Hymie Weiss
Hymie Weiss | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 25, 1898 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Died | October 11, 1926 (aged 28) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Cause of death | Gunshot |
| Nationality | American |
| Allegiance | North Side Gang |
Hymie Weiss (born January 25, 1898 - October 11, 1926) was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone.
Early years
Born Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski in Chicago on January 25, 1898, he grew up on the North Side with his Polish-American family.[1] Earl gained the nickname "Hymie", and "Hymie the Polack" or "Hymie the Pole",[1] later in his career. He was Catholic, despite the ethnic moniker. As a teenager, Weiss soon became a petty criminal (after upsetting a fragrance shelf during a botched burglary as a youth, police dubbed him 'The Perfume Burglar') and ultimately befriended an Irish-American teen Dean O'Banion. With Weiss and George "Bugs" Moran, O'Banion established the North Side Gang, a criminal organization that eventually controlled bootlegging and other illicit activities in the northern part of Chicago.
Rivalry with Chicago Outfit
The biggest threat to the $100 million-a-year, (1 billion 2011 dollars), was not from prosecution by police, the district attorney, or the city's elected officials (due to corruption by the Torrio-Capone gang), but from a single rival: The Outfit
Personality
Hymie Weiss was ultimately recognized as Dean O'Banion's second-in-command, and was known as an intelligent yet somewhat impulsive gangster. It was generally thought that Weiss was the one who first steered the North Side Gang into the lucrative bootlegging business at the beginning of Prohibition. While some noted Weiss as being caring and kind, others feared his time bomb-like temper. When questioned about his brother Hymie in 1926, Fred Weiss replied, "I've seen him once in twenty years...that was when he shot me, six years ago." When photographers tried to snap his picture, Weiss would glare at them and say in a low voice, "You take a picture of me and I'll kill you.".[2]
When a deputy U.S. Marshal crashed a party at Weiss's apartment to arrest a friend for violation of the Mann Act, Hymie chased him away at gunpoint. The marshal returned with reinforcements, busted the friend, and confiscated a cache of alcohol and weapons. After the raid, Weiss filed a lawsuit to recover silk shirts and socks that he claimed the marshals had stolen; both the government's charges and Weiss's lawsuit came to nothing.[3]
Gang War
After Dean O'Banion's murder on November 10, 1924, Hymie Weiss took command of the North Side Gang and swore to avenge his friend's death. On January 12, 1925, Weiss and his men were suspected of shooting up Al Capone's limousine in front of a South Side restaurant; Capone was not present at the time. Twelve days later, Hymie and Bugs Moran ambushed Johnny Torrio outside his South Side home. Despite being badly wounded by pistol and shotgun fire, Torrio survived the attempt on his life. The rival gangs squared off for war.
Weiss and his pals were suspected of gunning down Sicilian crime boss Angelo Genna on May 26, 1925. The Gennas were longtime enemies of O'Banion and were suspected of having a hand in his murder. Whether or not the North Siders actually killed him is still debated today.
After spending the better part of a year in jail, Hymie marshaled his men for a major strike on their rivals. On the afternoon of August 3, 1926, two boys discovered the weighted-down body of Al Capone's chauffeur, Anthony Cuiringlione aka Tommy Ross, in a cistern in a rural section of southern Cook County. Cuiringlione had been tortured and murdered, presumably by the North Siders. A week later, on August 10, Hymie Weiss and Vincent Drucci were ambushed by three men as they prepared to enter the Standard Oil Building at Ninth and South Michigan avenues in downtown Chicago. As bullets flew, Drucci traded fire with his attackers while ducking behind a mailbox. Drucci and one of the assailants, Louis Barko, would be captured by police. Neither was charged.
A month later, on September 20, 1926, Al Capone was having lunch with bodyguard Frank Rio at the Hawthorne Hotel when a caravan of cars cruised past the Hawthorne Inn and riddled it with hundreds of submachine gun bullets. According to some accounts, the second-to-last car stopped in front of the hotel where Capone was cowering. A gunman casually walked up to the hotel's front door and emptied a Thompson submachine gun drum into the room. A total of four people, most of them bystanders, were wounded with varying degrees of severity. One of the casualties was none other than Louis Barko, the would-be killer of Weiss and Drucci.
While Capone survived the attack, this act scared Al enough to an attempt a truce. At a peace conference on October 4, 1926, Hymie insisted that the trigger-pullers in the O'Banion murder (John Scalise and Albert Anselmi) be executed. Capone refused Weiss's terms and took more radical means to end the gang war.
Murder
Hymie Weiss was suspected of having formed an alliance with South Side beer baron Joe Saltis, who went on trial for murder in October 1926. It was widely rumored that Weiss would buy off the jury in order to ensure an acquittal for Saltis.
Jury selection began on October 11, and Hymie and four of his men were sighted there. With Weiss that day were his bodyguard Sam Pellar, gangster Paddy Murray, attorney William W. O'Brien, and Benjamin Jacobs (an investigator for O'Brien). At 4:00 that afternoon, Weiss and his men left for their State Street headquarters, the old Schofield flower shop. The quintet parked their cars on Superior Street and rounded the corner to cross State. As they did, two gunmen hidden in a nearby rooming house opened fire with a submachine gun and shotgun. Hymie and Paddy Murray were fatally wounded by this first burst. William O'Brien was hit four times and staggered into a nearby stairwell. At the initial sound of gunfire, a panicked Sam Pellar drew his .38 and instinctively fired a shot in the general direction of shooters (this bullet unintentionally struck Weiss as he collapsed onto the sidewalk). Pellar and Ben Jacobs, both wounded, staggered back the way they had come. Bullets followed them the whole way and some chipped the cornerstone of the Holy Name Cathedral directly across the street.[4]
Although often said to have left an estate of $1.3 million dollars, Weiss's estate was actually calculated at $10,601.78 during a 1927 hearing between his family members and girlfriend Josephine Simard.
Hymie's killers were never positively identified, but Chicago Police suspected that the machine gunner may have been Jack McGurn. It has also been speculated that the man in charge of the hit was Frank Nitti.
From 1926 to 1929, George Moran took charge of the North Side Gang. During that time, Jack McGurn was especially singled out for repeated Northsider hit attempts, the Northsiders being known for considering "personal scores to settle" of greater importance than regular gang business.
Health
Weiss was said to have suffered from "arterial cancer". Not only is that entity extremely rare, it would hardly have been diagnosable in the era in which he lived. Given that his symptoms were said to include blinding headaches, dizziness, and fainting spells, it is more likely that Weiss was suffering from a pheochromocytoma (a tumor which, by virtue of affecting the circulation, is not totally unrelated to the term "arterial cancer"). Often, he would relax on a couch on the second floor of the Schofield flower shop.
Because of his illness, Weiss often said he didn't expect to live to an old age, which may explain his fearlessness in fighting his rivals. To this day, it is said that Hymie Weiss was the only man Al Capone ever truly feared.
References
Further reading
- Asbury, Herbert. Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986. 353-58.
- Keefe, Rose. Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot before Al Capone. Cumberland House, 336 pgs, ISBN 1-58182-378-9