Original subtitles

[intense music]

[gunshots ringing out]

- Tonight, one of the most shocking murders in mob history,

The Valentine's Day Massacre.

- On February 14th, 1929,

seven men from "Bugs" Moran's infamous gang

are lined up against a wall and executed.

- There's 70 shots fired.

- "Bugs" Moran was supposed to be in that meeting,

and he never came.

And then he sat back in the wings and watched what happened.

- This level of violence was off the charts.

- The 1920s and 30s are full of gangland murders,

but The Valentine's Day Massacre will go down

as both the most brutal and toughest to solve.

[camera clicking]

- They published incredibly gruesome images

of this violence,

and there's this immediate public outcry for justice.

People want to know who did this and to see them brought in,

but no one can really figure it out.

[camera clicking]

- Now, we explore the top theories surrounding

the Valentine's Day Massacre.

[intense music continues]

- The person with the most to gain

when it comes to the death of Moran

and the gutting of his gang

is obviously Al Capone.

- He's quite direct.

He says gangsters did not do this.

[intense music continues]

Cops did it.

- If this were a revenge killing

over the son of a police officer,

it would make sense why officers

would then look the other way.

- Even though we're approaching a century

since the Valentine's Day Massacre,

it is still one of the coldest cases

in American history.

- Who carried out The Valentine's Day Massacre,

and why did they do it?

[intense music]

[intense music continues]

[intense music fades out]

[suspenseful music]

January 16th, 1920, Chicago, Illinois.

It's a Saturday night,

and as midnight draws near

bar patrons take their last sips of legal alcohol.

When the calendar flips

America is officially going dry.

[suspenseful music continues]

[glasses clink]

- The Volstead Act, the dreaded 18th Amendment,

which has been brewing since the Industrial Revolution

hit the United States.

And suddenly, everybody's working a 40-hour work week,

and alcohol is being blamed

for absenteeism, tardiness.

It's also more importantly being blamed for violence

that men rain down on women.

- Prohibition is seen as a Christian cure all

for American bad behavior.

They believe that this can end domestic violence.

It can end poverty.

This is something they believe

will make the nation healthier, wealthier, and safer.

[suspenseful music continues]

- So as the clock winds down on prohibition,

you have kind of two energies

taking hold of the American populace.

You both have temperance advocates who are so excited

that this new more moral age in America is about to dawn.

Then you have people who are ruing the fact

that alcohol will no longer be available legally,

and they're basically getting drunk on that last night.

People talk about it as America's last call.

- There's no better way to create demand

than to tell someone they can't have something.

And essentially what the government did

is they immediately created a demand for alcohol

that could not be satisfied any other way

than through illegal means.

And that was what the mob was built for.

They were able to slip in

and immediately start putting together networks

of buying and selling alcohol

and providing it to people.

[suspenseful music continues]

- In this prohibition era,

Chicago finds itself as a real hub.

It's a big city.

It's centrally located for distribution purposes.

There's already a kind

of notoriously corrupt law enforcement system.

And so all of this is kind of the perfect storm

for it to be the place that Al Capone makes his name.

- Al Capone becomes the most important mob boss

and the most important bootlegger in Chicago.

He's actually Brooklyn born.

He moves to Chicago around 1920,

and he takes what is already a pretty well run gang,

and he turns it into

a million-dollar moneymaking powerhouse.

[intense music]

- [Laurence] By some accounts,

Al Capone's operation brings in $100 million a year,

about 1.7 billion in today's money.

[intense music continues]

- There were actually two rival gangs at this time

that were really vying for everyone's attention.

There was the Chicago outfit run by Al Capone

and the North Side crew,

which was run by George "Bugs" Moran.

"Bugs" Moran earned the nickname "Bugs"

because he was very violent, he was very volatile,

and they kind of thought he wasn't all there.

He was just kind of buggy.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] While Capone rules Chicago's South Side,

Moran maintains a stronghold on the North Side,

and by 1926, their rivalry turns into an all-out war.

