The St. Valentine's Day Massacre's Wicked, Wicked Wall

It began when I started looking for a Valentine's Day present for someone on the internet. I was hoping to find something special but after surfing the web for a while nothing really clicked so when I stumbled onto an article at a webpage about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre I started reading. Everybody who is from any where near Chicago knows the story and since I'm from Chicago I knew it too. Some Chicago mobsters from one gang got murdered inside a Clark Street garage by another gang on Valentine's Day during the Al Capone days. That's the story, but I kept on reading the article anyway. The account I read was written by a Troy Taylor and I found it at http://www.prairieghosts.com/valentine.html. After I started to read it I got curious as to whether there were any different versions of the massacre so I surfed around some more and quite a few, but all the other versions were very similar to Taylors' . I even found Taylor's exact same account at more than several other websites- not all of which gave credit to Taylor for it. So I went back to Troy Taylor's version of the massacre and kept reading.

Taylor wasn't really saying anything new or controversial. Basically, on Valentine's Day in Chicago in 1929 seven members of "Bugs'" Moran's Northside gang were put up against the North inside brick wall of a mechanic's garage on Clark Street and executed with a machine gun. No one was ever charged with the crime but it's almost a given today that Chicago's notorious Al Capone ordered the hit in an attempt to kill "Bugs" Moran himself. "Bugs" wasn't at the garage at the time. As Moran was arriving he ducked into another building down the street from the garage after he sensed something suspicious.

Taylor's version of the actual massacre matched all the other massacre versions I came accross---except one---the version written by Richard J. Dyer at a website called www.hymieweiss.com. Dyer's article said that whole sections of the accepeted version were fabricated and invented. I found little information on Richard Dyer, but from the the bibliography for his article his research was extensive. In Dyer's article, only five of the seven murdered men were Moran's men. One was a just a mechanic and the other was a civilian who just enjoyed hanging around Moran's men. But Dyer had more to say. Al Capone, according to Dyer, had very little to do with the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and it wasn't "Bugs" Moran who was the intended target. Dyer's article says there isn't even any evidence that "Bugs" Moran was headed to the garage or was anywhere near the garage at the time of the massacre. The article said that one of Al Capone's top underlings, Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn had a "Bugs" Moran problem. Moran had made three attempts on McGurn's life between 1926 and 1928 so McGurn came up with the idea of taking out Moran's top killers to protect himself. He turned to a trusted higher up, Frank Nitti, with the idea. McGurn and Nitti were running mates and Nitti was sympathetic. They took the idea to Al Capone - an Al Capone whose crime organization was so extensive that he wasn't even aware that one of his top men had a "Bugs" Moran problem. Capone's only role in the massacre, Dyer said, was to give McGurn the resources and authority to fix his problem and he gave them for two reasons. First to demonstrate his control over the organization was solid, and second to show he cared about the day to day problems of his top underlings even if he wasn't aware of what the problems were.

So maybe everything I knew about the massacre was wrong. It was starting to look that way.

Then I went back to Troy Taylor's article to find out what happened to the actual building where the murders occurred between the years1929 through 1967, which was basically not much.

The building was demolished in 1967.- End of story. I was about to go back to looking for a Valentine's Day present when something further down in Troy Taylor's article caught my eye. It was about the actual bricks used to build the North inside wall of the building where the murders were done - the wall the mobsters were lined up against and shot. They were, according to Taylor, bringing financial ruin, illness, bad luck and death to anyone who bought them, according to the stories.

I started doing web research on Troy Taylor. He is an author. Troy Taylor, author of Weird Illinois; Haunted Chicago; Bloody Chicago; Haunted Illinois; The Possessed (Haunted Illinois); Mysterious Illinois, and other sensational titles. I just kept reading his article on the history of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and tried to keep an open mind.

The murder building was demolished in 1967. But, the bricks from the bullet-marked inside North wall were purchased and saved by Canadian businessman -a Mr. George Patey.

I became curious about Patey. Surfing around the web I learned some things about George Patey and more importantly about the history of the history of the bricks that had a curse on them.

According to an online 1978 Time Magazine article, titled, O Wicked Wall, George Patey did buy the murder wall in 1967. The article says his original intention was to use it in a restaurant that he represented, but there were problems. According to Time, the restaurant's owner didn't go for the idea. And then there was a February 13, 2004 article by Andrew Herrmann, called, A Valentine You Could Refuse, that was printed in the Chicago Sun Times, Patey, said the Sun Times , was working as the restaurant's PR man when he heard about the demolition. He proposed buying the bricks, but it was the owner's wife who objected to the idea. The interview for the article quoted Patey as saying, "I told him, 'We'll bid low so we won't get them. But we'll still make news.' He wouldn't go for it." . Patey, according to the article, ended up buying the bricks himself.

