Al Capone: The American Gangster

Al Capone The American GangsterAl Capone was an American gangster who conduct a crime syndicate dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging of liquor and other illegal activities during the Prohibition Era of the 1920s and 1930s. Capone began his railway career in Brooklyn a genius moving to Chicago and becoming the boss of the criminal organization get it onn as the Chicago Outfit although, his business card reportedly described him as a used furniture dealer. He was, and still is, the most recognized and influential Mafioso in American history. Both hated and loved by the public, he shared a common dislike with many people in American society at that time a strong disdain for the dryness movement.Alphonse Gabriel Al Capone was born on January 17, 1899 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City to Italian immigrants Gabriele and Teresina Capone. They landed in New York just in time for the Panic of 1893, which would stand the kingdoms economy for age. Gabriel who was a aptitudeed neaten and Teresina a seamstress, wisely chose Brooklyn as home in preference to the even greater squalor and density of mulberry tree Bend, Manhattans Lower East Side Italian colony non that the depression spared Brooklyn. Unemployment would before long idle one quarter of the boroughs work string, making it no time for the unskillight-emitting diode.1The Capones lived let out than most. Though Gabriel could not ply his trade at first, he avoided the drudgery and extreme low pay of manual labor be behave he boasted another skill that went with his trade he could read and write. In Italy, as well as in America, the illiterate expected their barber to read them any letters that came their way. Gabriels training earned him a blood line in a grocery store until he could gather enough of a stake to open his own barber shop a storefront in a tenement at 69 Park Avenue.2Little Al, as he was c solelyed, had started school at antic Jay, P.S. 7, at 141 York, near the Navy Yard. After the family had moved, he transferred to William A. Butler, P.S. 133, at 355 Butler Street seven blocks away from Garfield. Until he reached sixth grade, he maintained a B average. He devoted much time and energy to his favorite extracurricular activity, playing hooky. He attended class merely thirty-three years of the required ninety. A red-haze temper that would occasion bothy e reallyplacemaster him all his life exploded one day, and he make a teacher who was lecturing him. direct to the principals darkice, he got a whip crepuscleg and quit school in embarrassment. He was fourteen at the time, merely he was ready to quit anyway as it was practically a family tradition.3Al make a stab at an assortment of honest jobs clerk in a candy store and pin boy in a bowling alley. For a while he earned twenty-three dollars a week working in an ammunition factory. He also worked as cutter in a book bindery, following his older fellow Ralph, who had worked in the print shop of a newspa per. Apprenticeship for Al Capones lifes work, though, arose on the streets. The streets Capone traveled as a young boy was ruled by gangs, or much precisely kid gangs. Members of these kid gangs could not be called gangsters by todays standards they would barely qualify as delinquents. Excepting petty pilferage and occasional lunch-money extortion, few engaged in activity anyone would consider all overthrowright criminal.4Al was heavily influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio whom he considered to be his mentor. John Torrio was the thinking mans criminal. Torrio possess a bar on James Street at the corner of Water. He soon expanded, leasing a rooming house down the block which he filled with prostitutes and a nearby store he converted into a pool hall. Young Al could hardly realize avoided absorbing the lesson of or soone who had attained money and power without the drudgery that were typically weighed on others.5Al at long last joined the South Brooklyn Rippers, a junior gang that inducted kids as young as eleven. No reliably au whereforetic details about Als activities in his late boyhood and early teens have survived, but he evidently did not stand out or apart. Not many years subsequently, a former Brooklyn kid-gang member remembered him as more or lessthing of a nonentity, affable, soft of speech and even mediocre.6Al had caught the eye of someone who could exert the most portentous influence possible at that stage. It was Frankie Yale, six years older, who had ushered Al into the Forty Thieves Juniors gang. When Al entered his mid-teens, Yale welcomed him exclusively into the adult gang Five Points headed by Johnny Torrio. Membership in this Manhattan gang showcased his tough scrappiness. Capone learned all in that respect was to know about extortion and slugging and the rest on the banks of the Gowanus Canal, says William Balsamo, Brooklyn native and historian of New York crime. Yale was fashioning a complex of enterprises beyond the Harvard Inn a morgue racehorses prizefighters another nightspot, the Sunrise Cafe a line of cigars-all based finally on his main line, strong-arm terror.7Capones job as bartender and bouncer at Yales Harvard Inn demanded a certain finesse. The trick was to bounce without alienating, and only to do so after considered efforts to calm and subdue had failed. Ideally, the bounced would recognize themselves as out of line. Capone unite the mass to bounce authoritatively and the intelligence to do it with tact. Capone became