Al Capone

At 48 years old, Al Capone has this physical status:

Alphonse Gabriel Capone (born January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), also known by the name "Scarface," was an American gangster and businessman who gained notoriety during Prohibition as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year tenure as a crime boss came to an end when he went to jail at the age of 33.

Capone was born in 1899 in New York City to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the Five Points Gang as a youth and became a bouncer in organised crime organisations such as brothels. Johnny Torrio, the forerunner of the Outfit, was politically protected by unione Siciliana in his early twenties and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum in Chicago. Capone's ascension and fall were aided by a rivalry with the North Side Gang. Torrio went into retirement after three North Side gunmen nearly killed him, handing over to Capone. Capone's bootlegging market grew by more violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police ensured he was safe from law enforcement.

Capone appeared to be paying attention to the cheers from fans as he appeared at ball games. He made numerous charities and was regarded by some as a "modern-day Robin Hood." However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang members were killed in broad daylight, has harmed Chicago and Capone's public image, prompting many people to call for government intervention and newspapers to report Capone "Public Enemy No. 1."

Capone was arrested and charged with 22 counts of tax evasion, according to the federal authorities who were determined to keep him out of jail. In 1931, he was found guilty of five charges. Capone's admissions of his wealth and unpaid taxes during prior (and eventually abortive) discussions to pay the government taxes he owed during a highly publicized lawsuit. He was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Following conviction, he updated his defense team with experts in tax law, and appealed was boosted by a Supreme Court decision, but his appeal was denied. Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became more dependent before being released after almost eight years of prison. He died of cardiac arrest as a result of a stroke on January 25, 1947.

Early life

Capone was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, on January 17, 1899. Gabriele Capone (1865-1920) and Teresa Capone (née Raiola; 1867–1952) were Italian immigrants. His father, a barber, and his mother, a seamstress, were born in Angri, a small commune outside of Naples, Italy. Capone's family immigrated to the United States in 1893 by sea, first going through Fiume (modern-day Rijeka, Croatia), a port city in what was then Austria-Hungary. The family lived on 95 Navy Street in Brooklyn, New York City's Navy Yard section. Gabriele Capone worked at a nearby barber store on 29 Park Avenue. Al and his family immigrated to 38 Garfield Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when he was 11 years old.

Gabriele and Teresa had eight children together: Vincenzo Capone, who later changed his name to Richard Hart and became a Prohibition agent in Homer, Nebraska; Raffaele James Capone, Ermino Capone, Matone's brother's beverage industry; and Mafalda Capone, Matthew Capone; and Mafalda Capone, a writer who died at the age of one. Ralph and Frank were members of Al Capone's criminal empire. Frank lived until his death on April 1, 1924. Ralph started bottling firms (both legal and illicit) early on and was also the front man for the Chicago Outfit for a short time until he was jailed for tax evasion in 1932.

Capone sparked enthusiasm as a student but had trouble with the rules at his Catholic Catholic school, which was strict. He was suspended for punching a female tutor in the chest at the age of 14. He worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. He played semi-professional baseball from 1916 to 1918. Capone was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio, whom he regarded as a mentor after this.

Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin at the age of 19, on December 30, 1918. She was an Irish Catholic, and had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone (1918–2004). Albert lost the majority of his hearing in his left ear as a youth. Capone was under the age of 21, and his parents had to agree in writing to the marriage. Despite their drug use, the two couples had a happy marriage despite their illicit lifestyles.

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Career

Capone was first acquainted with small-time gangs, including the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He joined the Brooklyn Rippers and later the mighty Five Points Gang, which was based in Lower Manhattan. During this period, he was recruited 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 doing the door; her brother Frank Galluccio's left side of his face was slashed with a knife three times; Capone's wounds gave him the word "scarface"; Capone loathed it. Inconsistencies were recorded at the time when this was occurring. Capone hid the scarred left side of his face when photographing, saying that the wounds were war wounds. His closest friends referred him to as "snorky," a term for a sharp dresser.

Capone left New York City 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 it is considered the most likely way for him to get syphilis. Capone was aware of being infected early and his timely use of Salvarsan may have cured the disease, but he never sought medical attention. In 1923, he purchased a small house on the south side of the city's south side, at 7244 South Prairie Avenue. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, hijacker Joe Howard was killed on May 7, 1923, after attempting to interfere with Capone-Torrio bootleg beer. His name first appeared in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter in the early years of the decade. Since Colosimo's assassination on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being complicit, Torrio took over Colosimo's narcotic empire.

Torrio was the leader of a virtually Italian organized crime group in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was suspicious of being drawn into gang wars and began to seek deals over territories between rival crime groups. Dean O'Banion's smaller North Side Gang was put under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. Despite Torrio's claims to be a mediator of conflict, O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful in the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side. Torrio ordered the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924, in a tragic move. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the crew, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a point to seek revenge on his murderers.

