by Gordon Kerr
By now, Little Pete was an enormously wealthy man. Revenues from his business interests flooded in, but he always wanted more. Horse racing was the next thing to take his fancy and in 1896 he could be found in the betting rings of the Bay District and Ingleside tracks placing very large bets, sometimes amounting to as much as $8,000 a day. He never lost and within two months had won over $100,000. Naturally, it was not long before stewards became suspicious of the epidemic of sick horses and inept rides by previously talented jockeys and wondered if perhaps it might have something to do with Little Pete’s success. When private detectives followed jockeys to the offices of his shoe company, J.C. Peters, it became evident that he was bribing them to throw races and paying trainers and stable boys to poison their horses. But although the racing establishment was outraged and jockeys were banned, they were unable to pin anything on Little Pete and he pocketed his winnings and carried on as before.
The Sue Yops were still smarting over his success and decided to finally bring an end to his reign in Chinatown, joining forces with 12 other Tongs to engage the Sum Yop in a war of extermination. Little Pete was, naturally, the principal trophy in this war and a record-breaking price of $3,000 was placed on his metal-covered head.
Three thousand dollars was a significant amount of money and would guarantee a comfortable old age back in China. Consequently, the race was on to win the money and Little Pete was pursued everywhere by assassins – the boo how doy of the enemy Tongs were out in force as were numerous freelance professional killers. Little Pete’s iron curtain of bodyguards and hatchet men could not be penetrated, however.
Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop were two young Chinese men who had arrived from China to find their fortune prospecting for gold in Oregon. Having made a considerable sum of money, they headed for Chinatown in January 1897, to see the sights before returning home to China. Both men were members of the Suey Sing Tong that was opposed to Little Pete’s Sum Yops. But they were peaceful men and neither had ever fired a pistol or swung a hatchet in anger. Neither had they heard of Little Pete before their arrival in San Francisco.
It was their cousin, Lem Jok Lep who first told them of the head of the Sum Yop Tong, his criminal activities and the high price that had been put on his head. Lem Jok was an important man, occupying, on behalf of the Suey Sings, a seat on the strategy committee that had been set up by all the Tongs opposed to Little Pete and his men. As he explained the way Little Pete operated to his two cousins, they became angry and decided that there was no reason why they should not kill him and claim the substantial reward.
You would be excused for believing their decision to be a little foolhardy, given the number of people protecting Little Pete and the fact that many of the most efficient hatchet men and assassins had failed so far in the task. Nonetheless, on 23 January 1897, Chinese New Year’s Eve, Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop strolled into the barbershop which occupied the ground floor of Little Pete’s building at the corner of Waverley Street and Washington Street in San Francisco. Little Pete, ever careful about his appearance, was, at that moment, bent over a sink, the barber wetting his hair under a tap before plaiting it into the queue of which the little man was so proud.
For once, however, his cautious nature had failed him. He had been running late that morning and had hurried out of his apartment accompanied by only one of his bodyguards. He had then sent this man out to buy a newspaper for him to read while the barber worked on his queue. So, when the two young men entered the barbershop, Little Pete was utterly defenceless. Chew Tin Gop stayed at the door watching out for the returning bodyguard, while Lem Jung walked up to the Sum Yop leader and grabbed a handful of his hair, at the same time pushing the barber to one side. He pushed the barrel of the revolver he was carrying down the back of Little Pete’s neck, inside the coat of chain mail and pulled the trigger again and again. Little Pete fell to the floor with five bullets lodged in his back.
The two men fled the barbershop to be hailed as heroes. They received their money before escaping to Portland where they boarded a ship for China. Meanwhile, other assassins who had been loitering in the vicinity of the barbershop, armed to the teeth with knives, guns and hatchets, were arrested and charged with the murder, only to be acquitted later.
Little Pete’s death marked the end of the Sum Yops and the other Tongs took savage revenge, slaughtering their enemies. It was a slaughter that was ended only by the intervention of the Emperor of China himself. Thomas Riordan, Little Pete’s attorney, sent a cable to Emperor Kwang Su pleading for help, and the Emperor consulted with the great Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang. Li Hung Chang ordered the arrest of all relatives of the Sue Yops living in China and threw them into prison, threatening to behead them if one more Sum Yop was murdered in San Francisco. The war ended abruptly and a peace agreement was signed by the Sum Yops and the Sue Yops. It is a peace that has never been violated.
