AL CAPONE, THE FAMOUS GANGSTER OF NEW YORK CITY

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search information about Alphonse Gabriel Capone, best known as Al Capone, the American gangster, businessman, co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit.

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899-January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname Scarface, was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. 

 

His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he went to prison at age 33.

Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager, and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol -the forerunner of the Outfit- and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana.

A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone.

Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as modern-day Robin Hood. However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged Chicago's and Capone's image, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone Public Enemy No. 1.

The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone and prosecuted him in 1931 for tax evasion. During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes during prior and ultimately abortive negotiations to pay the government taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

More information: FBI

Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899. His parents were Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone (1865–1920) and Teresa Capone (1867–1952). His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a town in the Province of Salerno.

Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. During this time, he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called the Harvard Inn.

Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door at a Brooklyn night club and was slashed by her brother Frank Gallucio. The wounds led to the nickname Scarface which Capone loathed.

When he was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds. He was called Snorky by his closest friends, a term for a sharp dresser. At about 20 years of age, Capone left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Johnny Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer.
  

Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis. Timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment.

In 1923, he purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the city's south side for US$5,500. In the early years of the decade, his name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's crime empire after Colosimo's murder on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being involved.

Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups.

The smaller North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion, also known as Dion O'Banion, was of mixed ethnicity, and it came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes. 

More information: The Mob Museum

 

In a fateful step, Torrio either arranged for or acquiesced to the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.

Al Capone was a frequent visitor to RyeMabee in Monteagle, Tennessee when he was traveling between Chicago and his Florida estate in Miami.

The protagonists of Chicago's politics had long been associated with questionable methods, and even newspaper circulation wars, but the need for bootleggers to have protection in city hall introduced a far more serious level of violence and graft.

Capone is generally seen as having an appreciable effect in bringing about the victories of Republican William Hale Thompson, especially in the 1927 mayoral race when Thompson campaigned for a wide open town, at one time hinting that he'd reopen illegal saloons.

Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang.

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion.

On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance.

On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for carrying a concealed weapon. On May 17, 1929, Capone was indicted by a grand jury and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh.

Following the entering of a guilty plea by his attorney, Capone was sentenced to a prison term of one year. On August 8, 1929, Capone was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as the number one Public Enemy on the unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's widely publicized list.

In April 1930, Capone was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach; the governor had ordered sheriffs to run him out of the state. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements, but was acquitted after a three-day trial in July.

In September, a Chicago judge issued a warrant for Capone's arrest on charges of vagrancy, and then used the publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. In February 1931, Capone was tried on the contempt of court charge.

More information: Smithsonian

In court, Judge James Herbert Wilkerson intervened to reinforce questioning of Capone's doctor by the prosecutor. Wilkerson sentenced Capone to six months, but he remained free while on appeal of the contempt conviction.

On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building in the courtroom of Judge James Herbert Wilkerson, Capone plead guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a two and a half year prison sentence plea bargain.

Capone was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his arrival at Atlanta, the 110 kg Capone was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhoea. He was also suffering from withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum.

Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. He was seen as a weak personality, and so out of his depth dealing with bullying fellow inmates that his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, feared that Capone would have a breakdown. 

Rudensky was formerly a small-time criminal associated with the Capone gang, and found himself becoming a protector for Capone.

The conspicuous protection of Rudensky and other prisoners drew accusations from less friendly inmates, and fueled suspicion that Capone was receiving special treatment. No solid evidence ever emerged, but it formed part of the rationale for moving Capone to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco, in August 1934. On June 23, 1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow-Alcatraz inmate James C. Lucas.

At Alcatraz, Capone's decline became increasingly evident as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties, his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in the hospital section, confused and disoriented.

Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his sentence for contempt of court. He was paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court, based on his reduced mental capabilities diagnosed.

The main effect of Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as considerably undermining the city's organized crime syndicate. Far from being smashed, the Chicago Outfit continued without being troubled by the Chicago police, but at a lower level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule.

More information: All That's Interesting

Organized crime in the city had a lower profile once Prohibition was repealed, already wary of attention after seeing Capone's notoriety bring him down, to the extent that there is a lack of consensus among writers about who was actually in control and who was a figurehead front boss. Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in the city without incurring serious investigation.

In the late 1950s, FBI agents discovered an organization led by Capone's former lieutenants reigning supreme over the Chicago underworld.