[intense music continues]

- "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone couldn't stand

that one might be growing faster than the other,

and before long,

we see Al Capone looking over his shoulder.

In fact, he has a $50,000 bounty on his head

that's bringing people from out of state in,

trying to kill Al Capone.

[intense music]

- One of the tactics

that was exclusively a Chicago thing

was created by the North Siders,

the marriage of the Thompson submachine gun

to an eight-cylinder automobile.

Absolutely devastating.

[intense music continues]

- So with this bounty on his head,

Al Capone had an entourage

of people who would travel with him,

whose sole responsibility was to look out for something

that would place him in danger.

And that day came in a little restaurant in Cicero

near South Side Chicago.

And Capone's eating,

when all of a sudden a bunch of cars pull up.

[intense music continues]

The windows come down and men with Thompson submachine guns

[heavy gunfire]

start spraying the building with bullets.

More than a thousand bullets were fired at Capone that day,

and miraculously, this guy is able to escape unharmed.

[intense music continues]

- It's important to realize

that even though these two men loomed so large,

this was an era where petty criminality was everywhere.

Everybody in Chicago seemed to be on the take at this time.

- [Laurence] The city's police force

was notoriously corrupt.

Even Chicago mayor, William Hale Thompson

was rumored to be in Al Capone's pocket.

- The public is kind of willing

to turn a blind eye to some of this stuff.

A lot of people felt that, you know,

these guys can kill each other off.

We don't really care.

Just keep our booze flowing,

and keep us out of the crossfire.

- [Laurence] All that changes

on the morning of February 14th, 1929, Valentine's Day.

[intense music continues]

- There is a meeting in a garage on the North Side,

and there's seven members of the gang

that are waiting for their boss,

George "Bugs" Moran, to meet them.

[intense music continues]

According to eyewitnesses in the neighborhood,

they see a Cadillac pull up,

and four or five men jump out of this Cadillac,

two dressed in police uniforms.

And they knock on the door of the garage.

It's very likely

that the seven men assembled in the garage

thought that this was just a simple police shakedown.

[intense music continues]

- This was something that gangs were used to at that time,

and, frankly, if it's true that they owned the police

through bribes and other kinds of things,

it wasn't too stressful to go through the process,

get arrested, and get bailed out,

and the charges to be dropped.

But this time it was much different.

[intense music continues]

- So they are told,

"Get against the wall, put your hands up."

The ones who had weapons

have their weapons relieved of them.

[intense music continues]

The men from the Cadillac unsheath their overcoats,

pull out Thompson submachine guns and shotguns,

and then they open fire.

[gunfire ringing out]

[shell casings clinking]

[intense music]

- There's 70 shots fired.

According to eyewitnesses,

the perpetrators get back into the Cadillac,

and they speed off.

People in the neighborhood know something has gone on.

They've heard these shots.

So a few brave souls go into the garage

and discover what is clearly a horrific crime scene.

[camera clicking]

- [Laurence] Newspapers across the country

pick up the story,

dubbing it The Valentine's Day Massacre.

- They published incredibly gruesome images

of this violence.

And if you can imagine,

before this, people knew about the crime

and the violence of the underworld,

but it was very much sort of below the radar

of what most people had in their face.

Then, all of a sudden you have this brutal act of violence

and pictures of it in the newspaper.

[intense music]

- The usual suspects are rounded up,

but no arrests were ever made that stuck.

Even though we're approaching a century

since the Valentine's Day Massacre,

it is still one of the coldest cases,

one of the most intriguing mysteries

when it comes to crime in American history.

[intense music continues]

- There's this immediate public outcry for justice.

People want to know who did this

and to see them brought in,

but no one can really figure it out.

The rivalry between "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone is legendary.

So when a group of Moran's men

gets gunned down so violently,

minds immediately go to one name.

