Capone, Alphonse 1899-1947

CAPONE, ALPHONSE 1899-1947

Gangster

Background

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 January 1899, Alphonse Capone became involved at an early age with petty street criminals operating in his neighborhood. During one saloon brawl Capone was slashed on the cheek with a razor, earning the lifelong nickname of "Scarface Al." He became a gunman for the notorious Five Points Gang and moved to Chicago in 1919 to escape arrest on a murder charge. That same year Congress declared the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages nationwide.

Chicago Gang Leader

Through a series of "efficient" murders of criminal enemies, Capone became the primary lieutenant of Johnny Torrio, another member of the Five Points Gang, who had moved to Chicago in 1915. With Capone's help he began a concerted effort to gain control of the newly established illegal-liquor racket. When Torrio was permanently disabled in 1925 after an assassination attempt by a rival gang, "Big AT Capone assumed direct control of the organization. Other bootleggers operated in Chicago in the 1920s, but Capone was more ruthless, greedy, shrewd, and systematic than the rest. He was suspected of being behind nearly two hundred killings in Chicago during the decade. He acquired such notorious henchmen as Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, August "Augie Dogs" Pisano, and Louis "Luigi" Morganno. He also managed to achieve working relationships with various powerful Chicago politicians, particularly Mayor William "Big Bill" Thompson.

"The Millionaire Gorilla."

From the beginning Prohibition had proved both unenforceable and unpopular. Capone once told reporter Damon Runyon, "I make money by supplying a public demand. If I break the law, my customers … some of the best people in Chicago, are as guilty as me." His favorite observation was "Everybody calls me a racketeer, but I call myself a business man." By 1929 Capone was reputed to possess a fortune of $50 million, and the Chicago Tribune began calling this flamboyant gangster the "Millionaire Gorilla."

Prison

Law officers could never directly implicate Capone in any of the murders he planned, including the bloody Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 14 February 1929, when seven members of the rival George "Bugs" Moran gang were executed in a Chicago garage. In late 1928 U.S. Treasury agents, after extensive investigations, found evidence that Capone had never filed federal income-tax returns. He was successfully prosecuted on charges of income-tax evasion, and in October 1931 he was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment at hard labor, which he served in federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and Alcatraz. During this long interlude in prison he lost all his power within American organized crime. Released from prison in 1939, Capone died of paresis in Palm Island, Florida, on 25 January 1947.

Sources:

Laurence Bergreen, Capone: The Man and His Era (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994);

Steven Nickel, "The Real Eliot Ness," American History Illustrated, 23 (October 1987): 42-52.