10. The Man Who Scared Al Capone
Yale was arrested, but was released when police failed to shake his alibi. Capone returned the favor a year later, when he helped Yale murder three rivals and wound a fourth in an ambush outside a New York City nightclub. The friendship ended in 1927 when Yale, Capone’s whiskey supplier, got greedy and began to hijack the Chicago gangster’s trucks. Negotiations failed to resolve matters, so Capone went after his former boss. On July 1st, 1928, Yale received a call that something was wrong with his wife. Yale jumped into his armor-plated car and sped off, without waiting for his usual escort of bodyguards. He was intercepted en route by gunmen who riddled his vehicle and shot him to death with armor-piercing bullets.
Back in Chicago, in his first major act of revenge for the murder of Dean O’Banion, his successor Hymie Weiss went after the Al Capone’s boss, Johnny Torrio. He was ambushed outside his apartment with a fusillade of gunfire, and took bullets to the jaw, lung, abdomen, groin, and legs. Severely wounded, Torrio was spared from a coup de grace shot to the skull when the killer’s gun jammed. The near death experience frightened Torrio, and convinced him to retire. So in 1925, he handed control of the Chicago Outfit to Capone, and moved to Italy.
Capone, who reportedly feared Weiss, tried to make peace and end the grudge match with the North Side Gang. His offers were rejected. After repeated failed efforts by the rival bosses to kill each other, Weiss led a team of gunmen in 1926, that fired over 1000 bullets into Capone’s headquarters. Capone survived, and returned the favor a few weeks later. On October 11th, 1926, Weiss was about to enter his headquarters, when hitmen opened fire from the windows of a nearby building’s second floor. Weiss was fatally injured, and died in an ambulance en route to the hospital.