[intense music]

- The person with the most to gain

when it comes to the death of Moran

and the gutting of his gang

is obviously Al Capone.

Many people are certain that it's him

because he is rumored to have already initiated,

if you will, the deaths of maybe 200 people in Chicago,

including a handful of men

who have been "Bugs" Moran's predecessors.

[intense music]

- "Bugs" Moran is truly the only man

standing in Al Capone's way

of taking full control of Chicago.

Even though "Bugs" Moran wasn't in the garage

during the morning of the massacre,

it completely hobbles Moran's operation.

- [Laurence] Moran himself publicly accuses Capone

of orchestrating the massacre.

[intense music continues]

- As one would expect,

"Bugs" Moran blames Al Capone,

and says words to the effect of only Capone kills like that.

Many politicians and many people of note

around the United States already believe

that Al Capone is capable of doing anything,

and so they tend to drift over into siding

with "Bugs" Moran's interpretation of the events.

[intense music continues]

- Herbert Hoover had just been elected president.

In his campaign,

he spoke about bringing law and order

back to the United States,

and there was a focus on Capone.

It was determined that he was a public enemy.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] In true Capone fashion,

the notorious mob boss

seems to have the perfect alibi.

- On the morning of the massacre.

Capone is in Florida.

He's living in his home on Palm Island in Miami,

and that morning he has a meeting with the DA

to talk about his involvement with another murder,

something that had happened the year before.

It's impossible to put Capone at the scene of the massacre

if he's clearly talking

to law enforcement agents in Miami.

Just because his alibi eliminates him

from pulling the trigger,

it doesn't eliminate his involvement.

It's very possible he still pulled the strings.

[intense music]

- Some people believe the fact

that Al Capone has such an airtight alibi

that this was part of the setup

and probably means more so

that he ordered the hit at a time

when he knew he would not be there.

- So typically part of the Capone plan

was for there to be nothing

that could tie him to the event,

no matter how many layers he needed to use.

Even if he had shot someone

or beaten somebody's head in,

he was never there.

[intense music continues]

- This was a highly planned, organized hit

and that sort of lends to the theory

that it was put together by organized crime.

But even though a good majority of people did think

that this was a Capone- orchestrated hit,

it's not the only theory.

[intense music]

[intense music]

- [Laurence] It's the morning of February 14th, 1929.

Some Chicago residents have just heard

a barrage of gunfire ring out

at 2122 North Clark Street

on gangster "Bugs" Moran's turf.

As crowds gather outside the garage,

Sergeant Thomas J. Loftus

is the first policeman on the scene.

- Sergeant Loftus came in

and saw this incredibly gruesome sight.

As he checked each of the bodies

to see if there was anyone alive

he came across one particular individual

who'd been shot 14 times,

but was still clinging to life,

a guy named Frank Gusenberg.

Sergeant Loftus leaned down

and he whispered to him, "Who did this to you?"

And Gusenberg said, "The cops did it."

[intense music continues]

- Sergeant Loftus does try to get more information

out of Gusenberg,

and allegedly Gusenberg says, you know,

"Take me to the hospital.

I need to be seen by a doctor."

And he never gives away anything else.

Although a lot of people immediately jumped

to the conclusion that Capone was involved,

once stories about Gusenberg's words

as well as the fact that eyewitnesses

saw people dressed in police uniforms

coming in a Cadillac

that looked like a police-issued vehicle,

people start to question,

and there are theories

that maybe Chicago police were involved.

[intense music]

- There are real elements of this crime scene

that support this theory that cops did it.

Some of the guys that ran out of the car

were wearing police uniforms,

and the Cadillac in which these guys drove up

was of the sort that the police would outfit for use.

It also had a weapons rack on the back,

which was something only the police had.

- [Laurence] The accusation that corrupt police

carried out The Valentine's Day Massacre

also comes directly from a member of law enforcement.

