September 20th 1926 was a pleasant afternoon in Chicago by all accounts. The sun was shining, the wind was still for once and the newly-appointed leader of the Chicago Outfit, Alphonse Capone, is having lunch at his Cicero headquarters, The Hawthorne Hotel, with his associates. It’s here where Capone met government officials to pay off and bribe so he’s left alone to run his gambling, prostitution and bootlegging empire in peace.
Today is a slice of rare tranquility in the windy city during a decade where Chicago had seen violence like never before. The introduction of the 18th Amendment, also known as Prohibition, which prohibited the sale, distribution and consumption of alcohol had led to gang wars across America as rivals competed to sell illegal beer and spirits to the thirsty public who still craved a drop of the good stuff.
Al Capone, or Scarface as he was commonly referred to, finds his Chicago Outfit at war with the North Siders, an Irish-Polish gang who had also made their presence known during prohibition by having speakeasies, casinos and gunmen of their own who were willing to engage if challenged or disrespected. The tit-for-tat war with the North Siders had been going on for around 2 years now, with both sides losing men in the violent exchanges.
As Capone orders another Southside Fizz, the favoured drink of the Mafia boss, and sits down to discuss a plan of action to gain complete control of Chicago and get rid of the Northsiders once and for all, 8 sedans roll down West 22nd Street approaching the Hawthorne Hotel. The sedans are full of Northsiders, seeking to put a dampener on this peaceful afternoon of Capone’s, to put it lightly. They are still hungry for revenge after the brutal slaying of their boss Dean O’Banion in his flower shop a few months prior which was orchestrated by the Outfit.
The cars slow down as they pass the Hawthorne and almost choreographically, as if rehearsed, begin firing through the windows at the front of the hotel with Thompson Sub Machine guns, the weapon of choice for prohibition-era mobsters. The noise is deafening, heard by thousands in Cicero, over 1000 rounds are emptied into the Hawthorne where Capone was stationed.
Capone’s bodyguard, Paul Ricca, threw him to the floor, luckily shielded by a table, and they stayed routed to the carpet for the duration of the gunfire which lasted nearly 90 seconds - a long time when you’re under attack.
As the 2nd to last Sedan cruised past the Hawthorne, the car gradually stopped. Out stepped a short man in brown overalls, with slicked back hair and a scarred face. His nose was broken and he was wielding an aforementioned Thompson submachine gun, or tommy gun for short. After quickly examining the bullet-ridden and defaced front of the hotel he emptied the entire 100 round drum of the tommy gun into the Hawthorne, some bystanders reporting he was laughing as he distributed the hail of bullets.
The image of the gunman smiling and longing for the blood of the boss of the Chicago Outfit was ingrained into Capone’s mind and his stomach churned at the thought of his name. This is the story of Hymie Weiss, the only man Al Capone ever feared.
Hymie Weiss’s real name was Henryk Wojchiechowski and he was born in what is now present-day Sieradz, Poland, in 1898 to Walenty Wojchiechowski and Maria Bruskiewicz. In 1901, in search of a better life, Walenty & Maria emigrated to the United States and opted for Buffalo, New York when Henryk was 3 years old. They adopted the surname Weiss and later relocated to the North Side of Chicago, settling in an Irish District.
He had four siblings who survived infancy: Bruno, Frederick, Violet and Joseph. Unfortunately, two others passed away during infancy.
After his parents split up whilst Henryk was still young, he quickly became a troubled youth who was often found roaming the early 20th century Chicago streets. In 1919 He applied to fight in World War 1, even forging his birth year as 1897 on his draft registration card to increase his chances of being accepted. However he was declined due to a double rupture after a medical. His brother Fred was accepted into the army and always nagged Weiss about his non-service to his country, labelling him a disgrace to his family and America.
In 1920, Fred returned home from fighting in France and was one of the first of many to feel Weiss’s wrath. Over dinner, with the whole family present, Fred made a snide remark about Weiss’s non-service to his country. Without hesitation, the hot-headed Weiss pulled for his pistol and shot his older brother. An action that shocked the whole family, they tried to cover it up. Fred was rushed to hospital and pleaded with the doctor who was attending to his wounds to not tell the police and claimed it was an accident. Inevitably, the police did pick Weiss up; however, he explained that the gun was under a pillow and somehow discharged accidentally. However the pillow in question had no bloodstains, neither did the bedding surrounding it. The police let Weiss go this time but it was the first of many meetings he was due to have with the authorities.
