Machine-gun killing of William McSwiggin at Cicero was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Illinois, 1926.
Assistant State's Attorney William McSwiggin was cut down with two O'Donnell-gang associates, James Doherty and Thomas 'Red' Duffy, by machine-gun fire outside the Pony Inn saloon in Cicero, a killing widely attributed to Al Capone's crew during the beer war with the West Side O'Donnell brothers. That a prosecutor died alongside gangsters, apparently caught among the intended targets, produced a political scandal and repeated grand-jury investigations, though no one was convicted. The case exposed the entanglement of Cook County law enforcement with the bootlegging factions and became a symbol of the impunity Capone enjoyed at the height of his power. The Cicero attack, using an automobile-borne submachine gun against men on the street, typified the tactics of the mid-1920s beer wars in Capone's fortified suburban stronghold.
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