Due to his failing health, Capone was released from prison on November 16, 1939. A very sickly Capone left Baltimore on March 20, 1940, after a few weeks of inpatient and a few weeks of outpatient care, for Palm Island, Florida. In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Capone was one of the first American patients treated by the new drug. Though it was too late for him to reverse the damage in his brain, it did slow down the progression of the disease.

In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. Capone spent the last years of his life at his mansion in Palm Island, Florida, spending time with his wife and grandchildren.

On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted bronchopneumonia. He suffered a cardiac arrest on January 22, and on January 25, surrounded by his family in his home, Capone died after his heart failed as a result of apoplexy. His body was transported back to Chicago a week later and a private funeral was held. He was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago.

In 1950, Capone's remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Salvatore, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

More information: ThoughtCo

 

They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money.

Al Capone

ST VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE, IRISH VS ITALIAN GANGS

Saint Valentine's Massacre Victims

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang. It was a terrible story occurred in Chicago on a day like today in 1929. This massacre was a result of the struggle between Irish North Siders and Italian South Siders.

The history of the city of Chicago is deeply related with gangsters and mobs, especially during the 20's in the last century. It was a dark time full of crimes and violence, a time that must be remembered to understand Chicago and its past.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was the 1929 Valentine's Day murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park garage on the morning of Valentine's Day. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants who were dressed like police officers.

The incident resulted from the struggle to control organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the Irish North Siders, headed by George Bugs Moran, and their Italian South Side rivals led by Al Capone.

The perpetrators have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of a significant role, as are members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son.

At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 14, 1929, seven men were murdered at the garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago's North Side.

More information: Block Club Chicago

They were shot by four men using weapons that included two Thompson submachine guns. Two of the shooters were dressed as uniformed policemen, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats, and hats. Witnesses saw the fake police leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage after the shooting.

The victims included five members of George Bugs Moran's North Side Gang. Moran's second in command and brother-in-law Albert Kachellek, alias James Clark, was killed along with Adam Heyer, the gang's bookkeeper and business manager, Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran, and gang enforcers Frank Gusenberg and Peter Gusenberg. Two collaborators were also shot: Reinhardt H. Schwimmer, a former optician turned gambler and gang associate, and John May, an occasional mechanic for the Moran gang.

Real Chicago police officers arrived at the scene to find that victim Frank Gusenberg was still alive. He was taken to the hospital, where doctors stabilized him for a short time and police tried to question him. He had sustained 14 bullet wounds; the police asked him who did it, and he replied, No one shot me. He died three hours later.

Saint Valentine's Massacre on Newspapers

Al Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang.

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion. Several factors contributed to the timing of the plan to kill Moran. Earlier in the year, North Sider Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter unsuccessfully attempted to murder Jack McGurn. The North Side Gang was complicit in the murders of Pasqualino Patsy Lolordo and Antonio The Scourge Lombardo. Both had been presidents of the Unione Siciliana, the local Mafia, and close associates of Capone.

Moran and Capone had been vying for control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging trade. Moran had also been muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, and he had taken over several saloons that were run by Capone, insisting that they were in his territory.

The plan was to lure Moran to the SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street on February 14, 1929 to kill him and perhaps two or three of his lieutenants. It is usually assumed that the North Siders were lured to the garage with the promise of a stolen, cut-rate shipment of whiskey, supplied by Detroit's Purple Gang which was associated with Capone.

More information: The Mob Museum

The Gusenberg brothers were supposed to drive two empty trucks to Detroit that day to pick up two loads of stolen Canadian whiskey. All of the victims were dressed in their best clothes, with the exception of John May, as was customary for the North Siders and other gangsters at the time.

Most of the Moran gang arrived at the warehouse by approximately 10:30 a.m. on Valentine's Day, but Moran was not there, having left his Parkway Hotel apartment late. He and fellow gang member Ted Newberry approached the rear of the warehouse from a side street when they saw a police car approaching the building.

They immediately turned and retraced their steps, going to a nearby coffee shop. They encountered gang member Henry Gusenberg on the street and warned him, so also he turned back. North Side Gang member Willie Marks also spotted the police car on his way to the garage, and he ducked into a doorway and jotted down the license number before leaving the neighborhood.

