Old files offer fresh look at St. Valentine's Day massacre

In looping black fountain pen on paper now browned and cracked at the edges, a grim story unfolds:

"Both thoracic ... cavities contain a large amount of blood, the lungs are perforated 12 times, there is laceration of the thoracic aorta, laceration of the liver and of the diaphragm."

That's what became of Reinhardt Schwimmer, a North Side optometrist charmed by the trappings of gangster life and slain in one of the grisliest chapters in the city's history: The St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929.

For decades, Schwimmer's autopsy report - as well as those of the six other victims in the massacre - had been all but forgotten, gathering dust in a metal file cabinet in a Cook County government warehouse.

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