Al Capone

Alphonse Capone
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Born	January 17, 1899 Brooklyn, New York
Died	January 25, 1947 (aged 48) Palm Island, Florida, U.S.
Conviction(s)	Tax Evasion
Penalty	Imprisonment from 1932 to 1939
Status	Deceased
Occupation	gangster, bootlegger
Spouse	Mae Josephine Coughlin
Children	Albert Francis Capone

"Capone" redirects here.

Alphonse Gabriel Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), popularly known as Al "Scarface" Capone, was an American gangster who led a crime syndicate dedicated to the illegal traffic of alcoholic beverages during the time of their prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Brooklyn, New York to Neapolitan emigrants Gabriele and Teresina Capone, he began his career in Brooklyn before moving to Chicago and becoming the boss of the criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit (although his business card reportedly described him as a used furniture dealer).

By the end of the 1920s, Capone had gained the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation following his being placed on the Chicago Crime Commission's "public enemies" list. Although never successfully convicted of racketeering charges, Capone's criminal career ended in 1931 when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion.

Birth, family, and early life

Capone was born to Gabriele Capone (December 12, 1864 – November 14, 1920) and his wife Teresina Capone (December 28, 1867 – November 29, 1952) in Brooklyn, on January 17, 1899. Gabriele was a barber from Castellammare di Stabia, a town about 15 miles south of Naples, Italy. Teresina was a seamstress and the daughter of Angelo Raiola from Angri, a town in the province of Salerno in southwestern Italy.

The Capones had emigrated to the United States in 1894, and settled in the Navy Yard section of Downtown Brooklyn. When Al was fourteen, the Capone family moved to 21 Garfield Street, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The new home was where Al met Mae Josephine Coughlin, whom he married a few years later at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church, and gangster Johnny Torrio. Gabriele and Teresina had seven sons and two daughters, of whom Alphonse was the fourth oldest.

Early criminal career

Gang member

Capone's life of crime began early. As a teenager, he joined two gangs, the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors, and engaged in petty crime.

Capone quit school in the sixth grade at the age of 14, after being expelled for punching a teacher at Public School 133. He then worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including in a candy store and a bowling alley. After his initial stint with small-time gangs, Capone joined the notorious Five Points Gang, headed by Frankie Yale. It was at this time he began working as a bartender and a bouncer at Yale's establishment, the seedy Harvard Inn. It was there that Capone was slashed in the face during a fight over a girl, against the girl's brother. Once his face had been stitched up, Capone exacted revenge against the girl's brother. Although never proven, it is most likely Capone killed him, as less than two weeks after that fight, the girl's brother was found with a slit throat.

"Scarface"

The scar on his face stayed for life, earning him the nickname 'Scarface' which he truly disliked, and once, allegedly, killed another man because he called him it. It has been said, Capone used to put compact powder over his scar to cover it up, he disliked it so much.

Marriage

On December 30, 1918, Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin, an Irish woman who shortly before their marriage had given birth to his son, Albert Francis ("Sonny") Capone. The couple lived in Brooklyn before moving to Amityville, Long Island, to be close to "Rum Row," which was a line of ships that anchored beyond the three-mile limit to off-load their cargoes of alcoholic beverages onto speed boats during national prohibition (1920-1933).

Murders

Capone was still working for Frankie Yale and is thought to have committed at least two murders before being sent to Chicago in 1919, mainly to avoid the retribution of Bill Lovett. A violent lieutenant in the White Hand Gang, Lovett was busy searching for Capone who had supposedly hospitalized one of his subordinates. Capone was familiar with Chicago, having been sent there previously by Yale in order to help crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo dispose of a troublesome group of Black Hand extortionists. Capone went to work for Colosimo's empire under Giovanni "Johnny" Torrio, another Brooklyn boy. The move set the stage for one of the most notorious crime careers in modern American history.

Capone moves to Chicago

Torrio immediately recognized Capone's talents and soon Capone was elevated to running the Four Deuces bar and given responsibility for much of the alcohol and prostitution rackets in the city of Chicago. With prohibition now in full effect, there was a fortune to be made in bootlegging. Colosimo's reluctance to move into this area of crime led to his murder on May 11, 1920, in the foyer of his own nightclub. Frankie Yale was later arrested for the murder, but the case collapsed through lack of evidence. Torrio was now in charge and promoted Capone to be his second in command.

The Capone family moved to Chicago for good, buying a red-brick bungalow at 7244 South Prairie Avenue on the city's South Side. The house would serve as Al Capone's first headquarters.

