Hymie Weiss

Weiss was born in present-day Poland, to Walenty S. Wojciechowski and Mary Bruszkiewicz. He had five siblings, Bernard, Frederick, Violet and Joseph, one of the two who died during infancy.[2] He was nicknamed "Hymie" and "Hymie the Pole",[2] later in his career. He was Catholic, despite the "Jewish-sounding" moniker (he carried a rosary and a bible).[2] As a teenager, Weiss became a petty criminal. After he upset a fragrance shelf during a botched burglary as a youth, police dubbed him 'The Perfume Burglar'. He befriended the Irish-American Dean O'Banion. With Weiss and George "Bugs" Moran, O'Banion established the North Side Gang, a criminal organization that eventually controlled bootlegging and other illicit activities in the northern part of Chicago.

When Weiss's brother Fred was questioned about him in 1926, he replied, "I've seen him once in twenty years... that was when he shot me, six years ago". When photographers tried to snap his picture, Weiss would glare at them and say in a low voice, "You take a picture of me and I'll kill you".[3]

On one occasion, Weiss chased away at gunpoint a deputy U.S. Marshal who came to arrest a friend for violation of the Mann Act at a party he was attending. The marshal returned with reinforcements, arrested the friend, and confiscated a cache of alcohol and weapons. After the raid, Weiss filed a lawsuit to recover silk shirts and socks that he claimed the marshals had stolen; both the government's charges and the lawsuit came to nothing.[3]

Jury selection for a murder trial of Joe Saltis, with whom Weiss sought an alliance, began on October 11, 1926 and Weiss and four of his men were sighted there. With him that day were his bodyguard Sam Pellar, gangster Paddy Murray, attorney William W. O'Brien, and Benjamin Jacobs (an investigator for O'Brien). At four o'clock that afternoon, Weiss and his men left for their State Street headquarters, Schofield’s Flowers. The quintet parked their cars on Superior Street and rounded the corner to cross State. As they did, two gunmen hidden in a nearby rooming house opened fire with a submachine gun and shotgun. Weiss and Murray were fatally wounded by this first burst. William O'Brien was hit four times and staggered into a nearby stairwell. At the initial sound of gunfire, a panicked Sam Pellar drew his .38 and instinctively fired a shot in the general direction of shooters (this bullet unintentionally struck Weiss as he collapsed onto the sidewalk). Pellar and Jacobs, both wounded, staggered back the way they had come. Bullets followed them the whole way and some chipped the cornerstone of the Holy Name Cathedral directly across the street.[3]

Weiss is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, the same place as Al Capone and Dean O'Banion.

Weiss and other Prohibition-era mobsters served as the basis for many gangster films of the 1930s. James Cagney, for example, based his character on both Weiss and Chicago gangland figure Dean O'Banion in The Public Enemy (1931).[4]

In 2013 and 2014, Weiss is portrayed by Will Janowitz on the third and fourth seasons of Boardwalk Empire.

• Asbury, Herbert (1986). Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. pp. 353–58.
• Keefe, Rose (1931). Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot before Al Capone. Cumberland House. p. 336. ISBN 1-58182-378-9.

• Hymie Weiss at Find a Grave
• Hymie Weiss at My Al Capone Museum
• HymieWeiss.com