Yales pupil, favored by invitations after a hard night at the Harvard Inn to sleep oer at Yales house. That happened frequently enough that Yales young ladys would show visitors Als room. Yale had the swagger of a young man, already boss yet still a comer. Inevitably, Capone viewed Yale as a model and a teacher.8One summer night in 1917 resulted in scarring consequences. Frank Galluccio Galluch, a merchant seaman, barbers assistant, and spear-carrier in the Genovese crime fami ly strutted into the Harvard Inn with his date, mare Tanzio, and his kid sister, Lena. The sight of Lena set Capones glands exploding. Every time his ravishs took him past her table he would try to chat with her Lena snubbed him. Her brother who was half drunk and did not know Capone assumed from his familiarity that Lena did. His kid sisters growing anger penetrated Galluccios alcoholic fog stating, You know that guy? Lena then respondedI never saw him before. Hes got a lotta nerve. He fashion give up, Frank. He cant take a hint. But I dont like him he is embarrassing me. Maybe you could ask him to please stop-in a prudish way.9Capone headed their way again and Galluccio was ready to take him aside like a gentleman Hey, mister, please do me favor, okay? Shes my kid sister, you know Before Galluccio could speak, Capone leaned oer to Lena, and whispered-loud enough to startle the party at the next table with heads swiveled in amazement-You got a nice ass, honey, and I mean it as a compliment. Believe me. Her brother sprang to his feet. The insult was bad enough the fact that strangers had plainly heard made it insupportable. I wont take that shit from nobody, Galluccio shouted. Apologize to my sister now, you hear? At a moment, Capones brain reasserted itself, perhaps kicked in by sister. Family meant everything, and its evocation put this customer unarguably in the right. With his most ingratiating and placating smile, Capone turned to Galluccio weaponry spread wide and palms up and open Hey, whatsa subject, pal, a little misunderstanding, a joke, no offense This is no fucking joke, mister, cried Galluccio.10Galluccio stood five-foot-six and weighed under 150. Capone looked like a mount avalanching toward him. The Galluch knew he could be badly hurt unless he struck first and quickly, but his punch would never do the job. He clawed his knife from his air pocket and lunged as the streets had taught him. One slash started two inches in front of mid-ear, c urved four inches down the left cheek to just below the corner of Capones mouthpiece the other two each measured two and a half inches, one on the left jaw, and the other on the neck under the left ear. Galluccio grabbed his sister and date and ran out the door. Someone rushed Capone to the Coney Island Hospital where doctors applied thirty stitches to his face.11Soon Galluccio heard that Frankie Yale had been asking around for him. Galluccio appealed to Joseph Masseria, overlord of all New York for justice. Joe the Boss decreed a sit-down at the Harvard Inn where they agreed that Capone had indeed been wrong and would not be allowed to seek vengeance, while Galluccio had to justify for his disproportionate reaction-which he readily did, contrite at sight of how he had disfigured Capone. Capone also recognized the justice of the settlement and the dishonor of his scars. He later put out the story that the scars had happened to him in service with the Lost Battalion of World War I . In fact, he had never been called up in the draft. This leading light scarring had given him the infamous nickname Scarface.12In 1918 Capone met an Irish girl at a dance and fell in love. She was pretty, slim and tall with a round piquant face and large eyes framed by a helmet of blond hair. Baptized Mary, she would be known all her life as Mae, daughter of Michael Coughlin, a construction worker, and the former Bridget Gorman. On December 4, 1918, Mae gave birth. Eighteen days later, Maes sister, Kathleen, and James DeVico, an otherwise obscure friend of Capones, became godparents to Albert Francis Capone, also known as Sonny. Mae had some two years on Capone, perhaps an embarrassment to them because each fudged a year of age on their marriage registration. Capone appears in the church records as Albert, maybe a mistake, or maybe a typical bit of criminal obfuscation.13Members of the Anti-Saloon League, founded 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, sincerely believed everyone would be better off without alcohol. They looked forward, one historian has observed, to a world freefrom hope and crime and sin, a sort of millennial Kansas. Their campaign, which quickly enveloped the nation, combined such animating idealism with the most brutal brass-knuckles regime the league terrorized sex act. In the words of a popular song of the eraWhat Have They Got on You, Mr. Congressman? Weve heard just how those drys, Keep cases on you Congress guys. One wrong vote and reports would wing back home broadcasted by the leagues fifty thousand field workers.14Americas April 6, 1917, entry into the war sanctified the dry cause as patriotism even for the doubting majority. The liquor trade gobbled up enough grain for eleven million loaves of bread a day. The league insisted intoxicated workers could not turn out war materiel any more than drunk soldiers could shoot straight. Caving in to these pressures, Congress passed a resolution calling for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution and sent it to the state legislatures for ratification in December 