The name Vincent Gebardi may not be immediately recognized from the many golfers of the 1930's. But Vincent was the club professional of the Evergreen Golf and Country Club of Evergreen Park, Illinois, south of Chicago. He represented the club in the 1933 Western Open.

Play kicked off on August 25 at the Olympia Fields Country Club in Olympia Fields, also a suburb of Chicago. Things went well for the first day, and by the start of the second round, Macdonald "Mac" Smith was the leader with a score of 68 despite his advanced age of 43.

Vincent himself had been playing pretty good - he typically shot in the low seventies, an average not unusual amongst club professionals even today. But the field was impressive. There was Gene Sarazen who at a youthful 31 (the same age as Vincent) had won the US Open and (British) Open Championship the year before and only two weeks earlier had taken the PGA Championship. There was Tommy Armour, also a winner of the US Open, the Open Championship, the PGA Championship, and the tournament's winner in 1929. Then from Texas there was the 21 year old newcomer Byron Nelson. But even though Vincent didn't expect he would win, he hoped he'd at least make a respectable showing.

Then on the second day, August 26, Vincent was playing the seventh hole. He was one under par for the round when the cops showed up. They told Vincent he was under arrest. But like a true duffer he asked to be allowed to finish up the round. The officers agreed but when part of the gallery is going to haul you down to the hoosegow, that tends to affect your concentration. So Vincent ended up shooting an 86 and so missed the cut for the final day's play.

What, we ask, was going on?

Actually Gebardi was not Vincent's real name. It was Gibaldi. But even that's not the name most people know him by.

It's Jack

Jack McGurn.

Machine Gun Jack McGurn.

Yep, in 1933 Machine Gun Jack McGurn, the gunman who allegedly planned the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, was a golf professional. When he was arrested during the Western Open it certainly made the news.

And what was the charge against "Machine Gun"? Murder? Robbery? Extortion?

Nope. Machine Gun Jack McGurn was arrested because people thought he was a gangster.

Ha? (To quote Shakespeare.) He was arrested because people thought he was a gangster.

Yep, Jack was arrested because people thought he was a gangster.

You see, the state legislators of Illinois were getting tired of the bad rap that Chicago had been getting as a mob controlled city. To this end they passed a law that allowed police to arrest anyone with the reputation of being a criminal.

So when the cops collared Jack, they told him he was being arrested for violating the Criminal Reputation Law. The law was essentially a souped-up vagrancy law which was based on the rationale that people with criminal reputations didn't have any "visible" means of support even if they wore $500 double breasted suits and drove around in $6000 armor plated Cadillacs. So they were vagrants.

Also playing in the tournament was Jack's wife, Louise - the Western Open had both men and women's divisions. She went with Jack to the station and then drove off and contacted Jack's lawyer. Jack was released on a stiff $10,000 bond.

Then to his chagrin and even before he went to trial, he and Louise were stopped as they were walking along the street. The cops arrested Jack again for the same offense. Once more he was taken to the station and posted bond. Ultimately he was sentenced to six months for vagrancy, but he was allowed bail pending appeals and the next year the case was thrown out by the Illinois Supreme Court.

If there was one person whose life shows that crime does not pay well enough it was Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Vincenzo Gibaldi was born in Sicily in 1902 and the family emigrated to America in 1906. As a teenager and living in Chicago, Vincenzo found his small but stout physique made him a talented welterweight. Because Irish boxers seemed to be part of the "in-crowd", he went by the professional name of "Battling" Jack McGurn.

The sources differ considerably in the telling of Vincenzo's background. Some say his dad was named Tommaso Gibaldi but he soon died and his mom, Josephine, remarried. Others say Tommaso had not simply died but had been murdered in a case of mistaken identity as he sat in a barber's chair. Then Vincenzo's mom, Josephine, remarried to a man named Angelo DeMory, DeMore, or DeMora.

But other accounts state that Angelo was Vincenzo's real dad - and the surname was indeed Gibaldi. The DeMory name came about because once Angelo came to America he changed his name due to growing prejudice against the Italian immigrants.

But whether Angelo was Vincenzo's dad or his step-dad or if his name was really Tommaso, once in Chicago he became the successful proprietor to either a grocery store or a restaurant depending on who's telling the story. And the stories also differ as to who killed Angelo although everyone agrees it was on January 8, 1923.

One account is Angelo was making bootleg whiskey but not sharing his profits with the local mobsters. To discourage such stinginess, four men approached Angelo in the street and shot him down.

