The Schofield Flower Shop murder of Dean O'Banion

Florist Dean O'Banion loved to arrange flowers in fact he was a renting chrysanthemum bouquets for a large funeral when Frankie Yale showed up at his shop O'Banion knew Yale assumed he was there to pick up flowers reached out to shake his hand Yale and the two men with him pulled out pistols shadow Bennion dead you see Dean O'Banion was more than just a florist he was one of the most influential gangsters in Chicago a rival to Al Capone and his death would spark many more murders in Chicago's infamous Beer Wars which would culminate in the shocking 1929 st. Valentine's Day Massacre the life of Chicago's arch killer Dean O'Banion deserves to be remembered O'Banion was born in July 8th 1892 to Irish Catholic parents in the central Illinois town of maroa it was a small place and as of the 2016 census still has a population of less than 2,000 most of the residents of maroa were employed at a nearby cigar factory though O'Banion's father Charles worked as a barber he was still young only 9 when his mother contracted tuberculosis and later died during her treatment Emma O'Banion was taken to a sanatorium where her child could not visit her because of the risk of infection but he wrote her notes which showed his affection one began dear mama I love you awful well when he was grown O'Banion replaced her original wooden grave marker with a fine stone monument and returned to maroa every year to decorate his mother's grave with flowers his life changed radically when O'Banion family moved north to an area of Chicago called kill govan or more menacingly Little Hell in August 1865 the Chicago Times described kill Govan as a safe retreat for criminals policemen not venturing to invade its precincts or even cross the border without having a large reserve force the rough neighborhood originally named after a location in Ireland shaped O'Banion's early life he took up with a street gang of other youngsters named the little hellions and formed friendships which would endure the rest of his life O'Banion was probably stealing a ride on a streetcar called bumper riding when he fell off and the car rolled over his left leg the accident left him with one leg about an inch shorter than the other in a limp earning him the derisive nickname of gimpy however if someone used that name abandon was known to beat the other person within an inch of his life he attended Holy Name School for Boys on North Sedgwick Street in Chicago according to historians opinion had a lovely tenor voice it could be found singing in the choir his classmates knew him as a charming and easygoing person one of his childhood friends later said he was always full of the devil and having fun O'Banion had fair hair brown eyes and a cherubic round face in addition to his natural charisma he had a habit of calling everybody swell fellow he continued doing that even in his later violent years with people that he battled James Bennett a Chicago journalist said he would bestow upon you swell fellow even when his address was in your death book O'Banion's early religious upbringing would show later in his life though he provided illicit alcohol to huge swathes of Chicago according to some he refused to drink any of it himself he also refused to make a profit from prostitution another major money-making Enterprise for less scrupulous mobsters after he dropped out of school he began working as a singer waiter for Bob McGovern at McGovern's saloon and cabaret with a tinny piano playing in the background O'Banion would serenade patrons of the saloon with Irish folk songs he also earned money is a newspaper boy singing papers for minuscule profits he quickly discovered that illicit activity like robbing drunks with the rest of the little hellions made more money than legitimate jobs slowly O'Banion was sinking into a life of crime he served two terms in Bridewell also called the House of Corrections before he turned twenty-one years old this jail time sir for burglary and carrying concealed weapons were the only infractions to land O'Banion behind bars the rest of his life O'Banion had the clout and connections to avoid being sentence he was active in what has been called the newspaper Wars of Chicago in which O'Banion and his associates would travel from shop to shop strongly encouraging the owners to sell whichever newspaper was paying them the most for their services that week if threats of violence failed O'Banion and company didn't hesitate to use their fists to force the shop owners into compliance power and money began flowing to opinion with the start of prohibition in the 1920s with his lifelong friends helping him o'banion begins supplying illegal booze to everyone in need of a drink on Chicago's North Side historians believe he was one of the first to develop the idea of stealing alcohol from other mobsters nabbing nearly a hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise from another gang in Chicago the speakeasy business exploded this prohibition continued historians estimate that O'Banion and his crew bought in more than 1 million dollars in profits in one year they made their headquarters in the William F Schofield flower shop a business that actually sold flowers and made a good front for their more lucrative trade of bootlegged alcohol with money and influence driving him O'Banion began flexing his muscles in politics he held expensive fundraising dinners for his hand-picked candidates bobbing his ill-gotten gains in front of Chicago's rich and powerful in addition to picking his favorites so Banyan's henchmen wandered around the polls in his territory in the 42nd and 43rd Ward's of the city on election day and