Nails was a top enforcer for the Dion O’Banion Gang, virtually the only Jew among the North Side Irish mobsters. As much as any single gunner, Morton was responsible for holding the Italian gangsters under Torrio and Capone—as well as the Genna brothers and others—at bay on the North Side from 1920 to 1924.
Morton, known by the police to have committed several murders, enjoyed respect bordering on terror from other mobsters mainly because he had won the Croix de Guerre in France in the Great War and been promoted on the battlefield to a first lieutenancy. That, and the fact that he concocted very inventive death traps for foes, made rival gangsters avoid confrontations with him. Often he would try to lure an enemy into combat by accusing him of making anti-Semitic slurs.
However, as celebrated as Morton could be for his killing ways, he was to become most noteworthy for the way he died and the gangland vengeance that followed.
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Nails, who developed a yen to circulate in finer circles, took to horseback riding in Lincoln Park “where the society swells ride.” One day in 1924, a riding stable horse threw Nails and kicked him to death. It was an act that could not be overlooked or forgiven. Four leading O’Banions—Bugs Moran, Little Hymie Weiss, Two Gun Alterie and Schemer Drucci—descended on the riding stable and at gunpoint kidnapped the offending horse.
The creature was led to the spot where it had dispatched Morton, and there, after the very angry Alterie punched the horse in the snout, was shot in the head, once by each gangster, in worthy underworld fashion. Gang boss O’Banion bewailed the fact he had not been around when Nails was killed and vengeance exacted; such moronic behavior fit O’Banion as well as his men.
Yet despite his unsavory record, Nails was accorded an elaborate funeral with considerable military, fraternal and religious honors. City, county, state and federal officials were prominent in attendance, and the Chicago Daily News reported: “Five thousand Jews paid tribute to Morton as the man who had made the West Side safe for his race. As a young man he had organized a defense society to drive ‘Jew-baiters’ from the West side.”
A year after Morton’s death ill-fated plans were laid for a memorial tribute to him. The printed announcement of the service bore the names of Rabbi Felix A. Levi, General Abel Davis, Captain Ed Maher and the Reverend John L. O’Donnell. The principal address was to be made by a leading attorney, Frank Comerford.
Perhaps what sent matters awry was the added announcement that also participating in the tribute would be Johnny Torrio, Terry Druggan and Hymie Weiss (the new leader of the North Siders, Dion O’Banion having by then been assassinated). General Davis backed out of the arrangements, saying it would be an error to flaunt such gangsters and Morton’s record “in the faces of decent citizens.” The whole affair then fell apart. It was, said one writer, “another kick in the head for poor Nails.”
