Jack McGurn
(1905–February 15, 1936)
“Machine Gun” Jack McGurn 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.
His Early life
He was born Vincenzo Antonio Gebhardi 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 because Irish boxers got the better bookings.
As a youth, McGurn did not run in gangster circles, however when his father was assassinated by members of The White Hand Gang after being mistaken for Willie “Two Knife” Altieri, McGurn, with Frankie Yale’s consent, killed the three hitmen responsible and avenged his father’s death. On hearing the news, Al Capone asked Yale if he could bring McGurn to Chicago and Yale agreed.
He was the assassin that fired the tommy gun that killed Frankie Yale in 1928.
McGurn is best known for the infamous instance of violence on St. Valentine’s Day in 1929, where he planned the attempted killing of the North Side gang leader George “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.
Later years
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.
This notoriety caused him to be shunned by the mob because he now was among the first to be arrested for any crime worse than spitting on the sidewalk. So McGurn, who had great eye-hand coordination, attempted a career as a professional golfer. According to the July, 1996 and June, 2003 issues of Chicagoland Golf magazine, McGurn was a silent partner in Evergreen Golf Club at 91st Street and Western Avenue in Chicago, a known mob hangout where he usually could be found playing, practicing, giving lessons or playing cards in the clubhouse.
McGurn, by then impoverished and abandoned by his fellow gangsters, was assassinated on St. Valentine’s Day in 1936 in a Chicago bowling alley while wearing rented shoes exactly seven years after the massacre. It is alleged that George “Bugs” Moran, the very man Jack had tried to kill years before, killed him for revenge of the murder of his gang.