Activity in Cicero, Illinois

After the 1923 election of reform mayor William Emmett Dever in Chicago, the Chicago government began to put pressure on the gangster elements inside the city limits. To put its headquarters outside of city jurisdiction and create a safe zone for its operations, the Capone organization muscled its way into Cicero, Illinois. This led to one of Capone's greatest triumphs, the takeover of Cicero's town government in 1924.

The 1924 town council elections in Cicero became known as one of the most crooked elections in the Chicago area's long history, with voters threatened at polling stations by thugs. Capone's mayoral candidate won by a huge margin, but only weeks later announced that he would run Capone out of town. Capone met with his puppet-mayor and personally knocked him down the town hall steps, a powerful assertion of gangster power, and a major victory for the Torrio-Capone alliance.

For Capone, this event was marred by the death of Capone's brother Frank at the hands of the police. As was the custom amongst gangsters Capone, signalled his mourning by attending the funeral unshaven, and he cried openly at the gathering. He ordered the closure of all the speakeasies in Cicero for a day as a mark of his respect.

Much of Capone's family put down roots in Cicero as well. In 1930, Capone's sister Mafalda's marriage took place at St. Mary of Czestochowa, a massive Neogothic edifice towering over Cicero avenue in the so-called Polish Cathedral style.

Capone's wealth, power grows in Chicago

File:Capone'scastle.jpg

The Lexington Hotel, Chicago. Capone's headquarters. Known as Capone's castle. Photographed in the 1990s, it is now demolished

Capone takes over

Severely injured in a 1925 assassination attempt by the North Side Gang, the shaken Torrio turned over his business to Capone and returned to Italy. Capone was notorious during the Prohibition era for his control of large portions of the Chicago underworld and his bitter rivalries with North Side gangsters such as Dion O’Banion, Bugs Moran, and O'Banion lieutenant Earl "Hymie" Weiss. Although the Capone organization was making a great deal of money from illegal prostitution and alcohol (some estimates were that between 1925 and 1930 it was grossing $10 million a year), Capone avoided prosecution by intimidating witnesses and bribing city officials, including the Mayor of Chicago William "Big Bill" Hale Thompson.

Retreats

Capone was reputed to have had several other retreats and hideouts including Brookfield, Wisconsin; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Olean, New York; French Lick, as well as Terre Haute, Indiana; Dubuque, Iowa; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Johnson City, Tennessee; and Lansing, Michigan.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre

In 1928, Capone bought a retreat on Palm Island, Florida. It was shortly after this purchase that he orchestrated the most notorious gangland killing of the century, the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. Although details of the killing of the seven victims in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street are still in dispute and no one was ever indicted for the crime, their deaths are generally linked to Capone and his henchmen, especially Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, who is thought to have led the operation, using Thompson submachine guns. By staging the massacre, Capone was trying to dispose of his archrival Bugs Moran, who controlled gang operations on the North Side of Chicago. Moran, spotting what he thought to be a cop car, decided to keep walking, and did not enter the garage.

Throughout the 1920s there were a number of attempts to assassinate Capone. He was shot in a restaurant, and had his car riddled with bullets more than once. However, most of the would-be assassins were incompetent, and Capone was never seriously wounded. Members of the gang that had wounded Torrio shot into the headquarters of Capone's gang, which was disguised as a doctor's office and an antique dealer's shop. Nobody was hurt in the raid (Capone's bodyguard threw him to the ground at the first sound of gunfire), although the headquarters was riddled with bullet holes.

Image control

Capone often tried to whitewash his image and be seen as a community leader. For example, he started a program, which was continued for decades after his death, to fight rickets by providing a daily milk ration to Chicago school children. Such efforts, however, did not change his reputation for violence and murder within the city. Also during the depression, Capone opened up a few soup kitchens for the poor and homeless. Capone was a man with style, and if he ever killed someone himself, or one of his henchmen killed an important person, hundreds of dollars worth of flowers was sent to the funeral, and even Capone and some of his men went to the funeral. In one instance, one of Capone's rival gang leaders got killed by his men, and he sent $5,000 worth of flowers to the funeral. In one fight between Capone's men and another gang, an innocent women was shot, not fatally, and required hospital treatment. Capone personally paid for all the hospital fees.

Downfall

Income-tax laws

Al Capone's privileged cell in Eastern State Penitentiary, where he spent ten months in 1929-1930 for possession of a concealed weapon [1]

Although Capone always did his business through front men and had no accounting records in his own name (even his mansion was in his wife's name), Al Alcini, a partner in crime, started linking him to his earnings. The federal, income-tax laws allowed the federal government to pursue Capone on tax evasion, their best chance of finally convicting him.

