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Pistol Pete’s Payback and Other Historic Vengeances

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 31 min

World War II - Quisling — Quisling with SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Cotton Boll Conspiracy

18. Payback for the Valentine’s Day Massacre

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 15^th, 1936. One day after the seventh anniversary of the massacre, three hitmen shot him dead in a Chicago bowling alley. They reportedly left Valentine’s card near McGurn’s corpse, which 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!“

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.