St. Valentines Day Massacre | The Land of Bilk and Money
2/4/202639 min
In 1920, a young Al Capone arrived in Chicago looking for a fresh start, and his timing couldn’t have been better. That same year, Prohibition outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol, turning America’s thirst into a criminal gold rush. Chicago quickly became the epicenter of bootlegging, and Capone was determined to seize the moment and make himself rich beyond imagination. But the city was already crowded with ambitious gangsters chasing the same prize. As rival bootleggers carved up territory, Chicago descended into a violent turf war that would reshape the criminal underworld.
See...
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLindsey Graham· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Imagine it's late in the morning on February fourteenth, nineteen twenty-nine. You're an officer in the Chicago Police Department, and you're sitting in the passenger seat of a telephone repair truck as it drives down a snowy street of the North Side neighborhood. You shouldn't need to hitch rides like this, but both of the station's patrol cars were in use when an urgent call came in about half an hour ago. So you had to ask a workman who was repairing a phone at the station to drive you over. The repairman pulls in front of a brick building with the name SMC Cartage Company painted across a blacked-out window. You hop down from the truck and land directly in a pile of dirty snow. As icy water seeps into your shoe, you look over at the garage. There's no obvious sign that anything's amiss. But just then, one of the station's patrol cars screeches to a stop nearby. A beat cop jumps out. "Hey, good timing! I heard the call on the radio to report here, but then the reception cut out. What's going on?" "Some lady called the station hysterical, insisted that the garage was full of death and destruction. The Sarge said she sounded nutso, so it's probably nothing. I bet she heard some car backfiring and assumed it was gunshots. Happens all the time." You and the other officer approach the door of the garage. He shoves