Hymie Weiss: 1898-1926

Hymie Weiss was born Earl J. Wociechowski in October 1898 in Chicago, the son of a Polish immigrant father and American mother. Mrs. Mary Wociechowski separated from her husband while the five children (Earl, Violet, Bernard, Frederick, and Joe, who died at age 13) were still young. She shortened their surname to Weiss, and sent them to a Catholic school in a probable attempt to restore any morals damaged by their father's saloon business. Young Earl, nicknamed 'Hymie' because of his Yiddish-sounding surname, preferred to learn lessons from the boy gangs who ran wild in 'Pojay Town', a near North Side settlement where his mother took up residence.

Weiss met O'Banion when both joined the ranks of Charles 'the Ox' Reiser's safecracking gang. The two young men found their personalities and working styles to be so complimentary that they became fast friends as well as companions in crime. By the time 1920 rolled around, giving Chicago gangland a bonanza in the form of Prohibition, O'Banion and Weiss had attracted a small army of followers in the North Side, and acquired enough influence and power among the local cops and politicians to warrant consideration when Johnny Torrio divvied up the bootleg territories of Chicago. To O'Banion and Weiss went the North Side, that vast expanse of territory north of Madison Street.

When O'Banion was killed in November 1924 by Capone-Genna gunmen, Weiss assumed leadership of the North Side gang and took his followers in a new direction: warlike offensives against the Torrio-Capone-Genna combine. Running battles took place in the streets, drive-by shootings were regular occurrences, and both sides lost troops. Despite the mayhem that now tinged the gang's bootlegging empire, Weiss not only strengthened their holdings but expanded them, making lucrative connections in Canada, Florida, and Cleveland. Little did anyone except those closest to him know that he was extremely ill. He had been suffering from headaches for years, and at the time of O'Banion's death, experienced at least one convulsion. When able to make the time, he made little-publicized trips to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for treatment.

One of Weiss' best-remembered feats is the September 1926 motorcade that he led past Capone's Cicero headquarters. At least eight automobiles pulled up outside the Hawthorne Hotel and emptied round after round of machine gun fire into both the hotel and the surrounding buildings. That was enough to make Capone sue for peace. But when Weiss told Capone's emissary that the price for peace was the execution of two of O'Banion's killers (men now high-ranking in the Capone organization), Capone displayed loyalty of his own by retorting, "I wouldn't do that to a yellow dog!!"

Someone had to die.

On October 11, 1926, Weiss and a small entourage were at the Criminal Courts Building, overseeing the jury selection for South Side gangster (and Weiss ally) Joe Saltis' murder trial. They left early in the afternoon and drove back to the old O'Banion flower shop, where they maintained an upstairs headquarters. As they were approaching the shop door, gunfire erupted from a machine gun nest in a nearby rooming house, killing Weiss and his chauffeur.

:End