- Frederick Silloway, who was the

Chicago Assistant Prohibition Enforcement Administrator,

a very long title,

calls a press conference the next day,

and he's quite direct.

He says, "Gangsters did not do this.

Cops did it."

Which gets the press's attention immediately.

And he said, "Later in the day,

we'll be giving you the names of the cops involved."

[intense music]

- One thing he stated to emphasize this point

that it was easily rogue cops

is that they had the perfect disguise

when it came to their misdeeds,

this very, very public war

between the Capone organization and the Moran Organization.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] This shocking allegation makes headlines

across the country,

- But there was no second press conference

and the next day Silloway

has been moved to another district.

[intense music continues]

- There are so many corrupt law enforcement officers

in Chicago during prohibition

that people don't find this very hard to believe.

But Chicago police claim that there is no proof of this.

They say that the police uniforms

that eyewitnesses saw were red herrings,

that these were probably imposters.

And there are a number of hitmen throughout the Midwest

that used police uniforms

in order to get away with their crimes.

- The idea that someone might have gone to the lengths

to soup up a car

or make uniforms is not as ridiculous

and as farfetched as it might sound.

It would've been pretty easy for someone

with the connections to come up

with really authentic looking police uniforms.

- Chicago police shut down

their internal investigation almost immediately.

They are not considering their own,

and they make it very clear to the public

that they don't want them considering police either.

[intense music continues]

By shutting down their internal investigation so quickly,

it leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth,

and there's a lot of room for speculation.

[intense music]

[intense music]

- [Laurence] Three months after

Chicago's notorious Valentine's Day Massacre,

the investigation goes cold.

But then, 20 miles away in the town of Hammond, Indiana,

there's a gruesome discovery.

- Police come across an abandoned car,

and they look inside,

there're two guys horribly murdered.

They weren't just shot.

They're completely disfigured.

Then, they found a third guy lying on the ground.

Same thing.

If anything, it was even more brutal

than the Valentine's Day Massacre.

[intense music fades out]

The investigators are able to identify

who these three butchered men were,

John Scalise, Alberto Anselmi, and Joseph Guinta.

- Even hardened coroners are absolutely dumbstruck

by this scene because it looks like these three men

have been bludgeoned with what appear to be baseball bats.

Noses broken.

Eyes bludgeoned.

Faces going both directions simultaneously.

They're almost unrecognizable.

[intense music]

- The three men had noted ties to Capone.

Guinta was one of his henchmen, a hitman.

And Anselmi and Scalise

were known as the Sicilian murder twins.

[intense music continues]

- The murder twins were made mafia men who came to Chicago,

and they were Al Capone's favorite contractors.

They would rub the bullets in garlic

so if the hole didn't kill you, the infection would.

- In 1925, both John Scalise and Alberto Anselmi

had taken part in a failed attempt on Moran's life.

So there's history there.

People had already connected these men to the massacre.

They were questioned after the crime.

Scalise and Anselmi were actually charged at one point,

although there just isn't enough evidence

to pin the crime on them.

- [Laurence] But now three months after the massacre,

these same gangsters have turned up dead.

- So these men turning up dead

in the way in which they were killed,

it's so brutal.

It makes the authorities in Chicago start

to say, "Hey, maybe these people were involved

with the Valentine's Day Massacre,

and they were actually the perpetrators,

and this is the retaliation for that."

[intense music]

- Some newspaper reports indicated

that "Bugs" Moran believed these were the men

who had carried out the Valentine's Day Massacre.

And maybe this is comeuppance for that.

Another theory is that this was almost a sacrifice

that Capone made to make peace with Moran.

In the months between the Valentine's Day Massacre

and the Hammond murders, there is this moment

where there are peace talks between Moran and Capone,

and other organized crime figures.

This much violence,

this much attention from the police, from the press,

it is not good for business.

And so as bitter as the rivalry

between Capone and Moran is,

they know that it might actually serve them

to kind of call a halt to these hostilities.