The funeral of Little Pete was one of the most lavish ever seen on the Pacific Coast. The funeral cortège was more than a mile long and firecrackers exploded the length of the procession. There were three Chinese bands, and numerous black-gowned priests swung noisy rattles. A huge quantity of baked meats, rice, gin and tea was hauled by a dozen express wagons. At the cemetery, however, there was a riot when a party of thugs threw themselves on the cortège and gorged themselves on the food.
George ‘Bugs’ Moran
George Clarence Moran was born Adelard Cunin on 21 August 1891 on a farm near Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Jules Adelard Cunin and Diana Gobbeil, giving him a curious Irish–Polish lineage. He had one brother and two sisters who would later be scandalised by the activities of their sibling.
When the family moved to Kilgubbin in Chicago’s North Side, the young George began to turn to crime to make a little money on the side. He would kidnap delivery horses and hold them hostage until the owner paid a ransom. Eventually, he was picked up for his horse theft as well as other petty crimes, and was incarcerated in Minnesota’s infamous Red Wing Juvenile Correctional Facility. He escaped, however, changing his name to George Miller to avoid detection on the outside. He ended up in the North Side of Chicago but, when he was arrested in Bloomington, Illinois, for grand larceny in 1912, he gave the name George Moran in order to conceal his previous record. He had apparently tried on a few other names for size – George Heitl and George Cage amongst them, but Moran was the one that stuck and that is how he became known from then on. ‘Bugs’ is the gangster name for someone who is crazy or eccentric and in that name he has illustrious company – Bugsy Siegel and Bugs Bunny, to name but two. He was given it because of the volatility of his temper, but he was just as likely to burst into laughter as explode with anger.
By the time Moran was 21 he bore the battle scars of his tough criminal apprenticeship – a four-inch-long knife scar along the right side of his neck and a crooked middle finger from a broken bone that failed to heal properly. He had already been in prison three times, but had also formed friendships with several people who would influence the course of his murderous life – Dean O’Banion, the violent Irish gang leader and florist, who walked with a limp following a streetcar accident and was afraid of no one, skinny Polish mobster Earl Wojciechowski, known as Hymie Weiss, and a moody Italian robber and kidnapper, Vincent ‘the Schemer’ Drucci.
Their early activities were strictly small-time and gave no hint of the colourful lives they would later lead. They mugged drunk customers leaving the club at which O’Banion worked as a bouncer and they also busied themselves with pickpocketing, shoplifting, breaking and entering and, eventually, armed hold-up and safe-cracking. Moran was arrested in the process of robbing a warehouse and went to Joliet Prison for two years. But the gang were working their way up the gangster ladder, eliminating all their rival gangs and establishing the 42nd and 43rd Wards of Chicago’s North Side as their territory. They began to socialise with politicians and judges, letting them know that they could help them out in whatever way they needed – delivering vot
es at election time, stopping people from voting for opponents and ending disputes. Moran, O’Banion and company had no objection to getting their hands dirty. The favours were returned. Once, when Moran was arrested after his fingerprints were found on the dial of a safe, the judge let him go after a tongue-lashing. As he left the courtroom, Bugs muttered to the amusement of the reporters: ‘It was an oversight. Hymie was supposed to wipe off the prints and he forgot.’ Soon, they had recruited more bootleggers, gamblers, safe-crackers and killers and had become the largest gang in Chicago.
Bugs could not bribe every judge, however, and in 1917 he was caught red-handed, carrying out an armed robbery in a department store. He went back to Joliet for a five-year stretch, emerging again in 1923.
