- Byname of:
- Alphonse Capone
- Also called:
- Scarface
- Died:
- January 25, 1947, Palm Island, Miami Beach, Florida (aged 48)
Al Capone
How did Al Capone die?
What was Al Capone’s sentence for tax evasion?
What was Al Capone’s childhood like?
What was Al Capone’s occupation?
What is Al Capone best known for?
News •
Al Capone (born January 17, 1899, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died January 25, 1947, Palm Island, Miami Beach, Florida) was an American Prohibition-era gangster who dominated organized crime in Chicago from 1925 to 1931 and became perhaps the most famous gangster in the United States.
Early life
Capone’s parents immigrated to the United States from Naples in 1893. Al, the fourth of nine children, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He attended school until the sixth grade, at which point he dropped out at age 14 after striking a teacher. He worked a variety of odd jobs—as a candy store clerk, a bowling alley pinboy, a laborer in an ammunition plant, and a cutter in a book bindery—all the while serving in the South Brooklyn Rippers and Forty Thieves Juniors, two “kid gangs”—that is, bands of delinquent children known for vandalism and petty crime that were common in New York at the time.
Johnny Torrio and the Five Points Gang
Capone also became a member of the James Street Boys gang during this period, which was run by Johnny Torrio—a “gentleman gangster” who would become his lifelong mentor—and was associated with the Five Points gang. At age 16 Capone became a member of the Five Points gang and served aspiring mobster Francesco Ioele (Torrio’s associate, more commonly known as Frankie Yale) as a bartender in Yale’s brothel-saloon, the Harvard Inn.
Before Capone turned 21, he was involved in several violent incidents. In a youthful scrape at the Harvard Inn, a young hoodlum named Frank Galluccio slashed Capone with a knife or razor across his left cheek after Capone made a crude comment to Galluccio’s sister, prompting the later nickname “Scarface.” Capone later shot the winner of a neighborhood craps game to death as he robbed him of his winnings. Despite being questioned by the police, Capone was let go because no one had witnessed the murder. In another incident, Capone brutally assaulted a low-level member of the rival White Hand gang and left him for dead. Since White Hand gang leaders promised retribution, Yale sent Capone, his wife, and his young child to Chicago to work for Torrio.
Chicago crime boss
In 1930 the Chicago Crime Commission dubbed Capone “Public Enemy Number One.”
Torrio had moved from New York to Chicago in 1909 to help run the giant brothel business under Chicago crime boss Big Jim Colosimo. Shortly after Capone’s arrival in the city in 1919, Colosimo was assassinated by either Yale or Capone himself in 1920 to make way for Torrio’s rule. As Prohibition began, new bootlegging operations opened up and drew in immense wealth.
When mayor William E. Dever took office in Chicago in 1923 and intensified enforcement against organized crime, Capone shifted his operational base to nearby Cicero, where his influence was stronger and pressure from law enforcement was weaker. Working alongside his brothers Frank and Ralph, he cultivated influence within the town’s police department and supported candidates for local office who were willing to overlook his criminal operations. During Cicero’s 1924 municipal election, Capone’s organization kidnapped rivals’ campaign workers and intimidated voters at the polls to cement his hold. Reports also linked Capone to political allies in Chicago, including the mayor preceding Dever, William Thompson, who was widely believed to have benefited from Capone’s financial support.
In 1924 Capone was responsible for the murder of Joe Howard in retribution for Howard’s earlier assault of one of Capone’s friends. William McSwiggin, an aggressive prosecutor, attempted but failed to indict Capone when the eyewitnesses to the killing, fearing harm, lost their nerve and denied remembering the incident. Later that year Torrio and Capone enlisted Yale and other associates to murder gang leader Dion O’Bannion in his flower shop. O’Bannion’s associates Hymie Weiss and George (“Bugs”) Moran were unsuccessful in their attempt to kill Torrio in early 1925.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
Criminal empire
After a stint in prison, Torrio retired to Italy, and Capone became crime czar of Chicago, running gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging rackets and expanding his territories by gunning down rivals and rival gangs. In 1926 Capone went into hiding for three months after he and some of his gunmen inadvertently killed McSwiggin while attacking other rivals. (That evening McSwiggin had been out drinking with two childhood friends, who were also beer runners, and other criminals when he was gunned down in the street.) Capone was never prosecuted for the killing.
Capone worked hard to manage his public reputation. He engaged in charity and cultivated relationships with journalists to present himself to the world as a community-minded entrepreneur rather than a mob boss. During the Great Depression, he funded a soup kitchen that fed thousands of unemployed people, an act of apparent generosity that also generated goodwill among those who knew little of his criminal operations.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Capone’s efforts to cultivate a respectable public image did little to curb the violence associated with his criminal empire. Gang warfare continued as he sought to eliminate rivals and strengthen his control over Chicago’s underworld.
The most notorious of the bloodlettings was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang were machine-gunned in a garage on Chicago’s North Side on February 14, 1929. Though Capone was in Florida at the time, the operation is broadly understood to have been conducted under his orders, with enforcer Jack McGurn’s colleagues carrying out the attack on his behalf. Far from consolidating Capone’s grip on Chicago, the massacre generated nationwide publicity that recoiled against him, prompting U.S. Pres. Herbert Hoover to press the Treasury Department to accelerate its efforts to build a federal income-tax-evasion case against Capone.
In May 1929 Capone was arrested outside a Philadelphia theater for possessing a concealed handgun, and within days was sentenced to one year in prison. After death threats from fellow inmates at Holmesburg County Prison, he was transferred to Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, where he served some eight months before being released early for good behavior in 1930. Many Americans were fascinated by the larger-than-life image of Capone. Indeed, the motion picture Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932), directed by Howard Hawks, starred Paul Muni in the role of a gangster loosely based on Capone, who reputedly obtained a copy of the film for private screenings.
Tax-evasion conviction and later life
The federal tax investigation eventually succeeded in building a case against Capone. On June 5, 1931, Capone was indicted for 22 counts of federal income-tax evasion for the years 1925 through 1929. On June 12 Capone and others were charged with conspiracy to violate Prohibition laws for the years 1922 to 1931. On October 17, 1931, Capone was found guilty on five felony and misdemeanor counts; news of the verdict was widely reported on October 18. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and $50,000 in fines and court costs. He entered the Atlanta penitentiary in May 1932 but was transferred to the new Alcatraz prison in August 1934.
Illness and death
In November 1939, suffering from the general deterioration of paresis (a late stage of syphilis), he was released and entered a Baltimore hospital. Later he retired to his Florida estate, where he died from cardiac arrest in 1947, a powerless recluse.
Lasting influence
On April 21, 1986, workers opened a large concrete vault in the basement of the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, Capone’s former headquarters. The event was broadcast during the live two-hour television special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults, hosted by Geraldo Rivera. The structure was dismantled using a bulldozer, dynamite, and saws. The effort revealed only dirt, debris, and a few bottles from the Prohibition period; no valuables, liquor caches, or human remains were discovered. Internal Revenue Service agents and the Cook County medical examiner were on hand in case assets or bodies were found. The host acknowledged the disappointing result on air.
Capone has remained a major figure in popular culture. He was portrayed by Robert De Niro in Brian De Palma’s film The Untouchables (1987), opposite Kevin Costner as federal agent Eliot Ness. Capone was also a recurring character in the HBO crime drama Boardwalk Empire (2010–14), where he was played by English actor and producer Stephen Graham.