Another story is Angelo was killed by the notorious criminal extortion gang called the Black Hand, not through mistaken identity and not because he wasn't sharing bootleg profits. Instead he, had refused to pay them "protection" money. Three of the Black Handers - Orazzio Tropea, Willie Altierri, and a man known only as "Jimmy the Bug" - walked into Angelo's restaurant and blasted him with shotguns.

Vincenzo was now 20 years old, working and with a wife. No, it wasn't Louise but a lady named Helena. But now, rather than letting the official wheels of justice begin their ponderous turnings, Vincenzo decided to settle the matter himself.

After all, it was no secret who the killers were. So Jack bought a pistol and began practicing his marksmanship. Then he took a leave from his job and began shadowing the men and eventually he got their daily routines down pat.

Naturally the subsequent killings of three top members of the Black Hand made the papers but it seems the police weren't much interested in chasing down the killer of some of the city's most notorious blackmailers and murderers. But the news stories did grab the attention of a man who had an office at the Hawthorne Hotel in Chicago's suburb of Cicero. He was registered as Albert Brown and his business card stated he was a second hand furniture dealer.

Albert Brown, second hand furniture dealer, was, of course, Alphonse Gabriel Capone, the #2 man in the criminal organization of Chicago's South Side. The #1 man was John "The Fox" Torrio.

With Al's connections it didn't take long for him to learn the basic facts of the case. Once he had heard about the Black Hand murder of Angelo DeMoray, he quickly put two and two together as who had dealt with the killers. So Al had some of his men contact Jack - as we'll now call him - to stop by for a chat.

Standing in Al's suite, Jack was decidedly nervous. What was Al going to do? Blackmail him? Turn him over to the cops? Take revenge because he had killed some of Al's fellow gangsters?

But Al assured Jack he had no love for the Black Hand, a group of despicables who preyed on their own people. Instead Al offered Jack a job. He needed employees like Jack who had no hesitation in taking direct action to ... well, to handle "difficulties".

The long and short of it is that Jack found himself in the employ of "The Outfit" at the munificent pay of $200 a week. Despite his alliterative nickname he preferred a revolver. But as one scholar has pointed out "Revolver Jack McGurn" doesn't have the right ring to it.

Jack soon became one of Al's right hand men and one of his most trusted advisors. Like all good assistants, Jack would anticipate what the Boss wanted and take action on his own. This is shown by the way Jack dealt with an employee relation problem, a problem which involved the singer and comedian Joe E. Lewis.

Joe E. Lewis is now largely forgotten, but in his time he was one of the most famous performers in the nation. Although radio and movies were emerging as venues for the performers, live appearances in nightclubs were a major source of their income. And in the 1920's Joe was both headliner and emcee at the Green Mill nightclub in Chicago. The club was a place where the jet set met, and much of the success of the club was because people came to see Joe.

Complicating matters was that most nightclubs were (allegedly) owned by gangsters. The clubs (allegedly) served as convenient meeting places and were also good fronts to funnel illegal monies from the rackets. Such a business model (allegedly) continued well into the 1980's and Jay Leno told some amusing stories - at least in hindsight they're amusing - of his appearing in (allegedly) mob controlled clubs.

After he became established with Al, Jack became part owner of the Green Mill. So he was not pleased when Joe came up and said he was leaving the club to perform as host at the New Rendezvous club. It's bad enough that Joe was leaving Jack's club but the New Rendezvous was in another gang's territory, the notorious Irish-Polish North Side Gang.

Jack voiced his displeasure but not in a way that Joe thought threatening. Sorry, Joe said, he was leaving for the more lucrative North Side. Later whenever the two men would meet, Jack again argued that Joe should stick with the Green Mill. But Joe's mind was made up.

One word of caution. Many of the details of what was said at the various mob meetings, who was present, and who was involved in any subsequent action are unknown. So no one really knows who were the three men who pushed their way in to Joe's hotel room one morning after he opened at the New Rendezvous. But it's a virtual certainty that they were acting on Jack's orders. When the visit was over, Joe was laying on the ground beaten and left for dead with his throat slashed, literally from ear to ear.

Amazingly, Joe lived. Even more amazingly he was able to return to performing although it took several years of rehabilitation, and he had to content himself with stand-up comedy rather than singing.

We mentioned that we often don't know details of the mob's actions. In this case, though, Joe left us an account of what happened in his autobiography, The Joker's Wild. The book was later made into a movie starring none other than Joe's friend, Frank Sinatra. Joe himself lived until 1971.