[intense music continues]

- Everybody wants peace,

but "Bugs" Moran won't even come to the table

unless the South Siders

turn over Anselmi, Scalise, and Guinta.

He won't even attend any meetings.

And so there's not gonna be any peace.

This is clearly personal for "Bugs" Moran.

He wanted these guys gone

because he felt that they were responsible for the massacre.

So funny enough, just five days

after the Indiana murders,

we not only have a peace conference,

we have a peace conference

that involves every big time gangster in the United States,

including Capone and Moran.

So did Capone give the green light

to kill these guys to settle the score?

Possibly.

[intense music]

- As Americans are sort of getting used to the idea

that "Bugs" Moran had called for the elimination

of these three men outside Hammond, Indiana,

the Chicago Tribune publishes an article

that says, no, it wasn't Moran, it was Al Capone.

[intense music continues]

And according to the story,

Capone arranges for a dinner

at the Plantation restaurant

just outside Hammond, Indiana.

And Capone shows up with two objects,

which most people think are large decanters of champagne.

When he pulls away the tissue paper,

it's two large clubs.

Capone used those clubs to beat these men senseless

and then shot them in the head.

[intense music]

- Capone killing his own associates

is not all that uncommon in gangland Chicago.

And there are these rumors

that Scalise, and Anselmi, and Guinta

are starting to grow a little too big for their britches.

Capone has been in hiding for so long,

and he's living primarily in Florida.

So there's this potential

that maybe these three men

are leading a revolt back in Chicago.

They're trying to take over the South Side gang.

And if that's the case,

Capone's not going to let that happen.

[intense music]

It's also possible that he was willing to sacrifice

a few of his men

in order to broker peace with Moran.

In reality, all of these things could be true.

[intense music continues]

If these three men were involved in the massacre,

that goes with them to their graves.

But it's not long

before another mobster comes under suspicion.

[intense music]

- It's December, 1929.

Nearly a year since seven

of gangster "Bugs" Moran's associates

were gunned down

in the Valentine's Day Massacre.

And the case is still unsolved.

By now, the tide is turning against gangsters

and the rampant violence they cause.

But without any hard evidence,

investigators still can't crack the case.

Then, they get what might be their biggest break yet.

- In December, in the same year

of the Valentine's Day Massacre,

in Michigan, just about a hundred miles north of Chicago,

a man was driving his vehicle

when he was involved in a collision.

A patrol officer who happened to be in the area

witnessed the accident

and ordered both of the men to come

to the police station.

- The policeman jumps on the running board

of one of the vehicles,

and as they're approaching the police station,

they come up to a stoplight.

[intense music continues]

And when they're fully stopped,

the driver of this vehicle pulls out a revolver

and shoots the policeman three times,

knocks him off the running board,

and he takes off, crashes his car,

and gets out, and runs away.

[intense music]

- When the authorities go through the abandoned vehicle,

they find documents regarding the ownership,

and it is registered to a guy named Fred Dane.

So using these documents,

they go to the home of Fred Dane,

and they find something that they've never seen before,

certainly not in the small town of St. Joseph.

- They discover a cache of automatic weapons,

two Thompson submachine guns, grenades, shotguns,

and along the way they recover some physical evidence,

fingerprints that they're able to compare.

And they learn at that point

that Fred Dane is actually

a man named Fred "Killer" Burke.

[intense music continues]

Burke was actually kind of a sole entrepreneur

working on his own,

sometimes for the mob,

sometimes for himself.

But he had a beef with "Bugs" Moran

because it was Moran's men who actually hijacked

some of his illegal shipments of alcohol,

costing him a lot of money.

And with that came, in his opinion,

a desire to commit homicide.

[intense music]

- Not only did Burke have a motive to strike back at Moran,

he clearly had the means.

He has a closet full of weaponry,

including the same kind of weapons

that were used in the massacre.