"As he was traveling between Chicago and his Florida home in Miami," Al Capone said.

Capone was in Canada with bootleggers who helped him smuggle alcohol into the United States during Prohibition. "I don't even know which street Canada is on," Capone replied when asked if he knew Rocco Perri, who was billed as Canada's "King of the Bootleggers." Capone was certainly in Canada, where he had some hideaways, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police insists there is no "providence" that he ever set foot on Canadian soil.

Capone was stunned, but unhurt, in January 1925. Torrio was returning from a shopping trip where he had fired several times. Capone, age 26, the current manager of an operation that took in illicit breweries and a road network that stretched to Canada, had to resign and cede, despite recovering. In turn, he was able to raise funds by using more violence. During the 1920s, an establishment that refused to buy alcohol from him often became a success, with up to 100 people killed. Capone was deemed as the source of the outbreak of brothels in the area by rivals.

Capone often enlisted the services of local black members of the black community; jazz guitarist Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton had uncles who worked with Capone on the South Side of Chicago; Capone once begged clarinetist Johnny Dodds to play a number that Dodds did not know; Capone split a $100 bill in half and told Dodds that he would get the other half when he learned it. Capone also sent two bodyguards to accompany jazz pianist Earl Hines on a road trip.

Capone indulged in custom suits, cigarettes, delectable food, and drink, as well as female companionship. He was most well-known for his flamboyant and costly jewelry. "I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want"; and, "all I do is please a public demand." Capone had made a national celebrity and was a talking point.

Since winning over municipal council elections (such as the 1924 Cicero municipal elections), he based himself in Cicero, Illinois, making it difficult for the North Siders to target him. His driver was discovered tortured and murdered, and there was an attempt on Weiss's life in the Chicago Loop. The North Side Gang carried out a plot aimed at bringing him to the windows on September 20, 1926. Gunmen opened fire with Thompson submachine rifles and shotguns at the first floor restaurant's windows. Capone was unhurt and called for a truce, but negotiations fell through. Weiss was killed outside the former O'Banion flower store North Side headquarters three weeks later on October 11. Hawthorne's restaurant's owner was a Capone's acquaintance, and Moran and Drucci abducted and killed him in January 1927. Capone's coercion became well-known to the point where it was speculated that several firms, including the producers of Vine-Glo, might use simulated Capone attacks as a marketing tactic.

Capone grew more alert and dissatisfied with Chicago's isolation. He and his entourage would often turn up at one of Chicago's train depots and buy a complete Pullman sleeper car on a night train to Cleveland, Omaha, Kansas City, Little Rock, or Hot Springs, where they would spend a week in luxurious hotel suites under assumed names. Capone paid $40,000 to Clarence Busch of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing family for a 10,000 square foot (930 m2) home on Palm Island, Florida, between Miami and Miami Beach in 1928.

Antonio Lombardo was appointed head of Unione Siciliana, a Sicilian-American benevolent society that had been corrupted by gangsters in November 1925. Capone was blamed for Lombardo's death, according to an infuriated Joe Aiello, who had wished for the position himself, and he resented the non-Sicilian's attempts to manipulate internal affairs within the Union. Aiello cut all personal and company ties with Lombardo, launching a dispute with him and Capone. Aiello worked with several other Capone rivals, including Jack Zuta, who ran vice and gambling establishments together. Aiello plotted to assassinate both Lombardo and Capone, and Capone's deposing attempt began in 1927. Capone was assassinated in 1927. Aiello also paid Joseph "Diamond Joe" Esposito's Bella Napoli Café, Capone's most popular restaurant, $140 to add prussic acid to Capone's and Lombardo's soup on one occasion; reports indicate he offered between $10,000 and $35,000. Rather, Capone revealed the scheme to Capone, who responded by sending men to burn one of Aiello's stores on West Division Street with a machine-gun fire. On May 28, 1927, more than 200 bullets were shot into the Aiello Brothers Bakery, injuring Joe's brother Antonio. A number of hitmen Aiello hired to murder Capone were slain during 1927's summer and fall. Anthony Russo and Vincent Spicuzza, two of whom had been paid $25,000 by Aiello to murder Capone and Lombardo, were among them. Aiello eventually gave away a $50,000 reward to anyone who dismantled Capone. At least ten gunmen attempted to locate Aiello's bounty, but the mission was unsuccessful. Capone's ally Ralph Sheldon threatened to murder both Capone and Lombardo for Aiello's reward, but Capone henchman Frank Nitti's intelligence network knew of the transaction and fired Sheldon shot in front of a West Side hotel, but he did not die.