Saint Valentine's Massacre Scenery

Capone's lookouts likely mistook one of Moran's men for Moran himself, probably Albert Weinshank, who was the same height and build. The physical similarity between the two men was enhanced by their dress that morning; both happened to be wearing the same color overcoats and hats. Witnesses outside the garage saw a Cadillac sedan pull to a stop in front of the garage.

Four men emerged and walked inside, two of them dressed in police uniform. The two fake police officers carried shotguns and entered the rear portion of the garage, where they found members of Moran's gang and collaborators Reinhart Schwimmer and John May, who was fixing one of the trucks. The fake policemen then ordered the men to line up against the wall. They then signaled to the pair in civilian clothes who had accompanied them. Two of the killers opened fire with Thompson sub-machine guns, one with a 20-round box magazine and the other a 50-round drum.

They were thorough, spraying their victims left and right, even continuing to fire after all seven had hit the floor. Two shotgun blasts afterward all but obliterated the faces of John May and James Clark, according to the coroner's report.

To give the appearance that everything was under control, the men in street clothes came out with their hands up, prodded by the two uniformed policemen. Inside the garage, the only survivors in the warehouse were May's dog Highball and Frank Gusenberg -despite 14 bullet wounds. He was still conscious, but he died three hours later, refusing to utter a word about the identities of the killers. The Valentine's Day Massacre set off a public outcry which posed a problem for all mob bosses.

More information: ThoughtCo

Within days, Capone received a summons to testify before a Chicago grand jury on charges of federal Prohibition violations, but he claimed to be too unwell to attend.

It was common knowledge that Moran was hijacking Capone's Detroit-based liquor shipments, and police focused their attention on Detroit's predominantly Jewish Purple Gang. Landladies Mrs. Doody and Mrs. Orvidson had taken in three men as roomers ten days before the massacre, and their rooming houses were directly across the street from the Clark Street garage.

Saint Valentine's Massacre

They picked out mug shots of Purple members George Lewis, Eddie Fletcher, Phil Keywell, and his younger brother Harry, but they later wavered in their identification. The police questioned and cleared Fletcher, Lewis, and Harry Keywell. 

Nevertheless, the Keywell brothers, and by extension the Purple Gang, remained ensnared in the massacre case for all time. Many also believed what the killers wanted them to believe: that the police did it. On February 22, police were called to the scene of a garage fire on Wood Street where they found a 1927 Cadillac Sedan disassembled and partially burned, and they determined that the killers had used the car. They traced the engine number to a Michigan Avenue dealer who had sold the car to a James Morton of Los Angeles.

The garage had been rented by a man calling himself Frank Rogers, who gave his address as 1859 West North Avenue. This was the address of the Circus Café operated by Claude Maddox, a former St. Louis gangster with ties to the Capone Gang, the Purple Gang, and a St. Louis gang called Egan's Rats.

More information: The Crime Mag

Police could not turn up any information about persons named James Morton or Frank Rogers, but they had a definite lead on one of the killers. Just minutes before the killings, a truck driver named Elmer Lewis had turned a corner a block away from 2122 North Clark and sideswiped a police car. He told police that he stopped immediately but was waved away by the uniformed driver, who was missing a front tooth.

Board of Education president H. Wallace Caldwell had witnessed the accident, and he gave the same description of the driver. Police were confident that they were describing Fred Burke, a former member of Egan's Rats. Burke and a close companion named James Ray were known to wear police uniforms whenever on a robbery spree. Burke was also a fugitive, under indictment for robbery and murder in Ohio. Police also suggested that Joseph Lolordo could have been one of the killers because of his brother Pasqualino's recent murder by the North Side Gang.

Bugs Morgan & Al Capone

Police then announced that they suspected Capone gunmen John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, as well as Jack McGurn and Frank Rio, a Capone bodyguard.

Police eventually charged McGurn and Scalise with the massacre. Capone murdered John Scalise, Anselmi, and Joseph Hop Toad Giunta in May 1929 after he learned about their plan to kill him. The police dropped the murder charges against Jack McGurn because of a lack of evidence, and he was just charged with a violation of the Mann Act; he took his girlfriend Louise Rolfe across state lines to marry. The case stagnated until December 14, 1929, when the Berrien County, Michigan Sheriff's Department raided the St. Joseph, Michigan bungalow of Frederick Dane, the registered owner of a vehicle driven by Fred Killer Burke. Burke had been drinking that night, then rear-ended another vehicle and drove off.

