On Feb. 14, 1929, seven men walked into the offices of the S.M.C. Cartage Company in downtown Chicago. They thought they were meeting some other men there to talk about obtaining shipments of bootleg liquor. It was the height of Prohibition, and Al Capone's South Side gang was the leader in organized crime in Chicago. George "Bugs" Moran's North Side gang used to rival Capone's gang for power, but after the deaths of two of the North Side gang's leaders, it was in no position to rival anyone for power, especially with Moran in charge. Moran was no mob leader; he was a safe-cracker by trade who rose quickly through the ranks of the North Side gang.

The seven men who entered the S.M.C. Cartage Company's warehouse were from Bugs Moran's North Side gang. The S.M.C. Cartage Co. was a known front for bootleg liquor, so when the men were met by police officers instead of mobsters, they took it in stride. They probably wouldn't even be arrested. The Chicago police department, the attorneys' offices, the judges, and the juries were all owned by organized crime. Capone had been found not guilty several times of various crimes -- not because he didn't commit them, but because he paid off everyone who had the power to convict him.

The police officers told the seven men to stand with their faces toward a brick wall. The men complied, thinking this was just routine and that they would be out of here in no time after paying the cops off.

But the two men dressed like cops weren't cops. Two more men, dressed in street clothes, entered the warehouse. All four were armed with Thompson submachine guns. Without warning, they opened fire on the seven men facing the brick wall. Thompsons submachine guns fired .45 caliber slugs at 800 rounds per minute. The seven men facing the wall never had a chance. Only one survived long enough to crawl out of the warehouse and find help.

The Chicago newspapers called it "the St. Valentine's Day Massacre." Al Capone was blamed, since all the victims were from his rival gang. Capone, though, had quite an alibi: he was in his villa in Florida the whole time and found out about it by reading the papers. History, though, would understand otherwise. The hit was ordered by Capone. It was actually designed to kill Bugs Moran, who was on his way to the warehouse with the other seven men. Moran thought he saw a cop outside the S.M.C. Cartage Co. warehouse and fled, thinking it was a set-up. Nevertheless, a Capone lookout thought he saw Moran enter the warehouse (he actually saw someone else whom he thought was Moran) and gave the signal to go through with the plan.

The people of Chicago had put up with mob violence for a long time, but the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was more than they could handle. Vivid pictures of pools of blood and horrible descriptions of violence were the last straw: Chicago refused to tolerate mob violence any longer.

Capone would never be convicted of this or any other crime, save the crime of tax evasion. Eliot Ness and a team of accountants from the Department of the Treasury figured out that while Capone could easily weasel his way out of a variety of crimes because he didn't actually physically commit them, he did commit tax evasion. His mob empire pulled in millions of dollars each year, all of which was taxable, and for none of which Capone had ever paid any federal taxes. Capone was convicted of tax evasion on Oct. 17, 1931 and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta, Ga. Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti took over the operations of Capone's empire once Capone went to prison, but things were never the same. The mob took a hit in 1933 when the 21st Amendment was ratified, ending Prohibition.

Capone, a very high-profile inmate, was moved from Atlanta to Alcatraz in 1934. Syphillis slowly destroyed his mind, and when he was released from Alcatraz in 1939, the once-brilliant mob boss was "confused and disoriented." He died in his Florida villa in 1947.

Please read more about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the history of the 1920s Chicago mob.

If you want to watch a dramatized version of the 1920s mob saga, rent or watch The Untouchables, which doesn't refer to the lowest Indian caste, but rather to the nickname of Eliot Ness's treasury department team. They were "untouchable" because they couldn't be bribed.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!