and George (Bugs) Moran controlled the north side. The two were unfriendly rivals in a violent era.
The Purples were not so much importers as hijackers of liquor shipments, which they sold to Capone.
According to many reports from that period, about a month before the massacre, members of the Moran gang had tried to kill Capone lieutenant Jack (Machine Gun) McGurn.
To retaliate, Capone asked Bernstein to call Moran and offer him a shipment of hijacked booze, to be delivered on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day to a north side garage. But instead of a truckload of whiskey, four gunmen showed up, two dressed as police officers. Moran, arriving late, saw the police uniforms outside the garage and drove away. Inside, seven men — five who worked for Moran, a mechanic and a doctor who liked to hang around with gangsters — were lined up against a brick wall and slaughtered by 200 bullets.
Capone was in Florida at the time. Bernstein was in Detroit. There was never enough evidence to arrest either.
Bernstein died in Florida in 1968.
Source: freep.com
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