1917. On January 16, 1919, Nebraska provided the necessary three-fourths majority by becoming the ordinal state to approve the resolution. The Eighteenth Amendment would become law in one year.15Meanwhile, the league rammed wartime Prohibition through Congress. Until the Eighteenth Amendment kicked in at midnight on Friday, January 16, 1920, the interim law forbade anyone in the United States to make, sell or transport-without a permit-any beverage containing more than one half of 1 percent alcohol. The ban-both eonian and interim-cunningly did not complicate owning, drinking or buying liquor. The league had been careful not to offend voters or members of Congress many were notoriously wet in habits no matter how dry they voted.16Capone was a suspect for two shoots in 1919 and was seeking a safe haven and a better job to provide for his new family. Capone relocated to Chicago to help out his Five Points gang men tor Johnny Torrio. Torrio had gone to Chicago to resolve some family problems his cousins husband was having with the Black Hand. Torrino had also been summoned there to help out his uncle, Big Jim Colosimo, the citys leading whoremaster to run his empire. By the time Capone arrived, Torrio was in dispute with Big Jim. Seeing the major financial opportunities that came with Prohibition, Torrio valued Colosimo to shift his organizations main thrust to bootlegging Big Jim was not interested. He had become rich and fat in the whoring trade and saw no invite to expand. He forbade Torrio to get into the new racket. Torrio realized that Colosimo had to be eradicated so that he could use Big Jims organization for his criminal plans. Together he and Capone planned Colosimos murder and sent Frankie Yale and his men from New York to carry out the job. Capone and Torrio meantime would act out airtight alibis17.One of Capones duties was to buy trucks for Torrios operation-which those in it ca lled the outfit-especially after Capone took over. Members used it nonchalantly when talking among themselves about their group-I joined the outfit two years ago-as they would say Im with Capone, when talking about their affiliation to an outsider. Many in the outfit were involved in transporting beer. For most of them, being part of a gang meant little more than being a truck driver that was the entry-level job for most. Possible promotion led to muscle and racketeering work. But Torrio relied on few to buy new and used trucks one was Capone. By mid-1922 Capone already ranked as Torrios number two.18The option of reform mayor William Emmet Dever led to Chicagos city government putting more strain on the gangster agenda within city limits. Devers biographer called him a dripping Wet who enforced Prohibition. He would tell a meeting of beer-guzzling Germans, I have never pretended to be, and am not now a Prohibitionist. But he would have law and order stating, He would enforce the l aw to the limit. Within a month, authorities were raiding places citywide with, wrote a reporter, unabated enthusiasm, arresting five hundred in one sweep, 450 in another. Within six months his men had closed over four thousand blatant saloons and some five hundred soda parlors-notoriously fronts for selling beers. A significant amount of license revocations were set forth.19To put its headquarters outside of city jurisdiction and compose a safe zone for its operations, the Capone organization muscled its way into Cicero, Illinois. This led to one of Capones greatest triumphs the takeover of Ciceros town government in 1924. Capone made it clear that he wanted an all-out conquest of the town. He installed his older brother Frank (Salvatore) as the front man with the Cicero city government. Ralph was tasked with opening up a labor brothel called the Stockade for Ciceros heavily blue-collar population. Al focused on gambling and took an interest in a new gambling joint called the Shi p. He also took control of the Hawthorne Race Track.20For the most part, the Capone conquest of Cicero was unopposed, with the exception of Robert St. John, the crusading young journalist at the Cicero Tribune. Every issue contained an expose on the Capone rackets in the city. The editorials were impelling enough to threaten Capone-backed candidates in the 1924 primary election. On election day things got ugly as Capones forces kidnapped opponents election workers and threatened voters with force-out. As reports of the violence spread, the Chicago read/write head of police rounded up seventy nine cops and provided them with shotguns. The cops, dressed in plain clothes, rode in unmarked cars to Cicero under the guise of protecting workers at the westbound Electric plant there. Frank Capone, who had just finished negotiating a lease, was walking down the street when the convoy of Chicago policemen approached him. Someone recognized him and the cars emptied out in front of him. In seconds, Franks body was riddled with bullets. Technically, the police called itself defense, since Frank, seeing the police coming at him with guns drawn, had revealed his own revolver.21Al was enraged and escalated the violence by kidnapping officials and stealing ballot boxes. One official was murdered. When it was all over, Capone had won his victory for Cicero. Capones temper stayed under control for about five weeks. But then, Joe Howard, a small-time thug, assaulted Capones friend Jack Guzik when he turned him down for a loan. Guzik told Capone and tracked Howard down in a bar. Howard had the poor judgment to call Capone a dago pimp and