McGurn was born in July 1902 in Licata, Sicily, the eldest son of Tommaso and Giuseppina (née Verderame) Gibaldi.

On March 7, 1928, McGurn was shot and wounded by the Gusenberg brothers at the Hotel McCormick, at Ontario and Rush street, from where he had been leading a local takeover of the beer racket.

[2] McGurn had part ownership of a speakeasy jazz club, a venue which still exists today, the infamous Green Mill, at 4802 North Broadway, in the middle of the rival "Bugs" Moran gang's territory.

[3] In November 1927, manager Danny Cohen gave McGurn the task of "persuading" comedian/singer Joe E. Lewis not to move his act south to the New Rendezvous Café, at North Clark Street and West Diversey Parkway.

[4] Although police charged McGurn in the case, he was never brought to trial largely due to his "blonde alibi" — girlfriend and later wife Louise Rolfe — who claimed they spent the whole day together.

A reasonably skilled golfer and flashy dresser, McGurn entered the competition as Vincent Gebhardi (another version of his real name), the professional at public Evergreen Golf Course.

The next morning, the name "Gebhardi" on the day's pairing sheet was observed by an alert Chicago Police chief detective, who sent two sergeants to arrest him.

"Aware of McGurn's truculent temper", the Chicago Tribune account reported, "the sergeants enlisted the help of Lt. Frank McGillen and five policemen from the Homewood station of the county highway force".

The group of burly officers accosted McGurn on the seventh green and told him he was under arrest under a warrant issued the day before under the "criminal reputation law".

Wearing a tight, thin white dress and sporting a three-carat diamond ring, she approached the policemen and snapped, "Whose brilliant idea was this?"

McGurn's assassins tossed a Valentine card with a prophetic poem near to his body: He was laid to rest at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.