Al, it seems, had not approved of Jack's actions. But neither did he change Jack's status as his #1 operative in The Outfit. Quite the contrary. When things started getting rocky, Al increasingly turned to Jack.

One rule for the mob is that business is business and don't let things get personal. That's easier said than done. After all, people who don't mind going around firing Tommy guns willy-nilly, putting bombs in cars, and burning down businesses don't take a dispassionate look at the competition.

We mentioned that the New Rendevous nightclub was in Chicago's North Side. In the early 1920's Chicago's natural divisions were occupied by separate gangs. Johnny Torrio and Big Al had the South Side and the mad, bad, Genna Brothers controlled the West Side or "Little Italy". But it was Charles Dean O'Banion - erroneously called "Dion" by the reporters - that had the North Side where he also ran a florist shop. Of course, the East Side of Chicago is called Lake Michigan.

There had been agreement that the three groups would operate within their own territories. But it was common for the bosses to test the waters and encroach on the other mobs' boundaries. Another factor was that Dion, a native of Chicago, resented that "foreigners" like John and Al had moved in from New York City and grabbed the South Side.

So Dion decided on a bit of subterfuge. He called up Johnny Torrio and said he decided to go straight and get out of a life of crime. So he offered to sell John his interest in one of the North Side's breweries. Fine said, John, he'd be right over. But when he showed up to cement the deal, so did the cops who had been tipped off by Dion. Since Dion had no previous bootlegging convictions, he knew he would be let off with a fine. But he also knew that this would be Johnny's second conviction and would land him real jail time.

This episode proved to Al and John that Dion was not serious about cooperating with the other mobs. Worse, he was a man who couldn't be trusted. And if you can't trust big time gangsters, who can you trust?

Of course Dion didn't run the North Side Gang by himself. His #2 man was Henryk Wojciechowski (voy-chee-HOF-ski), who was better known by the more pronounceable name of Hymie Weiss. Two of the other gang's leaders were Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci (DREW-chee) (showing that Dion had been an equal opportunity employer) and Adelard Leo Cunin, who went by the easier to remember name of George Moran. People called him "Bugs" because he was.

Just like no one knows who attacked Joe E. Lewis, no one really knows who were the three men who showed up on November 9, 1924, at Dion's flower shop ostensibly to pick up a floral arrangement. One of Dion's employees, a black man named Wiiliam Crutchfield, had finished sweeping up some petals. Although there were other employees with Dion, they were in the back rooms. William didn't recognize any of the men and also went into the back as Dion offered one of the men a friendly handshake. Evidently when the man took Dion's hand, he held on while the other two men pulled guns and fired. William ran back into the front room as the men left the shop.

Dion's death kicked off a mob war that lasted for five years. Any sense of propriety went out the window and there was no regard for innocent by-standers.

First of all, in January, 1925, John Torrio was shot as he got out of his car after shopping with his wife. He survived but immediately retired to Italy leaving Al in charge of the South Side Mob.

Then in 1926 Al was in the coffee shop of the Hawthorne Hotel when a car zoomed by with Tommy guns a-blazing. Al and the rest of the customers hit the floor. After the car had passed, Al started to rise but his bodyguard, Frank Rio, pulled him down.

Frank had noticed that the attack had done no damage. There wasn't even any broken glass. The gun had been firing blanks.

It was a "stall" Frank told Al, that is, a ploy designed to get them to come to the windows to see what had happened. So they stayed on the floor.

Sure enough a minute later a new line of cars came roaring by. But this time the choppers were firing real bullets. The restaurant was literally shot to splinters, but amazingly no one was killed although one woman was wounded fairly seriously by flying glass.

Jack had not been present but he knew that Hymie Weiss was now in charge of the North Side. So Jack effected Hymie's dispatch on October 11, 1926. Some stories have Schemer Drucci falling at the same time but other references say he lasted until in 1927. So as the last years of the Twenties roared out, Bugs Moran was left in charge of the North Side Gang with the #2 and #3 slots now being filled by brothers Frank and Pete Gusenberg.

Of course these weren't the only attacks in the gang war and Jack himself survived several attempts on his life, one of which landed him in the hospital. He maintained it was Pete and Frank Gusenberg who were the gunmen. He also believed they were the killers who broke into the house of another of Capone's top men, Pasquale "Patsy" Lolordo. The men killed not only Patsy but also Patsy's wife, Aleina.