When the Volstead Act introduced Prohibition in 1918, other gangs began to put their snouts in the trough that had been the North Side Mob’s alone. Johnny Torrio and his lieutenant, Al Capone, moved into the Southside of Chicago, pushing out an Irish brothers’ gang, the Southside O’Donnells, and any other gang that got in the way. Torrio tried to establish borders around each gang’s territory and worked alongside O’Banion and his North Siders for a while. Trouble flared, however, when the Gennas, a band of Sicilian brothers who were allied to Torrio and Capone, started undercutting O’Banion and his men on sales of booze on North Sider territory. O’Banion started hijacking the Gennas’ alcohol shipments.
When O’Banion started labelling the Italians as ‘greaseballs’ and ‘dagos’ and Moran used the words ‘Scarface’ or ‘the behemoth’ to the press to describe Capone, the situation started to get out of hand. It ended with the assassination of O’Banion. The Gennas owed him $30,000 for a gambling debt and O’Banion told them they had to pay it in a week ‘or else’. He then set up Johnny Torrio, telling him that he wanted to get out and retire and inviting him to buy his Siben Brewery. When Torrio turned up the cops were waiting for him. It was his second offence and he went to jail for nine months while O’Banion just laughed and paid a paltry $7,500 fine. When Torrio found out that he had been set up, the order went out to kill the florist. Frank Yale, John Scalise and Alberto Anselmi obliged, gunning the Irishman down in his flower shop.
Following O’Banion’s death, the leaders of the North Side gang, Weiss, Moran and Drucci, ran a brazen advert in the city’s main newspapers, stating that they would be running the organisation as equals. They signed it ‘Board of Governors’. Chicagoans were highly amused, but Chief of Police, Morgan Collins, was enraged by their nerve.
Hymie Weiss took over at the top and Bugs became underboss. Their names began to become regular features in the press, and Bugs would be photographed regularly, always immaculate in three-piece suit, cashmere coat and expensive fedora. He was loved by politicians because he gave them money and helped finance their affairs and their lifestyles, and ordinary Chicagoans loved him because he seemed a Robin Hood figure to them, taking on the authorities and ever-ready with a quip or a joke. They also loved the fact that he was beating the Sicilians at their own game. To them, even his violence was carried out with style.
The Capone mob and Weiss and Moran’s gang now engaged in a massive turf war that would cost the lives of many men on each side, but would also, ultimately, cost Scarface his freedom.
Moran hated Capone. It was not just about fighting for power and wealth. It was personal. Like O’Banion, he was disgusted by the fact that Capone’s business interests included prostitution. In spite of his violence and criminality, Moran was still a good Catholic, a better one, to his mind, than Capone. He refused to run brothels or pimp prostitutes, lucrative though these were. He set out to avenge O’Banion and kill his nemesis, Al Capone.
Their first attempt on Capone’s life happened more by accident than by design. On a snowy night, 12 January 1925, Moran, Drucci and Weiss had been driving round town, hoping to find him. When they finally saw his black sedan parked outside Palermo’s Restaurant on the South Side and ‘the behemoth’ climbing out of it, it was like all their Christmases rolled into one. They quickly took aim with three machine guns and opened fire, Capone and his men throwing themselves to the ground as bullets peppered the car. Only Capone’s driver was injured and Scarface lived to fight another day. He took no chances though. From then on he drove round in a specially built armoured car.
They may have failed to nail Capone, but they came close to killing Torrio himself. He rarely carried a gun and refused a bodyguard, a stubbornness that he would live to regret. On 25 January 1925, Weiss and Moran waited for him outside his house in a car driven by Vincent Drucci. As soon as Torrio pulled up and got out of his car, Moran and Weiss leapt out, guns blazing. Torrio’s driver was wounded and fell to the ground. Torrio took off, running towards his house but as he reached the lawn, heard a blast and felt a sharp pain on his face. Blood began to spurt from where a bullet had blown away a part of his cheekbone. He was hit several times more and crumpled to the ground. Moran approached him, gun at arm’s length, preparing to fire a shot into his skull to deliver the coup de grâce, but, pulling the trigger, all he heard was a click. He had run out of ammo. By now, people were looking out of their windows and cars were stopping at the top of the street to take a look. Moran cursed and jumped into the car, fleeing the scene, leaving the Italian still alive.