Celebrity status

Part of the reason Capone was taken to task in this way was his status as a celebrity. On the advice of his publicist, he did not hide from the media by the mid 1920s and began to make public appearances. When Charles Lindbergh performed his famous transatlantic flight in 1927, Capone was among the first to push forward and shake his hand upon his arrival in Chicago. He gained a great deal of admiration from many of the poor in Chicago for his flagrant disregard of the prohibition law that they despised. He was viewed for a time as a lovable outlaw, partially due to his extravagant generosity to strangers and often lending a hand to struggling Italian-Americans. His night club, the Cotton Club, became a hot-spot for new acts such as Charlie Parker and Bing Crosby. He was often cheered in the street, and it was only the brutal murders of the St. Valentine's Day massacre that made people view Capone, once again, as a killer and socially unacceptable. This was despite Capone's opening of soup kitchens in Chicago's poorest suburbs.

Public Enemy No. 1

Capone headed a list of "public enemies" corrupting the city compiled by the chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission, Frank J. Loesch, in April 1930. The list was published by newspapers nationwide, and Capone became known as "Public Enemy No. 1."

"The Untouchables"

Pursuing Capone were Treasury agent Eliot Ness and his hand-picked team of incorruptible U.S. Prohibition agents, "The Untouchables", and internal revenue agent Frank Wilson of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue. During a routine warehouse raid, they discovered in a desk drawer what was clearly a crudely coded set of accounts. Ness then concentrated on pursuing Capone for his failure to pay tax on this substantial illegal income. This story has become a legend and the subject of books and films.

Federal court trial, sentence

Capone was tried in a federal court in 1931. The Alcinis tried to help Capone, but he pleaded guilty to the charges on advice of his legal counsel hoping for a plea bargain. But after the judge refused his lawyer's offers, and the jury was replaced on the day of the trial to frustrate Capone's associates' efforts to bribe or intimidate the original panel, Al Capone was found guilty on five of 22 counts of tax evasion for the years 1925, 1926, and 1927 and willful failure to file tax returns for 1928 and 1929. Capone's legal team offered to pay all outstanding tax and interest and told their client to expect a hefty fine. Capone turned crimson with rage as the judge sentenced him to eleven years in a federal prison and one year in the county jail, as well as an earlier six-month contempt of court sentence. He also had to pay substantial fines and costs, leading up to $50,000.

Prison time

Bribery attempts

In May 1932, Capone was sent to Atlanta, a tough federal prison, but was able to take control and obtain special privileges. He was then transferred to Alcatraz, where tight security and an uncompromising warden ensured that Capone had no contact with the outside world. Capone entered Alcatraz with his usual confidence, but his isolation from his associates, and the repeal of Prohibition, meant his empire was beginning to wither. He attempted to earn time off for good behavior by being a model prisoner and refusing to participate in prisoner rebellions. When Capone attempted to bribe guards he was sent to the "hole" (solitary confinement).

Inmate enemies

During his early months at Alcatraz, Capone made an enemy by showing his disregard for the prison social order when he cut in line while prisoners were waiting for a haircut. James Lucas, a Texas bank robber serving 30 years, reportedly confronted the former syndicate leader and told him to get back at the end of the line. When Capone asked if he knew who he was, Lucas reportedly grabbed a pair of the barber's scissors and, holding them to Capone's neck, answered "Yeah, I know who you are, greaseball. And if you don't get back to the end of that fucking line, I'm gonna' know who you were."

Capone earned the contempt of many of the inmates in Alcatraz when he refused to take part in a prisoners' strike after a sick inmate, accused of malingering, was denied medical treatment and died. Continuing his work in the prison laundry, Capone was continually harassed by other prisoners and often called a "scab" or "rat." He was eventually allowed to remain in his cell until the strike was resolved.

Shortly after returning to work, an unidentified inmate threw a heavy lead sash at Capone's head, but he suffered only a deep cut on the arm after being pushed out of the way by convicted bank robber Roy Gardner.

Reassigned to mopping up the prison bathhouse, Capone was nicknamed the "wop with the mop" by inmates. He was later stabbed in the back by Lucas, who was sentenced to solitary confinement in "the hole." Capone was hospitalized for a week. He suffered further harassment and unsuccessful attempts on his life throughout his prison sentence, including spiking his coffee with lye and attacking him as he was walking towards the dentist's office. He remained under protection from several inmates (possibly due to payoffs by the Chicago Outfit).

Mental problems

Capone's mental state began to deteriorate. Amongst other things, he would repeatedly make his bed and then undo it for hours. At times, Capone refused to leave his cell at all, crouching in a corner and talking to himself in Italian or, according to some, complete gibberish. He began telling people that he was being haunted by the ghost of James Clark, a victim in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Paranormal investigators were even sent in to observe Capone and his surroundings, though they ultimately decided that Capone was simply mentally unwell.

