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During Prohibition, Chicago’s Beer Wars were at the forefront of the national imagination. For years the city had been turned into a battleground. Dean O’Banion ruled the North Side, and Al “Scarface” Capone and Johnny Torrio had the South Side. O’Banion was killed in 1924 by Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi, gunners for Capone, and Torrio was killed the following year by North Siders Earl “Hymie” Weiss, Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci, and George “Bugs” Moran. Soon after, Weiss, Drucci, and Moran made an attempt on Capone’s life. They failed, and Weiss later died at the hands of two Capone gunmen; Drucci was killed by a young cop. Eventually, Moran was the only one of O’Banion’s men left, and he took over the North Side operation. Moran swore an eternal vendetta against Capone, who had long been desperate to have control of the North Side as well as the South Side. While on vacation at his home in Palm Island, Florida, in early 1929, Capone received word that Moran’s gunners had killed several of his top lieutenants.

In what came to be known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, seven members of Chicago’s Irish mob were gunned down by members of the competing Italian crime syndicate. The event was a turning point for organized crime in Prohibition-era Chicago, as control shifted hands from the Irish to the Italian mob. Moreover, this event gave Al Capone, one of the most notorious mobsters in history, firm control over illegal activities in most of Chicago and made Alphonse “Scarface” Capone a household name. The slaying was in response to a long series of killings and retaliation killings by the two gang rivals, but was the most decisive of such actions. Whereas the Irish, led by the Morans and O’Banions, had owned the organized crime sector in the north of the city for a large part of its history, now the Italians, newly headed by Capone, were making their presence known.

In the United States, criminal organizations had been in existence for many years prior to the 1920s, although the term “organized crime” was not in use before this decade. The passing of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and the institution of Prohibition in the United States completely changed the shape of organized crime, turning fragmented and poorly managed criminal gangs into highly structured and well-organized criminal enterprises.

On Valentine’s Day of 1929, five members of Chicago mobster George “Bugs” Moran’s gang and two others were murdered by a group of men dressed as police officers. Known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the event was thought to have been orchestrated by rival gangster Al Capone in an attempt to consolidate his power over organized crime in Chicago.