Al Capone and the Valentine's Day Massacre
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
History Hit
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bootleg liquor. Tommy guns. Gangs ruling the city with crooked cops.
The Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 Chicago sounds cinematic, but the fear and the bloodshed was very real.
What was the perfect storm that created this horrifying moment? How did it unfold? And how did the cops finally catch their man?
Joining Anthony and Maddy today is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Eig, to take us back to this bloody moment almost 100 years on.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Morning creeps over Chicago on Valentine's Day 1929, settling on a city worn thin by years of gang wars, |
| 0:13.1 | bombings, ambushes, prohibition deals that kept the streets simmering. At the Clark Street garage, |
| 0:19.6 | the northside men think today is routine. |
| 0:23.1 | Another shipment of hijacked whiskey, another gamble in a war that never quite ends. They warm |
| 0:30.0 | their hands, trade jokes, never guessing this morning has been chosen for something far darker. |
| 0:36.5 | Outside, engines idle. |
| 0:39.3 | The footsteps approach. |
| 0:40.3 | The silhouettes in the doorway look like police. |
| 0:44.3 | Too calm. |
| 0:46.3 | Too controlled. |
| 0:48.3 | And, as the first Tommy Gunn rises into view, |
| 0:52.3 | the truth becomes clear. This will be a massacre for the age. |
| 1:01.0 | Tommy Guns, fake police uniforms, a city drowning in bootleg liquor and gangland wars, |
| 1:09.0 | and seven bodies left on a cold garage floor. |
| 1:13.6 | These are the beats of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. |
| 1:17.9 | Now, in this episode, we step back into Prohibition Era Chicago, where a ban on alcohol birthed |
| 1:23.9 | violent bootleggers, rival mobs carved the city into battlefields, and corruption seeped |
| 1:30.3 | so deep that killers could masquerade as cops and vanish into daylight. From our modern perspective, |
| 1:37.3 | it feels almost cinematic. But the terror and the bullets were all too real. |
| 1:45.7 | And the message was unmistakable. |
| 1:48.4 | Power ruled law didn't. |
| 1:52.7 | From Prohibition era Chicago, this to After Dark, I'm Maddie. |
... |
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