After his rejection from the US Army, Weiss turned to a life of petty crime including burglaries and extortion. One of his failed burglary attempts involved accidentally knocking over a shelf full of fragrances, leaving him smelling like a number of expensive female fragrances, leading the police to nickname him "The Perfume Burglar’ upon arrest. His next run-in with police came when Weiss was 21 when police discovered 2 stolen cars in Cicero. A few minutes later, Weiss arrived in a 3rd stolen car with a few associates and they were all swiftly arrested. After a search at Weiss’s home, the police find numerous tools to dismantle and break into cars. The crew was fined for this bout of motor vehicle theft and allowed to leave the station the same day.
After this incident, something changed in Weiss. He had set his sights on a more rewarding life than stealing cars and beating up drunks for protection money. He wanted to learn a new trade and gravitated towards safe-blowing, something he was quite skilled at. It was during his time trying to make a quick buck safe-cracking on the streets of the Windy City that he formed a friendship with the Irish-American gangster Dean O'Banion. Alongside the leader O'Banion and fellow Irishmen George "Bugs" Moran, Weiss helped establish the North Side Gang. Hating the name Henryk and wanting to enhance his image and reputation, Weiss adopted the name Earl, which he believed carried the honour and prestige of a British earldom.
As they found success with safe-blowing, the trio branched out with their new-found wealth and began gaining control over bootlegging and gambling operations in the northern part of Chicago and the North Side Gang were making a name for themselves as ruthless killers who were not to be messed with.
During the North Side Gang’s come up and despite being Polish-Catholic, Weiss acquired the nickname Hymie The Pole due to his Jewish-sounding moniker. This was later shortened to Hymie and Earl ‘Hymie’ Weiss was born.
Apart from carrying a gun at all times, he was also known to carry a rosary. Weiss is credited with introducing the organised crime practice known as the "one way ride," which involves planning and carrying out a murder by luring or coercing the victim to drive with their killers. In a notable instance in July 1921, Weiss was last seen driving away with Steve Wisniewski, a local criminal who had recently hijacked a beer shipment on the Northside - something that angered the crew, Weiss took him for a one way ride.
During the early 1920s, life was going well for the North Side gang. The money was rolling in, they had a fierce reputation and could drink, gamble and clown about anywhere they chose. They had casinos, bars and breweries all over the city. Bugs Moran, Hymie and the boss Dean O’Banion were beginning to attract attention from the papers for their flamboyant and fascinating lifestyle. Reporters & photographers were often stationed outside their headquarters Schofield’s Flower Shop, one that the crew had acquired via extortion. The photographers and reporters were not met with the same friendliness they were when snapping or interviewing their bitter rival Al Capone. When photographers tried to snap Weiss’ picture, he would glare at them and say ‘You take a picture of me & I’ll kill you’.
Hymie Weiss was definitely an interesting personality however and one that the papers did cover, despite his protests. He was known for his kindness, with many stories circulating about his generosity. One such instance occurred when a poor family was unable to pay their food bill at the local grocer. Hymie stepped forward and paid not only his mother’s food bill but also settled the bill for his struggling neighbours. Despite his reputation for kindness, there were those who shuddered in fear at just the sight of his 5'7" frame. Often compared to a human time-bomb, Weiss was known to explode at the slightest provocation, causing unease among those who knew him well. The papers exclaimed that Dean O’Banion & Bugs Moran were friendlier than Weiss, perhaps it was his devastating health problems that made Weiss unsavoury towards the press.
By 1926, Weiss was suffering from terminal arterial cancer. He would often suffer with severe migraines, they were so debilitating that O’Banion had a specially built sofa installed in the upstairs office of Schofield’s Flower Shop which was supposed to help with the pain. Oftentimes Weiss would lie there in complete darkness and remain immobile for hours at a time. He had frequent hospital appointments for treatment for the severe pain which he often fainted from. One time, a Northside Gang Truck Driver told a story of Weiss in a complete fit on the floor because the pain in his head was so bad.
The severe headaches were only the start of Weiss’s problems; however, the North Side gang were not the only crew in town having success. In the South, the Chicago Outfit, headed by Johnny Torrio with Al Capone as his right hand man, thrived from bootleg liquor, gambling and prostitution - something the Catholic North Side Gang did not agree with.
Since 1920, Johnny Torrio had successfully kept the peace between the many gangs who operated in Chicago, having an agreement between all factions that they were a city-wide cartel, albeit divided in ethnicity. The Chicago Outfit were essentially Italian, where the smaller Northsiders were Irish & Polish. Even though Torrio & Capone’s outfit outnumbered the Northsiders, they still boasted around 100 members of their own and were the strongest rival to the Outfit.
