Say It With Flowers... or Bullets (2/14/07)

Most friends and lovers send their Valentine's greetings in the usual way: candy, flowers, cards. But Al Capone was anything but a "usual" guy. In 1929, when he wanted to make his feelings for rival Bugs Moran known, his Cupids didn't use arrows. They used Thompson submachine guns loaded with kisses, not covered in chocolate but in lead. Seven members of the Moran gang met their ends that day, including one who refused to turn stool pigeon, insisting, "Nobody shot me." The garage where the massacre took place was torn down in 1967, and the bricks were sold to a businessman who used them in the men's room of his restaurant. When that building was demolished, he tried selling the bricks individually, but buyers kept returning them, claiming they were cursed. And that lot in Chicago? Passers-by still report strange noises and feelings of fear. One assumes those whispers are something other than sweet nothings.