Rich, I surrendered on having a short squeeze. But you reminding me of the St Valentine's Day Massacre and reading the story has made me think that you are right.
It has some elements similar to Globalstar. So, let's arrange a vast conspiracy to defraud Carrie Lee and the Wall Street Journal and the SEC [okay Bill McDonald, you can be defrauded too] by causing a short massacre on Valentines Day.
So, 14th February 2001 it is!
crimelibrary.com
That's into the new millennium [the real one] and quite an appropriate date. Y2K was supposed to be a glitch year and it sure was.
It's quite a story. I love the "Nobody shot me" comment. That must be one of the great lines of history.
<McGurn's plan was a creative one. He had a bootlegger lure the Moran gang to a garage to buy some very good whiskey at an extremely attractive price. The delivery was to be made at 10:30 A.M. on Thursday, February 14. McGurn's men would be waiting for them, dressed in stolen police uniforms and trench coats as though they were staging a raid.
McGurn, like Capone, wanted to be far away from the scene of the crime so he took his girlfriend and checked into a hotel. Establishing an airtight alibi was uppermost in his mind.
At the garage, the Keywells spotted a man who looked like Bugs Moran . The assassination squad got into their police uniforms and drove over to the garage in their stolen police car. Playing their part as police raiders to the hilt, McGurn's men went into the garage and found seven men, including the Gusenberg brothers who had tried to murder McGurn.
The bootleggers, caught in the act, did what they were told: they lined up against the wall obediently. The four men in police uniforms took the bootleggers' guns and opened fire with two machine guns, a sawed-off shotgun and a .45. The men slumped to the floor dead, except for Frank Gusenberg who was still breathing.
To further perpetuate this charade, the two "policemen" in trench coats put up their hands and marched out of the garage in front of the two uniformed policemen. Anyone who watched this show believed that two bootleggers in trench coats had been arrested by two policemen. The four assassins left in the stolen police car.
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
(Chicago Historical Society)
It was a brilliant plan and it was brilliantly executed except for one small detail --the target of the entire plan, Bugs Moran, was not among the men executed. Moran was late to the meeting, seeing the police car pulling up just as he neared the garage. Moran took off, not wanting to be caught up in the raid.
Soon real policemen came to the garage and saw Gusenberg, dying from twenty-two bullet wounds, on the floor.
"Who shot you?" Sergeant Sweeney asked him.
"Machine Gun" Jack McGurn with Louise Rolfe, the "blond alibi" (Graham)
"No one --nobody shot me," whispered Gusenberg. His refusal to implicate his executioners continued until his death a short time later. >
Mqurice
PS: The original short squeeze was supposed to include sales of Globalstar phones and minutes taking off but Globalstar couldn't keep their end of the bargain. They should be getting it right by Feb. The shorts will be totally lulled into a false sense of security by now. Come on you shorts, there's really cheap whiskey here... |
