If love was in the air in Chicago on February 14, 1929, it was likely the love of booze. After nine years of Prohibition, America’s inveterate fondness for drink had turned bootlegging into a huge, cutthroat business for mobsters. Thus, at 10:30 that morning, four members of Al Capone’s outfit lined up seven men against the wall of a Chicago garage — five members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang, plus two unlucky hangers-on — and killed them with Tommy gun fire and shotgun blasts.
It was the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: a bad ending for those guys but just the beginning for that bullet-pocked wall, whose notoriety eventually landed it in a prime spot in Las Vegas’ Mob Museum.
“I don’t believe the Valentine’s Day holiday factored into the decision of those who plotted the massacre,” says Geoff Schumacher, the museum’s vice president of exhibits and programs (and, full disclosure, my friend). That’s just when the opportunity arose. “But the fact that it happened on Valentine’s Day did give the massacre a pithy name and therefore much wider notoriety.”
Which the museum is happy to play up. February 14 was chosen as the facility’s opening date in 2012, and every Valentine’s Day the museum’s cash flow is massacred by free admission for Nevada residents (who often dress to the nines for the occasion, Schumacher says). This year, in addition to the wall, visitors can see the actual Tommy guns used in the killings, courtesy of the Berrien County, Michigan, sheriff’s office, where they reside.
The astonishing brutality of the mass murder played a role in ending Prohibition, Schumacher adds. “For several years during Prohibition, large swaths of the citizenry had favorable sentiments toward bootleggers, whom they saw as simply satisfying the desires of a thirsty public.” But rising violence in the late ’20s prompted a rethink. “Not only was Prohibition not working, but it was leading to greater violence in the streets. People came to agree that the Noble Experiment had failed.”
As for that other meaning of February 14: Although the museum doesn’t track such things, it’s easy to imagine romantic couples snapping wry selfies in front of the wall, bullet holes behind them and Cupid off to the side — wearing a fedora, of course.