There was no love lost between the rival factions however. They nicknamed Al Capone the ‘Behemoth’ due to his chubbiness and they hate the Italian gang who spreads their prostitution and whorehouses around town. The Northsiders are all staunch church-goers and their headquarters, the Schofield Flower Shop, is situated across the road from the Holy Name Cathedral, where the crew attend together every Sunday. Dean O’Banion was even an altar boy here in his earlier years. Hymie Weiss even attends church multiple times a week and remember, cushioned nicely next to his 1911 Colt Automatic is his ever-present rosary beads.
In 1924, the North Side gang discovered that a rival crew, the Genna brothers, who were close to Torrio’s gang, were selling alcohol in North Side Gang territory. O’Banion approached Torrio to help resolve the issue however Torrio offered no help in resolving the matter and allowed the Gennas to continue their encroachment into the territory, much to the North Side Gang's displeasure.
The Northsiders began hijacking the Genna Brother’s beer shipments which caused tension however they didn’t care. O’Banion, Weiss & Bugs Moran had gone to Torrio to resolve the issue peacefully and were met with a cold shoulder, from the Northsiders point of view it was a free for all.
Later that year, in May, O’Banion learned from an informant on his payroll that the police were planning to raid one of his breweries and had the date and time they were due to strike. Before the rain, O’Banion approached Torrio and explained that he was looking to sell his share in the beer rackets and retire to Colorado. He offered his brewery & his share for $500,000, to which Torrio accepted and handed over the money. On the morning of the deal, the police raided and shut down the brewery. O’Banion, Torrio and their associates were arrested. Torrio was arrested on bootlegging charges, a repeat offence for the Chicago Outfit leader and one which required him to serve mandatory jail time. Quickly realizing he had been set up and betrayed by O’Banion, not to mention conned out of a half a million dollars, he seeked revenge.
Torrio made his intentions of wiping out the Northside crew quite clear and would have acted almost immediately had it not been for the intervention of Mike Merlo, a political figure and fixer associated with the Chicago Outfit. Merlo wielded considerable influence in the Chicago Underworld as well as the Democratic Party and realised that an all-out gang war would have been bad for business. Merlo had a keen interest in keeping the peace between the factions of the Chicago Underworld and convinced Torrio to cease any violence towards the Northsiders.
Merlo could only keep Torrio convinced and therefore the peace in Chicago whilst he was alive however, and on November 8th 1924, he died of cancer. With the one man he’d listen and take advice from now dead, Torrio wanted that revenge he craved for being betrayed, and he wanted it quick.
2 days after Merlo’s death, on November 10th, 3 Italian men, Frankie Yale, Albert Anselmi & John Scalise entered Schofield’s flower shop. The 3 men were known to O’Banion, who was behind the counter. He knew them by name and as members of the Chicago Outfit. They enquired about flowers for Mike Merlo’s funeral and as soon as O'Banion's back was turned, they shot him dead.
Shortly after, Hymie Weiss calls the flower shop to speak with O’Banion, however he is told the bad news that Dean had just been murdered. Weiss is devastated. He walks into his bathroom and locks the door, before completely collapsing on the floor. He remains in an unresponsive state for hours with his arms crossed, staring into space and his back against the bathtub. His mother Mary calls Bugs Moran for assistance and they knock on the door trying to get him out. Eventually, Bugs kicks the door down, Hymie does not flinch and simply tells them ‘Everything I have is gone’. He tells his mother & bugs the bad news that his best friend & leader of the crew O’Banion has been killed.
Naturally, Weiss succeeds O’Banion as the leader of the Northsiders and once he has pulled himself together, he becomes hellbent on avenging his friend. Hymie will go all out on serving revenge on those responsible, and he quickly finds out it was Torrio who put out the hit on Dean O’Banion.
He has now declared an all-out war against the Chicago Outfit & their associates the Genna brothers, Weiss, who is terminally ill with cancer, will not think twice about his own safety and the only thing that matters to him in this world now, is to get back at whoever murdered O’Banion. He feels it is his duty to avenge Dean.
In January 1925, whilst out hunting for anyone remotely associated with the Chicago Outfit, the Northsiders can’t believe their luck when they spot none other than Al Capone’s vehicle with the behemoth in it. They open fire, letting loose with the ever-present tommy guns on the car, ultimately missing Capone but wounding the rest of his entourage. This event prompts Capone into buying one of his famous armoured vehicles. After a high-speed chase Capone manages to get away but it won’t be long until Weiss’s cravings for revenge are fulfilled.