Capone shot Howard dead.22 tour only twenty-five, Al Capone became a prominent figure in Chicagos organized crime. He wasnt the only one though. Dion OBanion owned a thriving florist shop, but was also one of the biggest names in the bootlegging business. Flamboyant but untrustworthy, OBanion became a thorn in Capones side. In one instance, OB anion killed a man outside of Capones Four Deuces gambling joint and the ensuing trial dragged Capone into unwanted attention. OBanion also set up Torrio to be arrested by the police. He had promised Torrio he would move to Colorado if Torrio agreed to buy OBanions Sieben Brewery. OBanion took the money and left while the police were waiting to raid the brewery. Torrio went to poky and OBanion kept the money. The Brewery was eventually shut down permanently.23OBanion met his end while preparing a floral arrangement in his shop on November 10, 1924. He was a consummate hand shaker and on that day three known gangsters came in the shop. Thinking they were there to pick up flowers for the funeral of another prominent gangster, he went to shake their hands. One of them pulled OBanion off balance and six shots rang out. While there was a great deal of speculation concerning the triggermen, no one ever went to trial over the murder. It did leave OBanions territory wide open for Capone t o move in, but also made powerful enemies of OBanions friends. These friends included Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran.24Over the next two years, Moran and Weiss would fail in over a dozen assassination attempts against Capone. On January 24, 1925, Torrio was returning to his apartment at 7106 South Clyde Avenue from a shopping trip with his wife Anna. Walking from his car towards his apartment building, Weiss and Moran opened fire. They shot Torrio in the chest, neck, right arm and groin, but miraculously the elderly man survived. The true miracle came about when one of the men-reportedly Moran-held his gun to Torrios head and pulled the trigger only to hear the click of an empty firing chamber. This incident made Torrio consider quitting the game. After recovering, Torrio pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine months in jail for the Sieben Brewery raid. During his jail sentence Torrio informed Capone he was planning on leaving Chicago and turning his vast empire over to Al stating, It s all yours Al. Me? Im quittin. Its Europe for me. Torrio then moved to Italy with his mother and wife.25Shortly after he took over Johnny Torrios empire, it was clear that his new status had changed Al Capone. He was a major force now in the Chicago underworld. To underscore his rise in the world, he moved his headquarters to the Metropole Hotel. His luxurious suite of five rooms cost $1,500 per day. He went from near obscurity to cultivated visibility. Capone became visible at the opera, at sporting events and charitable functions. He was an important member of the community friendly, generous, successful, supplying a meeting of thirsty customers. In an era where most of the adult population drank bootleg alcohol, the bootlegger seemed almost respectable.26In the spring of 1926, Capones run of good luck hit a snag. On April 27, Billy McSwiggin, known as the young hanging prosecutor who had tried to pin the 1924 death of Joe Howard on Capone, met with an accident. A bootlegger nam ed Jim Doherty picked McSwiggin up by car at his fathers house. Dohertys car broke down and they hitched a ride with bootlegger Klondike ODonnell, a bitter enemy of Capone. The four Irish lads went on a drinking binge in Cicero with ODonnell and his brother Myles and ended up at a bar close to the Hawthorne Inn where Capone was having dinner. ODonnells cruising around in Cicero was a territorial insult.27Capone and his henchmen, not realizing that McSwiggin was in the bar with Myles ODonnell, waited outside in a convoy of cars until the drunken men staggered out. Then out came the machine guns and McSwiggin and Doherty were dead Capone was like a shot blamed. Despite the blot on McSwiggins integrity for keeping company with bootleggers, sympathy was with the dead young prosecutor. There was a big outcry against gangster violence and public sentiment went against Capone. While everyone in Chicago knew that Al Capone was responsible, there was not a shred of proof and the failure of this high-profile investigation to return an bill of indictment was an embarrassment to local officials. Police took out their frustrations on Capones whorehouses and speakeasies which endured a series of raids and fires.28Capone went into hiding for three months. Reputedly some 300 detectives looked for him all over the country in Canada and even Italy. He initially found refuge in the home of a friend in Chicago Heights and then, for most of the time, with friends in Lansing, Michigan. Those three months in hiding made an indelible mark on Al. He began to see himself as much more than a successful racketeer. He believed he was a source of pride to the Italian immigrant community a generous benefactor and important fixer who could help people. His bootlegging operations apply thousands of people, many of whom were poor Italian immigrants. While much of this was just his ego getting larger, Capone had real leadership abilities and was very capable of extending those talents into a reas that were beneficial to the community. He naughtily thought of retiring from his life of crime and violence.29On July 28, 1926, he returned to Chicago to face the accusations of murder. It