In telling Moran's story, some of the twentieth century's most fascinating gangland figures are revisited, among them Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dean O'Banion, Vincent Drucci, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, showboating Chicago Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, the gang-hating yet oddly pro-Moran Judge John H. Lyle, and two of Ohio's most colorful and brazen robbers, Virgil Summers and Albert Fouts.
While Moran was not killed in the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in February 1929—a bloodbath that was meant for him but instead claimed the lives of seven of his associates—it marked the beginning of Moran's end as a gangland power. Cops and journalists dismissed Moran, figuring the losing his top men in the Clark Street garage and Capone's steady absorption of the North Side would either force Bugs out of town for good or make him a vulnerable target for a hit man.
Moran suffered neither fate. His career showed him to be a cunning and determined survivor. Moran was street-smart in the style of the pre-World War I gangsters, rough-and-tumble brawlers who relied on their instincts, guts, and guns. He outlived O'Banion, Weiss, Capone, and probably most of those who predicted his imminent demise in 1929.
Moran did not escape scot-free, however, serving the latter part of his life in both Ohio State and Leavenworth prisons on bank robbery charges. Despite his violent career, it was cigarettes, not bullets, that did him in; he died in prison in 1957 from lung cancer.