[camera clicking]

- The police enlisted the help

of this incredibly brilliant scientist named Calvin Goddard.

They asked Goddard if it was possible

to compare the bullets recovered at the scene

of the Valentine's Day Massacre

with bullets fired through the Thompson submachine guns

in Burke's house.

[intense music continues]

Inside of a barrel of a gun

are these things called lands and grooves

that create kind of a circular motion.

Calvin Goddard wondered

if he could scientifically examine bullets

and see if they came from the same gun,

thinking that those lands and grooves

might actually be like a fingerprint, so to speak,

that it would be very characteristic

of just that weapon.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] Calvin Goddard examines the guns

found at Fred "Killer" Burke's house,

along with bullets recovered

from the Valentine's Day Massacre.

[intense music continues]

- Goddard does his testing

and he reaches a stunning conclusion.

All seven men killed in the Valentine's Day Massacre

were shot with those two Thompson submachine guns

found in the closet of Fred "Killer" Burke.

[intense music continues]

And this is really the first significant use

of forensic ballistics,

and it'll become an incredibly important science.

[intense music continues]

- "Killer" Burke goes on the run for nearly a year,

so he kind of becomes public enemy number one,

and he actually becomes the subject of a lot

of true crime stories that are being published.

And then a man in Green City, Missouri

reads a story about "Killer" Burke

in one of these true crime magazines.

And he realizes that one

of America's most wanted men

resembles a guy who's living next door to him.

- The neighbor phoned in a tip.

And he says, "I think your guy is over here.

I think he's my neighbor.

Come take a look."

And officers did just that

and they found Fred "Killer" Burke hiding in a farmhouse.

And he was taken into custody without incident.

[intense music]

So officers have Burke in custody,

and they're very much concerned

about making sure that the charge

of having killed one of their own sticks.

And so they're much more preoccupied

with those charges than they really are

about who killed a couple of gangsters.

And witnesses can't identify him

from the Valentine's Day Massacre.

He's already serving life

for having killed a police officer,

and you can't serve life more than once.

And so it just kind of really goes by the wayside.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] Four years later, however,

more evidence emerges connecting Fred "Killer" Burke

to the massacre.

- A bank robber named Byron Bolton

says he's got new information

on the Valentine's Day Massacre.

He says Burke was the gunman,

and that he knows because he was a lookout there.

Most importantly, Bolton says that the guy

who ordered the hit was Al Capone.

[intense music continues]

Bolton's claim makes headlines,

but immediately it has holes in it.

Two of these men that Bolton fingers

both have airtight alibis.

And then J. Edgar Hoover says, "This is not true.

Bolton is just making up a story

in order to look like he's cooperating

to get a reduced sentence."

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] Ultimately, the authorities

don't act on Bolton's allegation,

leaving Fred Burke's involvement

with the massacre unresolved.

[bars slamming]

- Burke dies in prison without ever telling

what happened either on Valentine's Day

or anything surrounding the weapons.

And with everything Al Capone is responsible for,

it's interesting that in the end,

the only thing that Hoover

and his men can get are tax evasion charges,

which ultimately send him to prison

where his health deteriorates so badly

that he finally is released

and returned to his home,

and he later dies.

In keeping with the mob code of silence,

Al Capone took the secret to the grave.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] It remains a mystery

exactly why "Bugs" Moran's men were gathered

in a Chicago garage on the morning

of Valentine's Day 1929.

But there's at least one clue that leads historians

to believe this was an important meeting.

- We may never know exactly why Moran's men

were gathered in the garage that day,

but we know that they were all dressed well.

One even had a carnation in his lapel.

It's Valentine's Day,

so maybe they're dressed up for that,

but it's more likely

that they were there dressed up for their boss,

believing that this is going

to be a business meeting.

[intense music]

But Moran does not show up at the garage that day.

- [Laurence] Moran's absence and the lack of specifics

about the meeting's purpose

lead some to suggest an unconventional theory.