There were various different reports about what George Patey did with the massacre bricks after he got them. Time Magazine reported in 1978 that Patey reassembled the wall and put it on display in a wax museum with gun-wielding gangsters shooting each other in front of it to the accompaniment of recorded bangs. The wax museum then went broke. Another source, in February of 2000, http://news.independent.co.uk/ , claimed that the wall toured shopping malls and exhibitions in the United States for, it said, a couple of decades. But the most reliable information on what George Patey did with his bricks was at the website of Marion Gnomes, www.myalcaponemuseum.com, Gnomes, it turned out, knew George Patey, and in addition is a collector and a very legitimate expert, nationally known - on Al Capone. Gnomes explains at his website that George Patey was in his Cadillac in Vancouver when he heard a radio report that the building where the murders happened was going to torn down in the coming Fall. George Patey thought it would be a great idea to buy the actual wall and use it to promote his boss' restaurant business and it was actually the restaurant owner's wife who objected to the idea. But Patey was not to be disuaded, says Gnomes. He out-bid three or four others for the North inside wall that took an estimated 72 gun shots. Patey had the wall painstakingly taken apart and had each of the 414 bricks numbered. He took them back to Canada and got them declared construction material at the border so he only paid several cents apiece to bring them over into Canada. Mario Gnomes says that George Patey then put the brick wall in a shopping mall, then into museums and galleries but in 1968 stopped exhibiting the bricks and put them into retirement..

According to Troy Taylor, Patey opened a night club in 1972 with a Roaring 20's theme and rebuilt the wall, for some strange reason, Taylor writes, in the men's restroom. Then three nights each week, women were allowed to peek inside at this macabre attraction. According to Taylor, when the club closed the owner placed the 417 bricks into storage. According to information at Mario Gnomes website the nightclub, called the Banjo Palace, actually opened in 1971. It had a roaring twenties theme and he had the explanation for the in the restroom. The famous bricks were installed inside the men's washroom with plexiglass placed right in front of it to shield it, so that patrons could urinate and try to hit the targets painted on the plexiglass. In a 2001 interview with Argentinian journalist, Ariel Cukierkorn published at www.pagina12.com, Patey said, "I had the most popular club in the city. People came from high society and entertainment, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Mitchum". George Patey was among other tings a stage magician and he did have ties to Hollywood. He was the opening act for performers like Mitzy Gaynor and Leona Horne, and even worked wityh Marilyn Monroe, but the Banjo Club closed in 1976.

Taylor says that Patey then offered the bricks for sale along with a written account of the massacre. He was selling for $1000 each, but soon found that he was getting back as many as he sold. It seemed, says Taylor, that anyone who bought one of the bricks was suddenly stricken with bad luck in the form of illness, financial ruin, divorce and even death. It's a version found all over the internet. There's no truth in any of this whatsoever.

Mario Gnomes says that George Patey wanted to sell the bricks, but as a whole, not as individual bricks, and he waited for over twenty years until 1999 before he finally decided to sell the bricks one-by-one on his own websitewww.Caponewall.com. George Patey, says Gnomes, never started selling any bricks to anyone after the Banjo Club closed. Any accounts that he started selling bricks when the nightclub closed and that they were sent back because of bad luck are a total fabrication.

The bricks were placed in storage until 1997 when Patey tried to auction them off on a website called Jet Set On The Net. The deal fell through after a hard time with the auction company and later starting in 1999, Mr. Patey tried to sell them brick by brick on his own website. I found the same information about what happened to the bricks after the Banjo Palace closed at the website www.mysterynet.com. A Mr. Guy Whitford citing George Patey as a very close friend said that, " the fact is, although he had many offers, George never sold a single brick, he has always had a problem with "breaking up the wall" (until now, 1999), so that 'bad luck to those who bought one' concept must be a rumour or journalistic embellishment. The last substantial offer for the entire wall was made by a Las Vegas casino about a decade ago, but George quaffed at the $175,000 offer. So both Gnomes and Whitford agreed as to when Patey started selling the bricks and that the bad luck label is entirely made up.

So in 1999 the bricks were subsequently put up for sale and available individually at Patey's website, www.Caponewall.com. The individual bricks according to Guy Whitford were going to be sold with an asking price for a single brick of $2500-$3000 dollars. That website was the source where Mario Gnomes got the bricks he purchased according to a comment Gnomes left at www.mysterynet.com on Oct 27, 1999. Gnomes wrote in his comment that the bullet ridden brick from the massacre that he bought from George Patey was donated to the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Flint, Michigan. I checked with the museum's website. There is a St. Valentine's Day Massacre wall brick on permanent display there. I was headed for Patey's website www.caponewall.com, to see if there were any bricks for sale but I never it. It went offline in 2003 according to Nathan L.K. Bierma writing at www.chicago.freeservers.com .