Targeting family members was considered something only for the lowest of the low and the vilest of the vile. But things got worse. One night Jack got a call that someone had riddled his house with bullets while his wife, Helena, and daughter were at home. No one was hurt but Jack was convinced there could only be one gang to run Chicago. Bugs Moran and the rest of the North Side had to go. Al gave Jack the nod and left the details to Jack.

This happened on February 14, 1929. Theories of who actually participated in the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" have been put forth by many scholars and the basics are well known. Five of the North Side Gang - Frank and Pete Gusenberg, Adam Heyer, Al Weinshank, and James Clark stopped by the S.M.C. Cartage [i. e., moving and transport] Company at 2122 N. Clark Street which is now an empty lot.

Why the group was congregating isn't known. But the company was a front to supply trucks for shipping and hijacking booze. In addition to the gang members gathering together, there was a mechanic, John May, who did work on the trucks, as well as a most unusual individual. That was Reinhart Schwimmer. You read he was either a qualified optometrist - and so merited the title "Doctor" - or he had simply inherited the business from his dad and had no medical qualifications. But most of all he liked hanging around with gangsters while he lived with his mother.

The one man missing was Bugs Moran. But at this point the plot was too far along to abandon. And if getting the top six members of the North Side Mob wasn't possible, then the next five would do just fine, thank you.

From testimony of the bystanders who were outside the building, at about 10:30 in the morning, two or three men in police uniforms drove up. From the forensic investigation that followed, apparently they ordered the men in the garage to stand facing the wall. The gang, thinking this was just one more token police raid and they'd be back on the streets in few hours, complied. Then two men in suits and overcoats walked in. Witnesses reported the sound of a jackhammer and a car backfiring. Then they saw the "policemen" leading the "civilians" with hands raised out of the building into a waiting car. They all got in and drove away.

Today when nationally elected officials just shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing they can do when literally dozens of people are killed by a single gunman, it's hard to believe that the death of seven gangsters was viewed with horror by the nation. Even though Al had a solid alibi - he was in Florida - the US government developed a plan to get him into prison. So on October 17, 1931, arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 11 years for income tax evasion, Al spent a year in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary before being transferred to Alcatraz. In 1939 and failing mentally, he was released and ended his days in Florida in 1948.

Jack, too, had a Valentine's Day alibi. He had spent the day with a lady. No, not his wife, but a blond bombshell named Louise Rolf. Unbeknownst to Jack, though, Louise was also married, but Jack and Louise both maintained they never left each others, well, "sight" the whole day. There was enough corroboration for their story that to this day the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is officially unsolved.

As you can guess Jack's "blonde alibi" didn't please Helena and she took steps that soon allowed Jack and Louise to marry. The problem for Jack now was just what was he going to do now that Al was gone.

But just as the authorities decided on an indirect tactic to get Al into prison, they also tried a flanking movement on Jack. Because Jack and Louise admitted they been making whoopee while someone rubbed out the North Side Mob and that they took vacations together, they were both charged with violation of the Mann Act. The Mann Act of 1910 had made it illegal to transport a woman across state lines for "immoral" purposes. They posted $5000 for bail and were released. Eventually the case was tossed out by the US Supreme Court.

But even though Bugs Moran still lived, for all practical purposes the North Side Mob no longer existed . So there just weren't that many people left for Jack to rub out. Nor did the others of the Chicago Mob - Al's brother Ralph "Bottles" Capone, Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, Sam "The Cigar" Giacana, and Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, - have the close and friendly relationship with Jack that Al had. In fact, a lot of the Outfit's members hated his guts. So when Frank Nitti emerged as Al's replacement he curtly told Jack his services were no longer required.

Jack still ran the Green Mill nightclub and he had other profitable interests in other clubs and hotels. These reasonably legitimate businesses had made Jack literally a millionaire at a time when a million dollars was a lot of money. He and Louise soon moved to Oak Park in a nice but unostentatious house (which is still there). In addition to his business interests, Jack spent a lot of time playing golf as did Louise.

Jack was quite good and even played at the professional level. He began acting as the golf pro for the Evergreen Golf Club and he also liked playing at Maywood. Like many club pros he would give lessons and would also play a round or two with the celebrities who would drop by. This included Bing Crosby, who, like Jack, played about par.

But Jack was never a touring professional and in any case this was not an era where even top golfers got very rich. But Jack was happy living with Louise and he was hoping to make a nice comfortable living as a hotelier and club owner. In fact he seemed pleased to be out of the rackets.

Unfortunately, the year of 1929 did not just mark the end of Jack's time with the mob. It was the start of the Great Depression which was particularly hard on entertainment industries like hotel and nightclub management.