- The fact that Moran wasn't at the garage that day

casts suspicion in his direction.

There are questions that he calls this meeting,

and yet he's so late that he's not there.

Did he have ulterior motives?

[intense music]

- The thing that's so intriguing

is "Bugs" Moran was supposed

to be in that meeting,

and he never came.

In fact, he later would only say

that he pulled up a little bit late,

and he noticed the police car

and the police officers walking in.

So he went and sat at the nearby coffee shop

as the murders unfolded.

Essentially, he called the meeting,

and then he sat back in the wings

and watched what happened.

[gunshots ringing out]

Many have theorized that Moran may have done this

to do a little house cleaning,

that he might have had leaders within his organization

that were starting to carve a new pathway.

Maybe there was some infighting that was going on,

or perhaps they were colluding

to take over the organization

and take it away from "Bugs" Moran.

[intense music continues]

- He had some rogue members of his organization.

The Gusenberg brothers, Frank and Peter,

were not always doing what he told them to do.

They were his key hitmen, his key muscle men.

But Peter, in particular,

had gotten into the habit

of pulling off what really were petty crimes.

One example that the press liked to write about

is that he robbed two very well-dressed women

and stole their jewelry worth $14,000,

which is an enormous amount of money in in the 1920s.

And then a really bizarre case,

he tries to shake down a stockbroker

unaware that this fellow had a gun,

and the guy began shooting his gun

at Peter Gusenberg, this tough, tough

"Bugs" Moran hitman, and he runs away.

And to Moran, this is unacceptable.

- All of these incidences with Peter Gusenberg

make the North Side Gang

look like a laughing stock.

And Moran might have gotten fed up.

People who are critical of this theory say

that it's unlikely that he would've taken out

so many of his own men

just to send a message to two.

He's hobbled his own organization

if you believe this theory.

[intense music]

- After the Valentine's Day Massacre,

Moran's organization started to rapidly decompose.

Moran tried to hang on to his position as a mob boss,

but he quickly was being recognized

by others in the criminal world

as someone who couldn't perform any longer.

He made attempts to join other mob organizations,

and they simply said, "Your time has passed,"

and kinda brushed him off.

- [Laurence] By the 1940s, Moran's nearly broke.

And after being arrested for robbery and mail fraud,

he dies in prison in 1957.

[intense music continues]

- We will never know if Moran actually killed his own men,

but it definitely would explain why he never showed up.

[intense music]

- [Laurence] In 2010, Al Capone biographer,

Jonathan Eig discovers

a 75-year-old letter in the FBI archives.

The document dated 1935,

6 years after the Valentine's Day Massacre,

is addressed to the agency's young director,

J. Edgar Hoover.

[intense music]

- This is a letter written by Frank Farrell.

In it he tells the director

that if he wants truly to solve

the St. Valentine's Day Massacre,

he should look into the fatal shooting of William Davern.

He says that in November of 1928, William Davern,

the son of a police officer,

was in a North Side pub

that was known as a gangster hangout.

And he got into a skirmish

with some people from "Bugs" Moran's crew.

And he wound up beaten, shot, and left for dead.

- He's able to make it to a firefighter's call box,

and he calls in this crime.

He's taken to the hospital,

and he lives for several weeks,

but he does not tell anyone who shot him

with the exception, according to this letter,

of his cousin, a man named William White,

more commonly known as "Three-Finger Jack."

[intense music]

- "Three-Finger Jack" is a lifelong criminal in Chicago.

He knows all of the North Side gangsters.

He's been in a number of stickups,

big heists of payrolls,

and things of this nature.

But he also has a hot temper,

and he's been known

to get really, really violent when necessary,

particularly when it comes to family pride.

When it came to his cousin, he swore vengeance.

[intense music]

- "Three-Finger Jack" had done some work with Moran's men,

the Gusenberg brothers.

