If there was any one thing that motivated Hymie Weiss it was revenge.
Since the murder of his friend Dean O’Banion, he’d been the de facto boss of the North Side gang that Dean had founded, mostly because none of the rest of the guys had wanted to be in charge. They were content to have Hymie make the decisions and if they weren’t sure what to do, they voted on it.
And their lack of initiative probably came from the fact that they seemed less interested in making money and more interested in sabotaging the operations of Capone and his allies – and, if possible, wiping them out. Hymie and his men had wounded John Torrio and chased him out of Chicago. They’d attacked Capone twice, killed Angelo Genna, and wounded and murdered dozens of enemy gunmen.
But Capone retaliated next. He marked Hymie and Vincent Drucci for death -- and then he tried again. And then Weiss nearly got Capone, and back and forth it went, until the streets of Chicago ran red with blood and one of the men ended up in the grave.