Torrio adhered to the strict Mafia code of omerta and would not divulge to the police who had tried to kill him. Moran was eventually arrested, but Torrio would not press charges and it was over. It was over for Torrio, too, however. He only just escaped with his life and decided to hang up his gun. He handed all his affairs over to his sidekick, Al Capone, and went into retirement.
Bugs decided that with Torrio out of the way, it was time to go after the Gennas. After all, they had caused all the trouble in the first place. Accompanied by Weiss and a few other associates, he ambushed Angelo Genna in May 1925, but he escaped and a frantic car chase ensued. Angelo lost control of his vehicle, crashed headlong into a lamppost and was trapped behind the wheel. Bugs’s car pulled up and he got out, blasting away into the Sicilian’s car, killing him.
Angelo’s brother, Mike, tried to take revenge on the North Siders, engaging in a fierce but inconclusive shoot-out with them. Shortly after, however, he was shot to death by the police. Then Giuseppe ‘The Cavalier’ Nerone, a Genna ally, was added to the toll. In November of that same year, Vince Drucci wiped out Genna backer Samuzzo Amatuna in a shooting in a barbershop. That left only Tony Genna who was gunned down, although it is unclear whether he was shot by Bugs and his gang or by Al Capone, clearing up the last vestiges of the Gennas and grabbing the spoils.
Moran thought he could hurt Capone by taking out some of the heavy security presence around him. So he kidnapped one of his bodyguards, tortured him with wire and burned him with cigarettes, before executing him and dumping his body. It made no difference.
Capone, in his turn, ambushed the North Siders a number of times. One day, Moran and Drucci were intercepted as they drove along Congress Avenue. Machine-gun bullets thudded into the car’s upholstery as it jumped the kerb and crashed into a nearby building. They clambered out into the nearest doorway, firing backwards at their pursuers. They escaped through the building, and ran in the direction of the nearest friendly doctor.
In August, a passing car opened fire on Weiss and Drucci as they made their way to the Standard Oil building to pay off a politician. The two men jumped behind parked cars as passers-by screamed and hit the dirt.
Just five days later, Weiss and Drucci were again targets for Capone’s goons. This time they shot back and the street became something like a scene from a Hollywood gangster movie, as Drucci jumped onto the running board of a car belonging to Capone soldier Louis Barko. The driver gunned the vehicle, hitting the pavement and throwing Drucci to the ground. He stood up and fired at the retreating car. When the cops arrived, Drucci said he was merely trying to stop some thieves who had tried to steal his wallet. He was charged with nothing more than creating a public
disturbance.
In September 1926 Moran made another attempt on Capone’s life. A fleet of six cars, machine guns poking out of curtained windows, drove into Cicero, the town on the outskirts of Chicago that was the base for Capone’s operations. They drove down 22nd Street where Capone’s hotel, the Hawthorne, was located, firing at every building. When they got to the hotel, a man dressed in overalls jumped out and began raking the lobby with machine-gun fire. Inside, Capone had been drinking with his personal bodyguard Frankie Rio. Rio threw Capone to the floor as the bullets shattered glass and furnishings around them. By the time the cars sped off, over 1,000 bullets had been fired, although the initial shots had been blanks, intended to scare people off the streets. Again Capone was left shaken but unhurt. In fact he was so shaken that he tried to call a truce with Moran and Weiss, but to no avail. The war continued and Capone again struck back, hitting the gang at its very heart.
The following month, as he was crossing State Street in Chicago with four of his men, Hymie Weiss was gunned down in a hail of shotgun and sub-machine-gun fire from a nearby second-storey window. Hymie died, aged 29, leaving $1.3 million. It was revealed that he suffered from arterial cancer, the symptoms of which were severe headaches, dizziness and fainting fits. He had not expected to live to an old age anyway, and had had little to fear when fighting Capone and his goons. Eventually, everyone decided enough was enough and, at a peace conference attended by Moran and the other bosses, it was decided to bring the shootings and bombings to an end and ensure that everyone got his fair share.
The peace held for a while but during it another of Moran’s cohorts died. Vincent Drucci was killed in a fight with the police, not with other gangsters. Now, with everyone dead apart from himself, Bugs Moran assumed leadership of the gang at the age of 34.
