With mob hits, booze smuggling, and violent turf wars, the Windy City of the 1920s and ’30s was a chaotic and dangerous place.
The 1920s transformed Chicago into one of America’s most notorious ganglands, where organized crime thrived during the Prohibition era and corruption ran so deep it reached the highest levels of government. This decade witnessed the rise of infamous criminal figures, brutal violence, and lawlessness that would define the Windy City’s reputation for generations.
Despite a similarly powerful criminal network in New York City and other cities, however, Chicago’s organized crime syndicate arguably helped define what made a gangster a gangster. As such, Chicago became increasingly infamous for its prevalence of the mob and its bloody turf wars…