Hotels went out of business and nightclubs shut down. Jack's income began dropping. Then Frank Nitti informed Jack that he was no longer a partner in their remaining businesses including the Green Mill nightclub.

With his business aspirations evaporated, Jack turned to bookmaking at the racetracks where he would cover the 50¢ bets at Melrose Park. "Machine Gun"Jack Mcgurn? Huh! More like "Penny Ante Tout" Mcgurn! In a few years Louise would lament that they were broke.

But even small time crooks need some relaxation and late on the night of Friday, February 14, 1936, while Louise stayed at home, Jack and two friends went off to the Avenue Bowling Alley. At around one o'clock in the morning as Jack and his friends stood by the lane, three men walked in. They pulled out guns - the earliest stories state these were .45 calibre revolvers - and barked for everyone to "Stick 'em, up!". Jack apparently thought it was a simple robbery and complied. As he stood with his back to the gunmen, he never knew what hit him. He had $3.83 in his pockets.

No, no one knows who the killers were. The fact that Jack was killed only an hour past the seventh anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre makes some think it was revenge for Jack's part in the most famous gangland murder in history.

Support for the revenge theory is attested in the earliest news reports. As the killers were leaving, they dropped a comic valentine on the floor which showed a couple in front of a house marked "Sold" and standing behind a sign saying "Household Goods for Sale". Underneath was the poem:

You've lost our job, you've lost your dough,

Your jewels and cars and handsome houses;

But things could still be worse, you know -

At least you haven't lost our trousers.

As far as Louise, the "Blonde Alibi", she ended up marrying four more men for a total of seven marriages (you can figure out the math). She survived Jack by almost six decades.

Oh, yes. Mac Smith, the "Old Scot", won the 1933 Western Open with a score of 68-71-71-72, a 282 total and even par. Tommy Armour was the runner-up.

And Mac's winnings?

It was a whopping $500.¹

References and Further Reading

The True and Complete Story of Machine Gun Jack McGurn: Chief Bodyguard and Hit Man to Chicago's Most Infamous Crime Czar Al Capone and Mastermind of the St. Valentines Day Massacre, Amanda Parr, Troubador Publishing, 2005.

Chicago Assassin, Richard Shmelter, Cumberland House, 2000.

"Jack McGurn", Mario Gomes, My Al Capone Museum.

"Golfing Gangsters", Will Tidey, CNN, September 26, 2012.

"Let's See PGA Tour Top This Caper at Olympia Fields", John Fischer, Sports Illustrated, August 24, 2020.

"Perspective; When Machine Gun Jack Put Himself in the Rough", Dave Anderson, The New York Times, June 8, 2003.

"Arrested Developments: 13 Golfers Who Spent Time in Jail", Brent Kelley, Live About, February 4, 2020.

"History of Evergreen Golf and Country Club", Jennifer Kenny, Local Golf Architecture Chicago, March 8, 2016.

"Caddying for a Man Who Never Shot Par", Timothy Sullivan (with John Koebler), Sports Illustrated, November 6, 1972, p. 72-78, 83-84.

"Western Open Play Starts", Imperial Valley Press, August 25, 1933, p. 6.

"194 Match Shots in Western Open", Paul Mickelson, [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, August 25, 1933, p. B-4.

"'Machine Gun M'Gurn Arrested While Playing in Golf Classic", Paul Mickelson, Brownsville [Texas] Herald, August 27, 1933, p.9.

"Mac Smith Grabs Western Open Golf", Washington [D. C.] Times, August 29, 1933, p. 22.

"Mac Smith Western Champ Again After Eight Years", [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, August 29, 1933, p. 3.

"Capone's Ex-Bodyguard Gets 6-Month Term: 'Machine Gun' Jack McGurn Convicted of Reputation Law", Indianapolis Times, September 7, 1933, p. 11.

"'Old Man' Moran Dies in Obscurity", John Keilman, Dayton Daily News, December 31, 1999.

"Murder of Dion O'Banion Marks Passing of Another King of Chicago Underworld"", Casper [Wyoming] Daily Tribune, November 24, 1924, p. 8.

"The Stage Is Set for War", Andrew Rodgers, Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1997.

"Jack McGurn, Killer for Al Capone Assassinated in Chicago Bowling Alley", Indianapolis Times, February 15, 1936, p. 1.

"Gang Trio Slay Al Capone Aide", Washington, D. C., Evening Star, February 15, 1936, p. 1.