This bit of trivia was touched on in the first panel of “Test the Waters” last week and I wanted to devote a full strip to it to really tell the full story. In today’s retelling, I wanted to try something different by showing it as one of those common stories told by multiple perspectives throughout the city.
The “Moran-O’Banion-Weiss clique,” as the papers sometimes called them, had worked together since before Prohibition. In 1918 they were believed to have stolen some $10,000 from the safes of five companies, including those of Standard Oil and Borden’s Dairy. One time the police busted them in the middle of a safe-cracking job, shortly after the first blast had gone off. The men claimed they’d been eating chocolate eclairs next door and had run in when they heard the noise. The jury was convinced, and they went free.