Back in 1926, "Three-Finger Jack"

and this crew, including the Gusenbergs,

had robbed a factory of $80,000.

When one of them snitched,

Jack and another guy dressed up as policemen

and murdered the snitch in his sleep.

Of course, that detail links directly back

to the Valentine's Day Massacre

when multiple people

saw the perpetrators dressed up as police

before shooting up the place.

[intense music fades out]

- "Three-Finger Jack" knows plenty of crooked cops,

including his uncle who not only is a retired cop,

but also the father of his murdered cousin

who can easily put him in touch with all

of the things they need when it comes

to fake police uniforms and the like.

And so the plan appears to be

that he will tell Moran to send all of his guys

and himself over to the garage for another job.

And the result is all of these men being killed.

- Coincidentally, the location

of the Valentine's Day Massacre,

2122 North Clark Street,

is the exact same location

where "Three-Finger Jack" had done business

with the Moran gang previously.

So if he summoned them to that location,

they would not have thought twice about it.

When you look at the sheer brutality

of the Valentine's Day Massacre,

it doesn't feel random.

It feels very personal.

It feels like they were really trying to send a message.

So if this were a revenge killing

for someone having killed the son of a police officer,

it would make sense why officers

would then look the other way.

[intense music]

- Is there any evidence whatsoever

to link "Three-Finger Jack" to this shooting?

Well, one of the witnesses said,

"You know, the driver of the black Cadillac

looked like he was missing a finger."

So maybe there is some validity to this,

but there is no genuine follow up

in part because "Three-Finger Jack" had been arrested.

He was incarcerated on the day

of the Valentine's Day Massacre.

Maybe he bribed the police to let him out.

That's highly unlikely.

So even this theory that Frank Farrell comes up with,

like all the others, has some holes in it.

[intense music continues]

- [Laurence] Ultimately, Hoover doesn't act

on Farrell's tip.

Some believe it's because "Three-Finger Jack"

was an informant for the FBI.

- And it would make sense that if "Three-Finger Jack"

is able to toss them a bone or two,

bad activity by other gangsters,

that they might look the other way.

I don't know how much value they really put on the life

of somebody who was involved in the kinds of things

that the North Side Gang members were involved in.

Maybe having them executed

wasn't really causing any heartburn

[guns firing]

for law enforcement at that time.

[intense music continues]

- When it comes to "Three-Finger Jack,"

we'll never know, as he was shot in 1934.

He took all of his secrets

to the grave with him.

The reason that so many gangland secrets

have stayed secret and probably always will,

is because there's always the implication,

if not the out now threat, of retaliation.

It is assumed and it is demanded that one be silent.

- It's so hard to get to the bottom of this case

because this is a world in which dishonesty

is part of everyday activity,

in which everybody's corrupt.

Everybody has a side deal.

People die very young.

Violence eliminates people

who might have shared something later in their life.

And so I think that it is really difficult

to ever really get a handle on what happened that day.

[intense music continues]

- The two principals in this story,

"Bugs" Moran and Al Capone lived several years

after the Valentine's Day Massacre.

Capone, he would die at home

almost two decades after this shooting.

And "Bugs" Moran survives almost three decades

after what happened in the garage that day.

And what's intriguing about both these cases,

no one was curious enough to ask

either Capone or "Bugs" Moran

what really happened.

If they did ask them,

no one ever recorded what the two men said.

So we're left with this extraordinary mystery

about America's coldest case almost a century later.

[gunfire ringing out]

[intense music continues]

- Chicago in 1929 was so dominated by gangsters

and corrupt officials.

It's no wonder the truth about the Valentine's Day Massacre

remains shrouded in rumors and secrecy.

Everyone had an agenda,

one that often had nothing to do with justice.

But interest in the most famous gangland hit

of all time is still intense.

Perhaps new evidence will emerge

as we approach the massacre's 100-year anniversary.

For now, though it remains America's coldest case.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."

[intense music continues]