FBI Vault, George (Bugs) Moran, Part 01: Bureau of Investigation memorandum of July 19, 1932
The first part of the FBI's Moran file. Its legible core is a two-page memorandum reporting that on June 12, 1932 two men approached agents near Antioch, Illinois, one of them drawing a gun, and that agents later identified the two from Chicago police photographs as George "Bugs" Moran and a second man whose name is redacted.
- Date
- 1932-07-19
- Kind
- case-file
- Source
- FBI Records: The Vault
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- A record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under FOIA through the Vault. A work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The page image shown was saved from the Vault viewer on 12 October 2026 and is stored here.
Part 01 of the FBI Vault file headed, on its FOIA cover sheet, “SUBJECT: GEORGE “BUGS” MORAN.” The part holds about twenty-five scanned pages. Several are FOIPA deleted-page sheets, and the later pages are newspaper clippings, which the Vault OCR cannot read and which were not read on the images for this archive. This page describes the one document that was read on the page images, scans 10 and 11.
Scan 10 (stored here) is dated July 19, 1932 and headed “Memorandum for Special Agent in Charge W. A. McSwain.” It reports that on June 12, 1932 special agents, whose names are blacked out, drove from Chicago toward the Chain-O-Lakes Golf Course near Antioch, Illinois, “for the purpose of determining where one [redacted], fugitive, in Chicago file No. 76-169 was living.” While the agents were parked at a service station “about four miles South of Antioch,” two men approached them. One drew a gun and ordered the agents out of the car. One of the men said he was a deputy sheriff or deputy marshal of Lake County. After the agents showed their badges, the men left.
Scan 11, the image above, gives the outcome. On July 12, 1932 an agent “viewed the showup at the Chicago Police Department and recognized the two parties who had approached us as above indicated as George “Bugs” Moran and [redacted].” The next morning the two had already been released. Agents then examined photographs at the Chicago Police Department and “were unanimous in the identification of Moran and [redacted] as the two parties who had approached Agents near Antioch, Illinois, on June 12, 1932, Bugs Moran being the one who drew a revolver on Agents.” The memorandum also records that the Lake County sheriff told the agents he had many deputies whose names he did not know.
This is the agents’ own report of an identification made from a police showup and photographs; no charge arising from it appears in the pages read. The research notes made before these images were read had dated this report to 1938 and said the OCR did not name Moran. Both points are corrected here from the page images.