George Patey himself passed away on Dec. 26, 2004.

Troy Taylor's article reads that In recent years, other bricks have emerged that claim to have come from the wall. These were not bricks purchased from Patey but were smuggled out of the lot by construction workers and curiosity-seekers, Taylor said. It was from these bricks that legends of misfortune and bad luck arose. "Are these bricks authentic?", questioned Taylor, "the owners say they are... but you'll have to judge for yourself". That, I thought, would be a very tough call to get right without knowing the full history of the bricks. But then again it wouldn't matter if there weren't any for sale.

I started looking on the internet - trying to find "Genuine St. Valentine's Day Massacre Wall Bricks" for sale - and I came across the names of Mike Johnson and Richard T. Crowe at a website that Richard Crowe hosts called, www.ghosttours.com, There are bricks, said to be genuine by Crowe, from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Wall for sale there. They come with a certificate of authenticity and a small plaque. You can buy one for $800.00.

I read Crowe's version of the history of the bricks that he'd incorporated into the webpage. George Patey, according to Crowe, purchased some 400 bricks from the building's demolition company to use them as a promotion in his nightclub in Canada. Crowe's article says that eventually, these were all sold off on the internet at $800 each. Patey died a few years ago and all of his bricks are believed to have been dispensed. According to Richard Crowe, another 200 or so wound up in the collection of a man named Jan "U.S. 30 Dragstrip" Gabriel, a Chicago area drag racing promoter. Thses are no longer available. But a third cache. says Richard Crowe, was collected by longtime Chicago Bar owner and historical memorabilia dealer Mike Johnson. This final holding is the only surviving population of massacre bricks currently available on the retail market, according to Crowe. Once these are sold there will be no more left, says Crowe. There were only he says, the three large holdings and a scattering of individual bricks ever in collector's hands. "As a longtime friend and associate, I have been asked to assist Mike in getting these bricks into collector's hands", the article read. The next sentence in the article was in bold printing and capital letters. "THE TOTAL POPULATION OF MASSACRE WALL BRICKS NEVER NUMBERED MORE THAN AROUND 800".

800 bricks. I never found any evidence that the North inside massacre wall was any bigger than 7 ft. X 11 ft., In one single article the massacre wall was refered to as being 7' X 11'. That reference was from the February 13th edition of the Chicago Sun Times. Mario Gnomes, who has a detailed brick by brick map of the 417 bricks in the massacre wall at his website www.myalcaponemuseum.com, states the wall was even smaller, 6 ft X 10 ft.. There's documentation on view at www.myalcaponemuseum.com in the form of a letter from the National Wrecking Company, which was the company that took down the massacre wall brick by brick in 1967, that entire back wall went to George Patey. Any bricks smuggled out weren't from the back wall. George Patey got them all, said Mario Gnomes when I conatcted him.

So I became curious about Richard Crowe? According to the Ghosttours website Richard T. Crowe hosts, he is an internationally renown ghost hunter, the Director of the original Chicago's Supernatural Tours and Programs, the best-selling author of Chicago's Streetguide to the Supernatural, a noted expert in the world of the unexplained, a free lance writer/ lecturer, a TV and radio personality, and he's the Midwest's first full-time ghost hunter.

I didn't find a Valentine's Day present but I think I learned something from all of this. History is like anything else. You get what you pay for. Only with history the depth of what you learn is paid for with the time your willing to spend on it. Historical truth won't come to you or seek you out. You have to go out and find it on your own. These days, with the internet, in some instances you can probably come close. Those who casually accept at face value what's offered as historical fact or accepted history do so at their peril.

George Patey never did reveal what he paid for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre wall bricks. Not to anybody.

SOURCES
Troy Taylor, The St. Valentine's DayMassacre, http://www.prairieghosts.com/valentine.html
Richard J. Dyer, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, http://www.hymieweiss.com.
Time Magazine, Aug. 14,1978, O Wicked Wall, @ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946998,00.html
Andrew Herrmann, February 13, 2004, A Valentine You Could Refuse,Chicago Sun Times,@ findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20040213/ai_n12531857-
Feb., 2000, http://news.independent.co.uk/
Mario Gnomes, www.myalcaponemuseum.com
Ariel Cukierkorn, Untitled interview with George Patey,2001, @ www.pagina12.com
Guy Whitford's 1999 comment. @ www.mysterynet.com
Nathan L.K. Bierma, Untitled Article, 2003,@ www.chicago.freeservers.com
Richard T. Crowe, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Bricks, @ www.ghosttours.com
The Gerald Ford Museum, @ www.ford.utexas.edu/
George Patey, obituary, Dec. 26, 2004, @ www.myalcaponemuseum.com

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