The 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre of seven members of the North Side Bugs Moran Irish gang by Al Capone's South Side Italian gang was the bloodiest killing that had ever occurred in America up to that time.
The massacre remains an unsolved case and there is still an extreme amount of mystery surrounding the killings. To this day no one knows who or how many people were involved in the massacre or even exactly what happened that night.
But on June 14, a little piece of the mystery surrounding that cold February night was revealed. A 1927 Cadillac sedan that may have been the second getaway car on the night of the murders was finally shown to the public.
The owner of the car, Greg Zanis, has been thinking about the vehicle ever since he first saw it at about 13-years-old.
"I found the car sometime in the early '60's at the Becker Estate, which is on Sheridan Road in Highland Park," Zanis said. "I was there because my father was a priest at Assumption Church in Chicago and he was performing a funeral. The older people were all drinking up in the house and so I went walking around the estate, which is a total of twenty acres."
After walking around for a while, Zanis came across an old coach house that peaked his interest.
"I went up to this coach house and saw an old car that was kind of hidden," he said. "Ever since then I haven't been able to get this car out of my mind."
When Zanis met his wife, he told her about the car that he had seen as a child and they went back to the estate to inquire about it.
"The car was in the exact same spot that it was before, but it was more sunken into the ground and its roof had fallen in," Zanis said. "We asked the owner about the car and she said that it had been found in a garage on Dearborn street and sat on the property ever since. I wrote her a check for $1,275, which was all the money I had at the time and we moved the car into our apartment."
Since then, Zanis has taken the car apart, put it back together and basically just lived with this gem inside his house. That is until Joan Duma got involved.
Joan Duma does house restorations and used Zanis as the carpenter on many of her projects. One day she was sitting with Zanis while he did tile and a radio DJ made an announcement about the second 'ghost' car used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
"The DJ said that the second getaway car hadn't been seen since 1963 when it was taken out of a garage on Dearborn Street," Duma said. "The DJ then went on to describe the car as a 1927 green and black Cadillac and Zanis just turned to me and said 'I have that car.'"
Ever since then, Duma has been researching the history behind this special car.
"I started writing to different motor clubs to see if they knew more information about the car using its engine number as a guide," said Duma.
She has since found out that the car was one of only two like it ever made and that it is, in fact, the only one still in existence.
"It had to have been built for someone," Duma said. "It has a larger wheel base, 142 inches, than any car of its time, a v8 engine, which means it one of the fastest of its time, and the same colors as Chicago police cars."
Also found on the back of the car when Zanis bought it were three small caliber bullet holes.
"The next car that Capone bought in 1928 was bullet proof," Duma said. "We think that he made that car bullet proof possibly because of what happened to this car."
So far, only one car used in the massacre has been found.
According to historical records, a 1927 Cadillac sedan was found burned and broken up in a garage and was reported by police to be used in the massacre. It is also widely known that at least two of the killers were dressed in Chicago police uniforms, which could be one of the reasons that the Cadillac was painted to be similar to a police cruiser.
Also, some of the eyewitness accounts indicate that some of the men exited the garage through the rear doors and went into a second car waiting in the alley.
Zanis and Duma believe that second car waiting in the alley is the car that they currently have.
"We think that the car drove away from the murder site and went to the garage on Dearborn where the car was then bricked into a wall," Duma said. "Then the family living in the Becker estate bought the garage found this car, bought it up to their estate and left it there."
Also, Al Capone was known to have many Cadillac's throughout his lifetime but currently only a couple of them are accounted for.
"Only six Cadillac's are known to be Al's at this moment," Duma said. "And the oldest one is the 1928 bulletproof Cadillac, but he had to have had Cadillac's before that one. He probably had them shipped to a different name."
Most would say that the pair has a lot of evidence built up to say that this is the second getaway car, but they are still waiting for a critical piece of evidence.
"We are hoping that the LaSalle Cadillac Club could help us connect the engine number to a delivery that matches with the timing that the massacre occurred or even connect the number to Capone himself," Duma said.
Right now, the pair is still thinking about what to do with the car itself.
"I have received calls from volunteers who want to restore the car, someone who wants to write a book about the car and the famous RM Auctions who want to restore the car and then auction it off with a starting bid of $550,000," Zanis said.
"Also interested in the car are the LaSalle Cadillac Club and the Chicago Historical Society," Zanis continued. "We are going to keep the car for the next six months and spend time thinking about what we are going to do with it."
Duma ended by saying that she thinks this car could change history and hopefully help to explain what happened the night of the Saint Valentine's Massacre.
"If I were to write something about the massacre right now," Duma said, "I would use a question mark, because this car throws what historians say about what happened that night totally for a loop."
Check it out
Want to view a video of Greg Zanis and the 1927 Cadillac that could have been used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre? Visit www.youtube.com/thedreamcar.