Jack McGurn
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"Machine Gun" Jack McGurn (1905–February 15, 1936) was a key member of Al Capone's Chicago-based criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit, and believed to be the principal assassin and planner of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
He was born Vincenzo Gibaldi in Licata, Sicily. A year later his family emigrated to the USA, arriving at Ellis Island on November 24, 1906. Vincenzo grew up in the Chicago slums where he later took up a career in boxing as a teenager and changed his name to "Battling" Jack McGurn. Sometime in the 1920s, McGurn joined Capone's gang, allegedly to avenge the murder of his father by the Sicilian Angelo Genna, whose crime family ruled the rackets on Chicago's West Side. Throughout his career as Capone's principal hitman and bodyguard, McGurn is credited with over two dozen killings of rival gang members. Although McGurn's favorite weapon was the pistol, the Chicago newspapers soon gave him his famous nickname, "Machine Gun".
He is most well-known for the infamous instance of violence on St. Valentine's Day in 1929, where he planned the attempted killing of the northside gang lead by Bugs Moran. The incident became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He remained free from suspicion, largely due to his "blonde alibi" - the nickname of girlfriend Louise Rolfe - who claimed they spent the whole day together.
In April 1930, when Frank J. Loesch, chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission compiled his "Public Enemies" list of the top 28 people he saw as corrupting Chicago, McGurn´s name was fourth on the list, which was published nationwide.
McGurn, by then impoverished and abandoned by his fellow gangsters, was assassinated in a Chicago bowling alley on St. Valentine's Day in 1936, exactly seven years after the massacre. McGurn was apparently the victim of a mob hit.
References
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