14. Payback For the Valentine’s Day Massacre
Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn (1902 – 1936) got his nickname because of his love of Thompson submachine guns. He was a Sicilian born small time boxer, who changed his birth name from Vincenzo Gibaldi to the Irish-sounding Jack McGurn, because boxers with Irish names got better bookings back then. Boxing didn’t pan out, so McGurn put more time and effort into his criminal sideline as mob muscle, and by the mid 1920s, he had become one of Al Capone’s chief bodyguards and hitmen. He was a suspect in the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre but authorities were unable to charge him for lack of evidence.
Because mob loyalty is largely a myth, Capone and the Chicago Outfit distanced themselves from McGurn, to avoid the heat he drew as a suspect. Cast off, McGurn tried his hand at professional golfing. The results were as dismal as his boxing career, and McGurn fell into poverty. His misery came to an end on February 15th, 1936, one day after the seventh anniversary of the massacre, when three hitmen shot him dead in a Chicago bowling alley. They reportedly left a Valentine’s card near McGurn’s corpse, that read: “You’ve lost your job, you’ve lost your dough, Your jewels and cars and handsome houses, But things could still be worse you know… At least you haven’t lost your trousers!“