turned out to be the right decision because the authorities did not have sufficient evidence to bring him to trial. For all the public uproar and efforts of the law enforcement groups, Al Capone was a free man. The people of Chicago were tired of indication about gang violence and the newspapers fanned their anger. Capone held a highly publicized peace conference in which he appealed to the other bootleggers assembled there to tone down the violence. He made his point stating, There is enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the streets. I dont want to die in the street punctured by machine-gun fire. At the end of the meeting, an amnesty had been negotiated which accomplished two key things first, there would be no more murders or beatings and second, past m urders would not be avenged. For more than two months thereafter, nobody connected with the bootlegging business was killed.30In May of 1927, the Supreme Court made a decision that Manny Sullivan, a bootlegger, had to report and pay income tax on his illegal bootlegging business. Just because reporting and paying tax on illegally-derived revenues was self-incrimination, it was not unconstitutional. With the Sullivan ruling, the small Special Intelligence Unit of the IRS under Elmer Irey was able to go after Al Capone.31Unaware and uninterested in Manny Sullivan or Elmer Irey, Capone became more obsessionally extroverted and expansive. He indulged heavily in his two big passions music and boxing. He became close pals with boxermJack Dempsey, but given the concern over fixed fights, the familiarity had to be very discreet. Always an opera lover, Capone expanded his patronage to the jazz world. With the opening of the Cotton Club in Cicero, Al became a jazz impresario, attracting and cultivating some of the best black jazz musicians of the day. Unlike so many other Italian gangsters, Al did not seem to have the deep-seated racial blemish and he gained the trust and respect of many of his musicians. Al extended his generosity and personal concerns to everybody who worked for him, black or white.Al spoke to reportersPublic service is my motto. xc percent of the people in Chicago drink and gamble. Ive tried to serve them decent liquor and square games. But Im not appreciated. Im known all over the world as a millionaire gorilla.32Capone biographer Laurence Bergreen described the way Capone inserted himself into the lives of those he knewHe came to dominate them not by shouting, overwhelming, or bullying, although the threat of physical violence endlessly loomed, but by appealing to the inner man, his wants, his aspirationsby making them feel valued, they gave unstintingly of their loyalty, and loyalty was what Capone needed and demanded in the volatile circles through which he moved it was the only protection he had from sudden death. The highest compliment other men could pay Capone was to call him a friend, which meant they were willing to overlook his scandalous reputation, that he had never been a pimp or a murderer.33The exposure was becoming a real nuisance. When he left for a trip to the West Coast, he had police skirt him at every station. Los Angeles toughest detective said We have no room here for Capone or any other visiting gangsters whether they are here on pleasure tours or not. When Capone came back from the West Coast he found himself surrounded by six Joliet policemen with their shotguns aimed at him. Capone stated, Well, Ill be damned. Youd think I was Jesse James. Whats the artillery for? In Chicago, the police made things as uncomfortable as possible by surrounding his house and arresting him at the slightest provocation.34Capone left for Miami where the stand was much better than the Chicago winter, but the receptio n by the local community was chilly. He, Mae, and Sonny rented a house for the season and started to look for a permanent residence. Over the coming months he would invest a small fortune in redecorating his new palace in Miami, securing it like a small fortress with concrete walls and heavy wooden doors.35The Palm Island estate came to the attention of IRS Intelligence Unit watchdog Elmer Irey. He chose Frank J. Wilson to head up the job of documenting Capones income and spending. The job was monumental despite Capones lavish spending everything was transacted through third parties. Although Capone had incredible wealth, every transaction was on a cash basis. The major exception was the very tangible assets of the Palm Island estate, which was evidence of a major source of income.36George Emmerson Q. Johnson, a member of the Scandinavian old boys network in the Midwest, was appointed U.S. attorney for Chicago. Johnson targeted Capone with unchecked passion. In the spring of 1928, the violence preceding the April primary election began to escalate out of control. It was not clear who was orchestrating all of this violence, but this time the targets were not gangsters, but U.S. Senator Charles Deneen, a reformer and a judge. The unabashedly corrupt Mayor Bill Thompson was presumed responsible since the victims were people who opposed him, but Al Capone who was still in Florida, was the scapegoat.While Mae Capone spent the spring of 1928 on an extravagant decorating spree Al dedicated himself to establishing himself as a legitimate citizen of Miami. In spite of the outward show of respectability, Al quietly made plans to solve pressing problems caused by his old boss Frankie Yale. The liquor supply deal that Capone and Yale had negotiated was experiencing too many