Patrolman Charles Skelly pursued, finally forcing him off the road. Skelly hopped onto the running board of Burke's car, but he was shot three times and died of his wounds that night. The car was found wrecked and abandoned just outside St. Joseph and traced to Fred Dane. By this time, police photos confirmed that Dane was in fact Fred Burke, wanted by the Chicago police for his participation in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Police raided Burke's bungalow and found a large trunk containing a bullet-proof vest, almost $320,000 in bonds recently stolen from a Wisconsin bank, two Thompson submachine guns, pistols, two shotguns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. St. Joseph authorities immediately notified the Chicago police, who requested both machine guns.

More information: CBS News

They used the new science of forensic ballistics to identify both weapons as those used in the massacre. They also discovered that one of them had also been used to murder New York mobster Frankie Yale a year and a half earlier. Unfortunately, no further concrete evidence surfaced in the massacre case. Burke was captured over a year later on a Missouri farm. The case against him was strongest in connection to the murder of Officer Skelly, so he was tried in Michigan and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1940.

On January 8, 1935, FBI agents surrounded a Chicago apartment building at 3920 North Pine Grove looking for the remaining members of the Barker Gang. A brief shootout erupted, resulting in the death of bank robber Russell Gibson. Taken into custody were Doc Barker, Byron Bolton, and two women. Bolton was a Navy machine-gunner and associate of Egan's Rats, and he had been the valet of Chicago hit man Fred Goetz.

Saint Valentine's Massacre

Bolton was privy to many of the Barker Gang's crimes and pinpointed the Florida hideout of Ma Barker and Freddie Barker, both of whom were killed in a shootout with the FBI a week later. Bolton claimed to have taken part in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre with Goetz, Fred Burke, and several others.

The FBI had no jurisdiction in a state murder case, so they kept Bolton's revelations confidential until the Chicago American newspaper reported a second-hand version of his confession. The newspaper declared that the crime had been solved, despite being stonewalled by J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau, who did not want any part of the massacre case. Garbled versions of Bolton's story went out in the national media.

Bolton, it was reported, claimed that the murder of Bugs Moran had been plotted in October or November 1928 at a Couderay, Wisconsin resort owned by Fred Goetz. Present at this meeting were Goetz, Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Fred Burke, Gus Winkler, Louis Campagna, Daniel Serritella, William Pacelli, and Bolton. The men stayed two or three weeks, hunting and fishing when they were not planning the murder of their enemies.

Bolton claimed that he and Jimmy Moran were charged with watching the S.M.C. Cartage garage and phoning the signal to the killers at the Circus Café when Bugs Moran arrived at the meeting. Police had found a letter addressed to Bolton in the lookout nest and possibly a vial of prescription medicine.

More information: All That's Interesting

Bolton guessed that the actual killers had been Burke, Winkeler, Goetz, Bob Carey, Raymond Crane Neck Nugent, and Claude Maddox -four shooters and two getaway drivers. Bolton gave an account of the massacre different from the one generally told by historians. He claimed that he saw only plainclothes men exit the Cadillac and go into the garage. This indicates that a second car was used by the killers.

George Brichet claimed to have seen at least two uniformed men exiting a car in the alley and entering the garage through its rear doors. A Peerless Motor Company sedan had been found near a Maywood house owned by Claude Maddox in the days after the massacre, and in one of the pockets was an address book belonging to victim Albert Weinshank.

Frederick R. Burke

Bolton said that he had mistaken one of Moran's men to be Moran, after which he telephoned the signal to the Circus Café. The killers had expected to kill Moran and two or three of his men, but they were unexpectedly confronted with seven men; they simply decided to kill them all and get out fast.

Bolton claimed that Capone was furious with him for his mistake and the resulting police pressure and threatened to kill him, only to be dissuaded by Fred Goetz.

His claims were corroborated by Gus Winkeler's widow Georgette in an official FBI statement and in her memoirs, which were published in a four-part series in a true detective magazine during the winter of 1935–36. She revealed that her husband and his friends had formed a special crew used by Capone for high-risk jobs.

The mob boss was said to have trusted them implicitly and nicknamed them the American Boys. Bolton's statements were also backed up by William Drury, a Chicago detective who had stayed on the massacre case long after everyone else had given up.

Bank robber Alvin Karpis later claimed to have heard secondhand from Ray Nugent about the massacre and that the American Boys were paid a collective salary of $2,000 a week plus bonuses. Karpis also claimed that Capone had told him while they were in Alcatraz together that Goetz had been the actual planner of the massacre.