Release

Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on Janaury 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California, to serve his one-year misdemeanor sentence. He was released on November 16, 1939, spent a short time in a hospital, then returned to his home in Palm Island, Florida.

Physical decline, and death

Capone's control and interests within organized crime had decreased rapidly on his imprisonment, and he was no longer able to run the Outfit on his release. He had lost weight, and his physical and mental health had declined, most noticeably with the onset of dementia probably caused by the third stage of untreated syphilis Capone had contracted in his youth.

On January 21, 1947, Capone had an apoplectic stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted pneumonia on January 24, and suffered a cardiac arrest the next day (possibly associated with the complications of third-stage neuros/syphilis).

Alphonse Capone was originally buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, in Chicago's far South Side between the graves of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Frank. However, on March 1950, the remains of all three family members were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, west of Chicago.

In popular culture

Capone's persona and character have been used in fiction as a model for crime-lords and criminal masterminds ever since his death. His accent, mannerisms, facial construction, sometimes his physical stature, type of dress, and often even parodies of his name are found in various cartoon series villains as well as some movies. These characters are often shown as wily and crafty, rather than contemptible, criminal characters.

In film

• One of the most notorious American gangsters of the twentieth century, Capone has been the subject of numerous articles, books, and films. He has been portrayed on screen by Nicholas Kokenes, Wallace Beery, Paul Muni, Barry Sullivan, Rod Steiger, Neville Brand, Jason Robards, Ben Gazzara, Robert De Niro, William Devane, Titus Welliver, Al Pacino, and William Forsythe.

• Al Capone also had two films about his life called Scarface. In the original 1932 version of the movie, his name was changed to Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, played by Paul Muni and in the 1983 version, it was changed to Antonio 'Tony' Montana, played by Al Pacino. The 1983 version, however, was remade to suit the modern day. The main difference is the main character, the Cuban Tony Montana, dealing in the Florida narcotics business instead of the illegal sale of alcohol. Both the original and the remake, reference how the downfall of both Tony Montana and Al Capone was due to tax evasion.

In television

• Capone and his era were highlighted in the 1959 television film The Untouchables and its feature film and television series remakes, which have created the myth of the personal war between the crime lord and Eliot Ness.

• An alleged vault of Capone's was opened by Geraldo Rivera on live television in 1986 on The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault. It turned out to be empty, except for an old whiskey bottle. This was parodied on the Simpsons, when Homer was trying to write a song and made the lyrics "There was nothing in Al Capone's vault/But it wasn't Geraldo's fault."
• In The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, Capone was toyed with in a very humorous episode.

In literature

• Capone is mentioned in the famous gangster novel "The Godfather", where he plays a part in Vito Corleone's past. In the Godfather, he is portrayed as a ruthless man, but one without tact.
• In several stories in the alternative history anthology Back in the USSA by Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne, Capone is imagined as the brutal dictator of a United States of America which experienced a communist revolution in 1917 instead of Russia, and is presented as an obvious analog to Joseph Stalin.

In music

• The Paper Lace song entitled "The Night Chicago Died" imagines Capone and his army of criminals waging war against the Chicago Police force.
• Capone is the subject of the Prince Buster song Al Capone and is the namesake of Rancid's Young Al Capone. Capone also appeared on the album art for Sufjan Stevens's 2005 album Illinois.

In comics

• Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould created the villainous crime-boss Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in 1931 as a caricature of Capone.
• He was a character in the comic book Tintin in America, the only real person to appear as a character in the The Adventures of Tintin series.

In videogames

• He is a non-playable character in the video game Shadow Hearts: From The New World.
• In the video game Scarface: The World Is Yours, Tony can buy the fictional "Whiskey Ghost" car, a gold-plated 1927 Ford Model A Custom Limo said to be once owned by Al Capone, for $10,000,000.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Kobler, John. Capone: The Life and Times of Al Capone, Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81285-1
• Lorizzo, Luciano J. Al Capone: a biography, Greenwood Press, 2003. ISBN 0-313-32317-8
• Pasley, Fred D. Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-Made Man, Garden City Publishing Co., 2004. ISBN 1-4179-0878-5
• Schoenberg, Robert J. Mr. Capone, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0-688-12838-6
• Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia, Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3

External links

• Obituary, NY Times, January 26, 1947 Capone Dead At 48; Dry Era Gang Chief
• Complete FBI files on Al Capone
• Find-A-Grave Alphonse ‘Al’ Capone
• An article on the Brothers Capone
• Al Capone at the Crime Library

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