Titans of History

CAPONE

1899–1947

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Al Capone

Al “Scarface” Capone epitomized the murderous American Mafia mobsters who ran their rackets with impunity during the Prohibition era. Ironically, despite his deep involvement in organized crime and murder, the only charge he was ever convicted of was income-tax evasion.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Alphonse “Al” Capone was the son of Gabriele Capone, an Italian barber who had arrived in America with his wife Teresina in 1894. Al embarked on his career in organized crime when he left school at just age fourteen, and fell under the influence of a gangster boss, Johnny “the Fox” Torrio. From there he graduated to the Five Points Gang in Manhattan. It was during this period that he was slashed in the face after a bar-room brawl, leaving him with the scar by which he would later be known. He was also suspected of involvement in two killings, though witnesses refused to come forward and nothing was ever proven.

Capone’s mentor Torrio had left New York for Chicago in 1909 to run a brothel racket. Ten years later he sent for his protégé, and it was probably Capone who was responsible for the murder in 1920 of Torrio’s boss, “Big Jim” Colosimo, with whom Torrio had fallen out. Torrio subsequently emerged as the undisputed kingpin of crime in the Windy City.

The introduction of Prohibition in 1920 endowed America’s gangsters with a gold mine of opportunities. Trade in smuggled alcohol became big business, and speakeasies where bootlegged liquor was readily available became the defining image of the era. But behind the relaxed jollity of the speakeasy and the gangster glamour lay violence, wanton sadism and psychopathic brutality.

In 1923 a reform-minded mayor, William E. Dever, was elected in Chicago on a platform of reining in the mobsters. As a result, Torrio and Capone opted to relocate much of their business to the satellite town of Cicero. The following year, with council elections scheduled for Cicero, Capone was determined to ensure that his candidates won, by whatever means. In the resulting violence, his brother Frank was killed and an election official was murdered, amid a wave of kidnappings, ballot-box theft and general intimidation. When it was all over Capone had won in Cicero, in one of the most dishonest elections ever seen.

Within weeks Capone, apparently believing himself impregnable, shot dead a small-time gangster called Joe Howard who had insulted a friend of his in a bar. The crime made Capone a target for William McSwiggen—the “hanging prosecutor”—and though he failed to pin any charges on Capone, McSwiggen did succeed in putting the gangster firmly in the public spotlight, setting Capone on the road to becoming America’s public enemy number one.

In 1925 Torrio retired after an attempt on his life by a rival concern, the North Side Gang run by Dean O’Banion, George “Bugs” Moran and Earl “Hymie” Weiss. Capone now took over from Torrio as the leading figure in the Chicago underworld. Thereafter, he developed an increasingly public persona, ostentatiously attending major sporting occasions, such as baseball games, and even the opera, presenting himself as an honest, successful businessman, with a flair for the common touch. In truth everyone knew the real source of Capone’s wealth.

Protection rackets, illegal gambling, bootlegging and prostitution—wherever there was a quick buck to be made, Capone had a hand in it. His eye for profit was combined with a ruthless approach to dealing with possible rivals—and the greatest threat to his hegemony, in Capone’s view, was the North Side Gang, the hoodlums who had earlier attacked Johnny Torrio.

The result was the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Disguising his men as policemen, Capone sent them to Moran’s warehouse at 2122 North Clark Street, where they lined seven of the North Siders up against a wall and machine-gunned them in cold blood. Several of the victims were also blasted with a shotgun in the face. The gang leader, Moran, escaped, but with his key lieutenants dead his operation went into steep decline. Capone was left as Chicago’s undisputed Mr. Big.

But outrage over the killings generated pressure for more action on the part of the authorities against Capone. It was this that led the FBI to launch its ingenious bid to pursue Capone for income-tax offenses. Aware that he was unlikely ever to be indicted for any of his more violent activities (both because of the distance he now kept between himself and specific actions and because of the fear of reprisals that kept any potential witnesses from testifying), the federal government appointed a Treasury agent, Eliot Ness, and a hand-picked team of agents—the Untouchables—to go after Capone.

As a strategy it proved to be a stunning success. In June 1931 Capone was formally charged with income-tax evasion, and that October he was found guilty and sentenced to eleven years in prison. Initially sent to Atlanta penitentiary, in 1934 he was transferred to the maximum-security facility at Alcatraz. In 1939 he was released early, owing to ill health. But he was never able to regain control over his criminal empire. A shadow of his former self, Capone retreated into obscurity—finally dying of syphilis in 1947, a forgotten figure.