More information: National Crimes Syndicate

Despite Byron Bolton's statements, no action was taken by the FBI. All the men whom he named were dead by 1935, with the exceptions of Burke and Maddox. Bank robber Harvey Bailey complained in his 1973 autobiography that he and Fred Burke had been drinking beer in Calumet City, Illinois at the time of the massacre, and the resulting heat forced them to abandon their bank robbing ventures. Historians are still divided on whether or not the American Boys committed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Many mobsters have been named as part of the Valentine's Day hit team. Two prime suspects are Cosa Nostra hit men John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. In the days after the massacre, Scalise was heard to brag, I am the most powerful man in Chicago.

Visiting the St Valentine's Day Massacre Wall

Unione Siciliana president Joseph Guinta had recently elevated him to the position of the Unione's vice-president. Nevertheless, Scalise, Anselmi, and Guinta were found dead on a lonely road near Hammond, Indiana on May 8, 1929.

Gangland lore has it that Capone had discovered that the pair were planning to betray him. Legend states that Capone produced a baseball bat at the climax of a dinner party thrown in their honor and beat the trio to death. Police tested the two Thompson submachine guns (serial numbers 2347 and 7580) found in Fred Burke's Michigan bungalow and determined that both had been used in the massacre. One of them had also been used in the murder of Brooklyn mob boss Frankie Yale, which confirmed the New York Police 

Department's long-held theory that Burke had been responsible for Yale's death. Les Farmer, a deputy sheriff in Marion, Illinois, purchased gun number 2347 on November 12, 1924. Marion and the surrounding area were overrun by the warring bootleg factions of the Shelton Brothers Gang and Charlie Birger. 

Farmer had ties with Egan's Rats, based 100 miles away in St. Louis, and the weapon had wound up in Fred Burke's possession by 1927. It is possible that he used this same gun in Detroit's Milaflores Massacre on March 28, 1927.

More information: Atlas Obscura

Chicago sporting goods owner Peter von Frantzius sold gun number 7580 to a Victor Thompson, also known as Frank V. Thompson, but it wound up with James Bozo Shupe, a small-time hood from Chicago's West Side who had ties to various members of Capone's outfit. Both guns are still in the possession of the Berrien County, Michigan Sheriff's Department.

The garage at 2122 N. Clark Street was demolished in 1967, and the site is now a parking lot for a nursing home. The bricks of the north wall against which the victims were shot were purchased by a Canadian businessman. For many years, they were displayed in various crime-related novelty displays. Many of them were later sold individually, and the remainder are now owned by the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.

The victims of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre were:

-Peter Gusenberg, a front-line enforcer for the Moran organizations

-Frank Gusenberg, the brother of Peter Gusenberg and also an enforcer

-Albert Kachellek (alias James Clark), Moran's second in command

-Adam Heyer, the bookkeeper and business manager of the Moran gang

-Reinhardt Schwimmer, an optician who had abandoned his practice to gamble on horse racing and associate with the gang

-Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; his resemblance to Moran is allegedly what set the massacre in motion before Moran arrived, including the clothes that he was wearing

-John May, an occasional car mechanic for the Moran gang

More information: History

I hope, when my time comes,

that I die decently in bed.

I don't want to be murdered beisde

the garbage cans in some Chicago alley.

Bugs Moran

AL CAPONE & THE CHICAGO OUTFIT, THE AMERICAN MAFIA

Al Capone

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search information about Alphonse Gabriel Capone, best known as Al Capone, the American gangster, businessman, co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit.

Al Capone was born on a day like today in 1899 and he has a controversial life becoming one of the most famous mobs of the history.

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899-January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname Scarface, was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he went to prison at age 33.

Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager, and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol -the forerunner of the Outfit- and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana.

A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone.

Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as modern-day Robin Hood. However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged Chicago's and Capone's image, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone Public Enemy No. 1.

The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone and prosecuted him in 1931 for tax evasion. During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes during prior and ultimately abortive negotiations to pay the government taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

More information: FBI

Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899. His parents were Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone (1865–1920) and Teresa Capone (1867–1952). His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a town in the Province of Salerno.

Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. During this time, he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called the Harvard Inn.

Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door at a Brooklyn night club and was slashed by her brother Frank Gallucio. The wounds led to the nickname Scarface which Capone loathed.

