Evening Star, 21 September 1926, page 18: Machine gun gang shoots up Cicero

Page 18 of the Evening Star for Tuesday, 21 September 1926 prints an Associated Press story datelined Chicago, September 21, under the headline “MACHINE GUN GANG SHOOTS UP CICERO” and the deck “Two Wounded in Renewed Warfare as Eight Armed Cars Rake Streets.” It says a “cavalcade of eight motor cars” fired on two buildings in Cicero, the Hawthorne Inn and a hotel whose name the Library of Congress OCR reads as “Anion,” “a short distance from where Assistant States Attorney McSwiggin and two companions were slain in April.”

The story names Al Capone as one who fled: “He was dining in the Hawthorne Inn, his reputed headquarters, and found hasty exit through a rear door.” It reports two people hit, a woman in an automobile and a hotel guest. It adds that “detectives advanced the theory” that Capone was the object of the fire, a theory the paper attributes to “information through underworld channels.”

The page prints no street address for the Hawthorne Inn, only “Cicero.” This archive cites the page for the building’s name, the town and the date, and for the paper’s own words “his reputed headquarters.” The theory about the motive is the detectives’, as printed.