Later that month, Weiss & Bugs waited for Torrio outside his Southside home to return from a shopping spree with his wife. When he returns, the pair confront the Chicago Outfit boss and begin shooting at him with automatics and a shotgun. Torrio tries to duck but is hit several times and severely wounded. As Torrio is lying on the floor with several gunshot wounds, Bugs Moran places his revolver to Torrio’s temple but miraculously the gun clicks empty and the getaway driver beeps his horn as they have now been spotted and it’s time to split.
Torrio nearly dies on the hospital bed, but after the intervention of several doctors and nurses, he survives and by now admits that there must be an angel looking down on him. Once recovered and still terribly shaken, Johnny Torrio resigns from the mob life. Telling Al Capone the criminal empire that grossed around 70,000,000 dollars a year from bootlegging, prostitution and gambling is all his. Torrio, the man that kept it together in Chicago moves to Italy with his mother and his wife and the Northsiders one and only target is Capone, or the Behemoth as they referred to him as.
With Torrio gone, a city-wide gang war breaks out. Weiss and the Northsiders make alliances with the Westside O’Donnell’s, the Saltis-McErlane Mob & the GKW gang. As the early months of 1925 roll by, Weiss and his crew launch several drive-by’s on Capone’s fleet of armoured vehicles, however the mob boss is never present during any of the attempted assassinations.
However their efforts were not going to be fruitless for too long, in May, Angelo Genna, the head of the Genna brothers who had encroached on Northsiders territory and made an allegiance with the Outfit, was cruising in his automobile when he notices a car in his rear view mirror gaining ground on them. Genna recognises the occupants and immediately steps on the gas
A car of Northsiders is on the hunt. Bugs Moran, Heimi Weiss and the driver, Vincent Drucci, a new recruit for the Northsiders, are armed to the teeth and can smell blood. As Angelo Genna’s car approaches Lincoln Park, Weiss and Moran begin firing with tommy guns and Genna is hit, his car crashing into a light pole on North Hudson Avenue. Slumped against his wheel with several bullet holes, the Northsiders exit the car and for good measure, begin firing over a dozen shots in Angelo’s defenceless body before stepping on the gas themselves and heading back to Schofield’s Flower Shop.
Miraculously, Genna is still alive a few minutes later when the police show up but when questioned who shot him, he merely shrugs, keeping to the code of silence. Angelo Genna dies a few hours later in hospital, surrounded by his family. A result for the Northsiders, and they were not about to slow down.
In August, shortly after 9am, a group of Capone associates have just polished off a hearty breakfast at the congress hotel and are driving through the heart of Chicago past the Standard Oil Building, one of the busiest spots in Chicago at the time. One of the Capone men, trusty soldier Paul Ricca, spotted Vincent Drucci & Hymie Weiss on foot near the standard oil building and unloaded his pistol at the Northsiders. Without hesitation, Weiss & Drucci immediately return fire at the passing Capone gang and a citizen is shot by a stray bullet in the shoulder, from which he recovers.
A shootout in one of the most metropolitan and busiest spots of downtown Chicago, this shootout made headlines across the city and struck fear into the hearts of your average chicagoan, making it clear that it wasn’t the back alleys and side streets that weren’t safe, but also this violence between the two factions could occur on the residential high streets and main roads on which they went about their daily lives, nowhere was safe.
A few days later, on the 7th August, A chauffeur of Capone’s, Tommy Ross, real name Anthony Cuiringuine, is found in a cistern in Palos Township, about 20 miles out the city, he had been murdered a few months before in Weiss’s trademark fashion of taking the victim for a one-way ride. However this execution wasn’t the usual quick assassin-like hit that they were known for, the Northsiders had tortured Tommy Ross but repeatedly burning him with cigarettes for hours trying to extract information from Ross about the routine of Al Capone. When they realised he was not going to divulge anything about his boss’s day-to-day habits, they volley 4 bullets into him and dump him in the cistern.
As Summer began to fade, the heat wasn’t going to cool in the windy city as one of the most violent attacks in Chicago history was about to take place - the attack on the Hawthorne Hotel in September. An orchestrated and premeditated attack from Weiss, Drucci, Bugs Moran and the rest of the Northsiders, this is one that shook Capone to his boots, over 1000 rounds from 8 Northside-packed Sedans were fired into Scarface’s HQ and if it wasn’t for the fine last-second intervention of his bodyguard Paul Ricca who through him to the floor shielded by a table, Alphonse could of have been on his way to Mount Carmel Cemetery.