Al Capone

When he was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds. He was called Snorky by his closest friends, a term for a sharp dresser. At about 20 years of age, Capone left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Johnny Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer.
  

Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis. Timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment.

In 1923, he purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the city's south side for US$5,500. In the early years of the decade, his name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's crime empire after Colosimo's murder on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being involved.

Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups.

The smaller North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion, also known as Dion O'Banion, was of mixed ethnicity, and it came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes. 

More information: The Mob Museum

 

In a fateful step, Torrio either arranged for or acquiesced to the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.

Al Capone was a frequent visitor to RyeMabee in Monteagle, Tennessee when he was traveling between Chicago and his Florida estate in Miami.

The protagonists of Chicago's politics had long been associated with questionable methods, and even newspaper circulation wars, but the need for bootleggers to have protection in city hall introduced a far more serious level of violence and graft.

Capone is generally seen as having an appreciable effect in bringing about the victories of Republican William Hale Thompson, especially in the 1927 mayoral race when Thompson campaigned for a wide open town, at one time hinting that he'd reopen illegal saloons.

Al Capone

Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang.

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion.

On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance.

On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for carrying a concealed weapon. On May 17, 1929, Capone was indicted by a grand jury and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh.

Following the entering of a guilty plea by his attorney, Capone was sentenced to a prison term of one year. On August 8, 1929, Capone was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as the number one Public Enemy on the unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's widely publicized list.

In April 1930, Capone was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach; the governor had ordered sheriffs to run him out of the state. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements, but was acquitted after a three-day trial in July.

In September, a Chicago judge issued a warrant for Capone's arrest on charges of vagrancy, and then used the publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. In February 1931, Capone was tried on the contempt of court charge.

More information: Smithsonian

In court, Judge James Herbert Wilkerson intervened to reinforce questioning of Capone's doctor by the prosecutor. Wilkerson sentenced Capone to six months, but he remained free while on appeal of the contempt conviction.

On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building in the courtroom of Judge James Herbert Wilkerson, Capone plead guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a two and a half year prison sentence plea bargain.

Capone was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his arrival at Atlanta, the 110 kg Capone was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhoea. He was also suffering from withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum.

Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. He was seen as a weak personality, and so out of his depth dealing with bullying fellow inmates that his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, feared that Capone would have a breakdown. 

Al Capone

Rudensky was formerly a small-time criminal associated with the Capone gang, and found himself becoming a protector for Capone.

The conspicuous protection of Rudensky and other prisoners drew accusations from less friendly inmates, and fueled suspicion that Capone was receiving special treatment. No solid evidence ever emerged, but it formed part of the rationale for moving Capone to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco, in August 1934. On June 23, 1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow-Alcatraz inmate James C. Lucas.

At Alcatraz, Capone's decline became increasingly evident as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties, his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in the hospital section, confused and disoriented.

Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his sentence for contempt of court. He was paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court, based on his reduced mental capabilities diagnosed.

The main effect of Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as considerably undermining the city's organized crime syndicate. Far from being smashed, the Chicago Outfit continued without being troubled by the Chicago police, but at a lower level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule.

More information: All That's Interesting

Organized crime in the city had a lower profile once Prohibition was repealed, already wary of attention after seeing Capone's notoriety bring him down, to the extent that there is a lack of consensus among writers about who was actually in control and who was a figurehead front boss. Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in the city without incurring serious investigation.

In the late 1950s, FBI agents discovered an organization led by Capone's former lieutenants reigning supreme over the Chicago underworld.

Due to his failing health, Capone was released from prison on November 16, 1939. A very sickly Capone left Baltimore on March 20, 1940, after a few weeks of inpatient and a few weeks of outpatient care, for Palm Island, Florida. In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Capone was one of the first American patients treated by the new drug. Though it was too late for him to reverse the damage in his brain, it did slow down the progression of the disease.

In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. Capone spent the last years of his life at his mansion in Palm Island, Florida, spending time with his wife and grandchildren.

On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted bronchopneumonia. He suffered a cardiac arrest on January 22, and on January 25, surrounded by his family in his home, Capone died after his heart failed as a result of apoplexy. His body was transported back to Chicago a week later and a private funeral was held. He was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago.

In 1950, Capone's remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Salvatore, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

More information: ThoughtCo

They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money.

Al Capone