O'Banion Assassinated: Chicago's Gang War Ignites

Three men walked into the Schofield flower shop on North State Street in Chicago on November 10, 1924, and Dion O'Banion, the Irish-American gangster who ran the store as a front for his bootlegging empire, extended his hand in greeting. One man grabbed O'Banion's hand and held it while the other two fired six bullets into his body. The murder ignited a gang war that consumed Chicago for the next five years and culminated in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. O'Banion led the North Side Gang, which controlled bootlegging on Chicago's North Side during Prohibition. A former choirboy and altar server, he maintained a genuine love of flowers alongside his criminal enterprises, creating arrangements for weddings, funerals, and the social elite. His shop across from Holy Name Cathedral was both a legitimate business and the headquarters of an organization earning millions from illegal alcohol, gambling, and safecracking. The killing was ordered by Johnny Torrio, the South Side boss O'Banion had double-crossed in a deal involving the Sieben Brewery. O'Banion arranged the brewery's sale to Torrio, then tipped off police, ensuring Torrio was arrested during the transaction and faced a second Prohibition violation that meant prison time. The betrayal, combined with O'Banion's encroachments on South Side territory, convinced Torrio that coexistence was impossible. The assassins were believed to be Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi, imported gunmen from New York. O'Banion's funeral was a spectacle of gangland excess: $100,000 in flowers, 10,000 mourners, and 26 truckloads of tributes. His successor, Hymie Weiss, immediately launched retaliatory attacks on Torrio, shooting him five times and driving him into retirement. Torrio's lieutenant, Al Capone, inherited the South Side operation and escalated the violence to a level that made Chicago synonymous with organized crime for a generation.