Surprisingly, no one was killed. Paul Ricca received a gunshot wound to his arm which he would recover from, and a citizen walking past the hotel at the time was wounded by broken glass to her eye from the windows of the hotel, for which Capone paid for her surgery.
Despite the miraculous lack of any casualty, Capone had reached his limit, this attack on the Hawthorne Hotel had been a devastating blow for the Outfit not just physically, but also mentally. Capone had only inherited the title of Boss of the Chicago Outfit 9 months earlier and he didn’t want his crew losing faith by coming under constant attack and not feeling safe in their own headquarters. Capone wanted a truce, he called a peace meeting.
He invited Hymie Weiss & Vincent Drucci to peace talks. Capone doesn’t attend the peace talks. Weiss knows that Capone is scared of him and most certainly has the ability to unnerve Capone with a single look, so much so that Capone decides to not attend and sends his trusty right hand man Tony Lombardo instead. Many people believe this is the only time throughout Capone’s life where he is genuinely shaken by a rival, hence Weiss earning the title as the only man Capone ever feared. Weiss will allow peace if Capone hands over whoever shot at him and Drucci outside the standard oil building. Weiss knows that any killer Capone has who’s brazen enough to engage in a shootout in one of the hottest areas for police and citizens in Chicago is almost as crazy as him.
Lombardo calls Capone and regurgitates Weiss’s demands, Capone scoff’s at the proposal and says he’d never turn one of his own in. Weiss angrily storms out of the room and declares that peace will not end, leaving Capone without a choice. Capone decides at that moment that Weiss must be killed. He knows that his hot headed and furious Northside rival will try to kill Capone again, it’s now a case of kill or be killed.
The Northsiders’ Headquarters is still Schofield’s Flower Shop, the site where Weiss has a specially made sofa upstairs for when his severe migraines hit due to his arterial cancer, and the site of the murder of his boss Dean O’Banion. The Outfit knows that Weiss tends to park his car across the road from the flower shop just next to the Holy Name Cathedral. After a few weeks at a less desirable spot to carry out the hit, two of Capone’s most reliable gunmen, Sam ‘Golf Bag’ Hunt, named so because he always carried a shotgun with his clubs whilst on the golf course & Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a trusted killer from the Outfit, set up shop at 740 North State Street, facing the Cathedral & the Flower Shop.
The newly vacated room offered a better chance of hitting Weiss as it also faced the spot outside the Cathedral where Weiss always parked his car. Other Capone gunmen rented a room at Superior Street, just to make sure they had all angles covered to get to Weiss.
Weeks go by with the gunmen keeping an eager lookout for Weiss until finally, at 4pm on the 11th October, Weiss and an associate emerge from a car next to the Holy Name Cathedral and head towards Schofield’s Flower Shop. As they approach the flower shop, machine guns open fire and a hail of bullets is unleashed into the Northside duo’s direction from the 2 Capone gun nests. Hymie is hit with shotgun pellets and machine gun bullets from the two angles and is hit a total of 10 times. He collapses on the street in front of Schofield’s and dies where he fell.
His associate Patrick Murray is hit 7 times, and also dies where he fell, a few steps behind Weiss. The Capone gunners continue firing with the two men on the ground, just to be sure, even spraying bullets at the Cathedral in the midst of their firing. Golf Bag & Machine Gun Jack escape through the back of the rented room and toss their tommy guns in a neighbouring back garden.
The police and an ambulance show up a few minutes later but it’s too late. On Weiss’s body they find $5,900 dollars, about $100k today, a colt pistol and his ever-present rosary beads & bible. Capone had won, he had taken out the man he feared the most, now free to crush the Northsiders and run the city mostly uninterrupted.
10 cars of flowers lead the way at his funeral for the hearse containing Hymie Weiss, the funeral procession made it’s way around the streets of Chicago and he is buried next to his good pal Dean O’Banion in a mausoleum at Mt Carmel Cemetery.
Hymie Weiss was the epitome of 1920s gangster. He spent his short 28 years on this planet intimidating, conspiring and collecting from the city of Chicago. His lack of hesitation to engage in violence and play his part in a city-wide gang-war displays the way he was wired up. Perhaps it was his terminal cancer that made him live every day as if it was his last and resulted in his complete lack of fear. Perhaps it was just part of his DNA make-up and he was always destined to be born on the wrong side of the tracks and wreak havoc through the underworld of whichever city he was to be raised in. Either way, Weiss goes down in history as one of the most violent, anti-social mobsters that ever graced the planet. And, unforgettably, the only man Al Capone feared.
To watch my more in-depth documentary on Hymie Weiss click here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bBlmTNOagA