St. Valentine's Day Massacre Site

Seven men were machine-gunned inside the SMC Cartage Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street on February 14, 1929, in Chicago's most infamous mob hit. The garage was demolished in 1967, but the site (now a lawn for a seniors' development) produces reports of phantom gunshots, screaming, and mist, while the salvaged bricks are considered cursed by their owners.

John May brought his German shepherd, Highball, to the garage at 2122 North Clark Street on the morning of February 14, 1929. May was a mechanic. Highball was tied to a truck near the back. When the shooting stopped, the dog was the only one in the building left alive, barking at a room full of dead men.

Seven people died that morning inside the SMC Cartage Company warehouse. They were lined up against the north wall and shot with Thompson submachine guns. The victims: Albert Kachellek (Bugs Moran's second in command, going by the alias James Clark), Adam Heyer (the gang's bookkeeper), Albert Weinshank (who managed cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran), Frank and Peter Gusenberg (enforcers and brothers), Reinhardt Schwimmer (a former optician turned gambling enthusiast who liked hanging around gangsters), and John May (the mechanic with the dog). The killers dressed as police officers. They drove a car that looked like a detective squad vehicle. The men inside the garage probably thought it was a routine raid.

Al Capone's Chicago Outfit was widely suspected of ordering the hit, intended for Moran himself, who ran late that day and never entered the building. Frank Gusenberg survived long enough for real police to arrive. Asked who shot him, he said, "Nobody shot me." He died three hours later at Alexian Brothers Hospital with fourteen bullets in him. Nobody was ever prosecuted.

The massacre made national headlines. It was the moment American public opinion turned against organized crime, and it marked the beginning of the end for Capone, who was convicted of tax evasion two years later. The garage at 2122 North Clark stood for another 38 years with bullet holes in the north wall, attracting morbid tourists who'd knock on the door and ask to see where it happened.

The building was demolished in 1967. A Canadian businessman named George Patey bought the bricks from the massacre wall at auction. He took them on tour, displaying them at galleries and shopping malls. He tried to open a crime museum in 1969. It failed. He reassembled the wall in the men's room of his Banjo Palace nightclub in Vancouver, British Columbia, turning the bricks into a urinal wall with plastic targets where patrons were supposed to aim. Patey also sold individual bricks for $1,000 each with letters of authenticity. He started getting them back. Buyers reported illness, financial ruin, divorce, and death after purchasing the bricks. As many bricks came back as went out. The Mob Museum in Las Vegas eventually acquired a large portion of the wall and displays it today.

The site is now a narrow lawn belonging to the Margaret Day Blake apartments, a Chicago Housing Authority senior citizens' development. There's a tree where the garage stood. No marker, no plaque, nothing to tell you seven men were killed on this spot. Passersby have reported odd lights and mist rising from the yard. People walking dogs along the sidewalk say their animals react to the site, pulling at their leashes and whining, possibly picking up on whatever frequency Highball was barking at in 1929.

CBS Chicago's haunting series documented reports of phantom gunshots and screaming heard near the site. The building's owner at the time of demolition reported poltergeist activity in the years before the garage came down: things flying off counters, objects falling from shelves.

The massacre itself is one of the most thoroughly documented crimes in American history. Every victim is named. The murder weapon types are known. The motive is clear. The orchestrator is all but certain. The only thing missing is a conviction. Seven men were killed and nobody paid for it. That kind of injustice tends to generate ghost stories, and this one has had nearly a hundred years to build.