similar to his newspaper war tactics of an earlier era encouraged Chicago citizens to vote for those the mob boss selected after Richard Lindbergh in his book gang linked Chicago writes the commonly asked question on election day who will carry the 42nd 43rd had an obvious answer O'Banion in his pistol pockets O'Banion was known to carry up to three guns on his person at all times and he had his reasons he was in a territory dispute with Papa Johnny Torrio and his lieutenant Al Scarface Capone O'Banion and the Irish mob generally ran the north side of Chicago while the Italians and Sicilians ran the south side when the Jenner brothers who were Sicilian began to sell alcohol up north O'Banion came down on them like a hammer he stole an expensive shipment of their product and wasn't afraid to bad-mouth him in public reportedly saying to hell with those Sicilians he attempted to Frank Al Capone's outfit for the murder of John Duffy which most historians believe he committed O'Banion told reporters at the time what happened to Duffy is out of my line I don't mix with that kind of riffraff he stirred up more bad blood when he managed to swivel Torrio out of almost $500,000 and a deal finally his fate was sealed after refused to forgive the debt of one of the Genna brothers O'Banion threatened and bullied Torrio and the Genna brothers all the while selling the families of deceased mobsters beautiful flower arrangements to grace their coffins on November 10th 1924 he was filling an order for more than $10,000 of flowers for Mike Merlot mobster had passed away benignly from cancer when the call came in to the flower shop that someone who is coming to pick up the arrangement what happened next was witnessed by William Crutchfield O'Banion's Porter who worked in the shop and three small school boys from Holy Name school for boys O'Banion's alma mater who are walking home from school to go to lunch Crutchfield told police three well-dressed and smooth shaped men walked into the shop while he was sweeping the floor upfront O'Banion greeted them with his trademark friendliness and smile and said hello boys you hear from Merlot's flowers Crutchfield said singers O'Banion knew the men he didn't view them as a threat and move to the backroom to finish cleaning said a short time later he heard shots and ran back out front to see O'Banion bleeding to death from five bullets in his face throat and chest the police called to the scene by those in the neighborhood positively identified the man in the shop as O'Banion they searched his body and discovered a pistol in his pocket an extra clip of ammunition for the gun and 575 dollars in cash robbery was ruled out as a motive after that point but no one was overly surprised by Albanians violent end Morgan Collins the chief of police at the time reportedly said I had expected him to be killed and so had he no one was ever convicted of the crime though it is commonly assumed that most in Chicago's underworld know exactly who had pulled the trigger Torrio and Capone were pulled in for questioning by police but both said they had recently put in thousands of dollars of orders for flowers from Schofield apparently trying to prove their innocence by whether money flowed the police released both when the authorities went to O'Banion's home to notify his wife they said some of her first words were is he dead tell me before she was overcome with emotion the boys who had witnessed the shooting ran back to the school and fetched a priest who entered the shop to give the phone mobster his last rites but the church washed its hands of abandon after that refusing to form a service for him at the graveyard they were apparently the only ones to avoid his funeral thousands of Chicagoans showed up to view O'Banion in his bronze and silver casket as he traveled through Chicago's North Side one last time over 25 car loads of flowers were delivered to the florists own funeral a testament to his in he's buried at Mount Carmel cemetery which would have been a few blocks from his old flower shop where the original Scofield's Ford's building once stood is now a parking lot the North Side gang retaliated for O'Banion's murder going after the Genna brothers and John Torrio himself Torrio was so surprised by the attack that he had groceries in both arms when he was wounded by the bullets he survived and refused to cooperate with police or identify his attackers but a short time later he left Chicago and gave control of his gang over to Al Capone Capone famously put an end to the beer wars with the brutal 1929 st. Valentine's Day Massacre and the North Side gang pretty much disappeared from the streets of Chicago that's another story for another episode one last anecdote shows the impact that O'Banion had on the mob in Chicago because Dean O'Banion was thought to be the man who brought the Thompson submachine gun into the fray the story is that he'd gone to Colorado on vacation and picked up the guns there but had died before he could use them but after his death the three guns were passed out to his men who used him in what some historians believe were the first incidents of mob violence to use the infamous tommy gun in chicago history a fitting legacy for the man that the chicago tribune called one hard-boiled florist I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets that we got in history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes don't forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 220,602

Rating: 4.9739647 out of 5

Keywords: the history guy, history, history guy, illinois, us history, mafia, mob, chicago, prohibition

Id: wQxf5tM2JN8

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019