Las Vegas' Mob Museum exhibits will include the St. Valentine's Day Massacre wall where seven people were gunned down by rival Chicago gangsters on Feb. 14, 1929.
Mayor Oscar Goodman announced the acquisition this morning at an event marking the beginning of renovations to the historic federal courthouse building in downtown, which will house the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.
On that day 80 years ago, four men dressed as police officers entered a warehouse where members of a gang headed by George "Bugs" Moran were gathered. Moran's gang was fighting with a gang led by Al Capone. The fake police officers lined up the rival gang members and killed them. A coroner's report documented 70 machine gun bullets and two shotgun blasts.
The warehouse stood until 1967, when it was demolished. A Canadian businessman bought the wall and used it as an attraction at a restaurant. After he died in 2004, his heirs settled on the Mob Museum as a home for the wall.
The museum is expected to open in early 2011.
"It's going to be a fun place, and it's going to bring a lot of people downtown," Goodman said.
Thanks to Alan Choate
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I thought the wall had been broken up and bricks individually sold with a certificate of authenticity? Anyone know for sure?
ReplyDeleteOnce the original owner of the wall George Patey passed on, the remaining unsold bricks went to his niece as an inheritance. She lives in Vegas and after a few attempts at selling them individually on Ebay, she ended up selling them to a future Las Vegas mob museum.
ReplyDeleteTo be precise, the remaining bricks of the wall that is going to the mob museum in Vegas, is not the whole wall originally bought by Patey.
Patey had sold about 150+ individual bricks out of 414 to individual collectors out there. He had told me this himself via telephone. Between 1999-2003 (before his passing), he had been selling them at www.caponewall.com. Patey himself had owned one perfectly bullet stricken brick.
One other bullet holed brick from the wall was snatched up a few years back on ebay of all places, for a cool $3000. This brick was originally removed by a crazed fan who visited the Werner storage company that was in operation at 2122 North Clark Street. The guy pleaded with Mrs. Werner and paid to remove one. He even photographed the removal. This was way before Patey had won the bid on the wall, thus before it was dismantled and shipped to him in 1967. I had informed Patey about this brick via photos and documents.
Please be aware that there a lots of other dubious bricks on sites out there claiming to be from the actual massacre wall. People love to twist the description when selling surrounding wall bricks and floor cobble stones from the back of 2122 North Clark. They tend to claim them as coming from the actual "massacre wall."
Potential buyers beware!