Death toll in Boardwalk Empire - how realistic? (open spoilers, I guess)

Cafe Society
1

I’m catching up on season 3, and there have been a few particularly bloody episodes lately. 11 of Nucky’s men are killed in Tabor Heights, and then 4 people are killed in retaliation by Rothstein, including 2 civilians. In a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere in 1923, this seems like the sort of thing that would rapidly become national news. And this is all in addition to incidental murders like Rowland Smith, Manny Horvitz, that random bloke shot in the street over the heroin deal, the Tabor Heights sheriff, and probably dozens of others that I’ve already forgotten. People are getting plugged left and right!

On the one hand, this makes for great TV in the absence of other murderthons like The Sopranos, but on the other hand, the Valentine’s Day Massacre was national news and “only” 7 were killed. Was prohibition really this bloody, or is this just poetic license?

2

Heck, after the sheriff got burned to death, I wondered why the Feds didn’t swarm the place. This ain’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but an east-coast town on the only passable road between Atlantic City and New York. If this was in Buttfuck, Arizona, I could picture it, maybe.

3

I’m gonna vote poetic licence. The media made a meal of almost every mob-related death in Chicago in that period so most of the stuff depicted in BWE would have in the real world drawn a huge amount of attention.