Aiello arranged machine-gun ambushes across from Lombardo's house and a Capone-owned cigar store in November 1927, but those plans were foiled after an anonymous tip led to police raiding several addresses and arresting four other Aiello gunmen. He confessed that Aiello had hired him to murder Capone and Lombardo, prompting the police to arrest Aiello himself and bring him to the South Clark Street police station. Capone sent nearly two dozen gunmen to stand guard outside the station and await Aiello's release after learning of the detention. The men made no attempt to conceal their identity there, and journalists and photographers alike rushed to witness Aiello's upcoming murder.

The protagonists of Chicago's politics had long been associated with questionable tactics, as well as newspaper circulation "wars," but a much more serious level of brutality and graft appeared in city hall. Capone is generally seen as having an important part in bringing about Republican William Hale Thompson's victories, particularly in the 1927 mayoral election, when Thompson ran for a wide-open town and hinting at the reopening of illegal saloons. Such a proclamation made Capone's campaign soar, and he reportedly accepted a $250,000 donation from the gangster. Thompson defeated William Emmett Dever by a narrow margin in the 1927 mayoral election. Thompson's nimble political machine had piqued on the often-parochial Italian community, but it was in danger with his soaring popularity in African American courting.

Joe Esposito, another politician, became Capone's political foe, and Esposito was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of his house on March 21, 1928. Capone continued to back Thompson. On the voting day of April 10, 1928, Capone's bomber James Belcastro in the wards where Thompson's opponents were supposed to be aided, resulting in the deaths of at least 15 people. Belcastro was charged with the murder of lawyer Octavius Granady, an African American who ran for president Robert Kennedy, was assassinated by a moped on polling day, and was followed by armed police cars before being shot dead. Four policemen were charged alongside Belcastro, but all charges were dismissed after key witnesses recanted their statements. An example of the local law enforcement against Capone's business began in 1931 when Belcastro was wounded in a shooting; investigators told skeptical journalists that Belcastro was an independent operator.

Capone was linked to Assistant State Attorney William H. McSwiggin's 1926 murder of chief prosecutor Ben Newmark and former student Frankie Yale, according to a 1929 study by The New York Times, who attributed the 1928 murders of chief investigator Ben Newmark and former colleague Frankie Yale.

Capone was widely blamed for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, despite being at his Florida home at the time of the shooting. The assassination attempt was aimed at Bugs Moran, the North Side Gang's chief, and the cause of the drive may have been the fact that some expensive whisky illegally imported from Canada via the Detroit River had been hijacked while being transported to Cook County, Illinois.

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen's; his replacement was forced because his predecessors, Weiss and Vincent Drucci, were killed in the riots that followed the assassination of original leader Dean O'Banion.

Capone's men rented an apartment across from the trucking warehouse and garage on 2122 North Clark Street, which served as Moran's headquarters, in order to track their targets' habits and movements. Capone's lookouts warned four gunmen disguised as police officers to launch a "police raid" on Thursday morning. The fake police lined the seven victims along a wall and called for accomplices carrying machine guns and shotguns. Moran was not one of the victims. Capone's image was shocked by photos of the slain victims, who also damaged Capone's reputation. Capone was summoned within days to appear before a Chicago grand jury on allegations of federal Prohibition abuses, but he was too sick to attend. Capone donated to charities and sponsored a soup kitchen in Chicago during the Great Depression in an attempt to improve his image.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre sparked national mistrust surrounding Thompson's marriage with Capone, and was a factor in Anton J. Cermak winning the mayoral election on April 6, 1931.

Capone was best known for compeling other men to do his dirty jobs for him. Frank Rio, one of Capone's bodyguards, decoded a plot by three of his guys, Albert Anselmi, John Scalise, and Joseph Giunta, who had been warned by Aiello not to depose Capone and take over the Chicago Outfit in May 1929. Capone later beat the guys with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene that was included in the 1987 film The Untouchables. The deirdre Bair, as well as writers and scholars such as William Elliot Hazelgrove, have challenged the authenticity of the accusation. Bair wondered why "three trained killers would sit still and watch this happen," Hazelgrove said that Capone would have been "hard pressed to murder three men to death with a baseball bat" and that he'd rather have an enforcer carry out the murders. Despite claims that the incident was first reported by author Walter Noble Burns in his 1931 book The One-way Ride: From prohibition to Jake Lingle, Capone biographers Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz have found traces of the tale in newspaper coverage shortly after the fact. Collins and Schwartz claim that similarities in published versions of the story show a lack of truth and that the Outfit deliberately spread the news to boost Capone's smearing reputation. Xvi, 209-213, 565 George Meyer, a Capone's associate, and the murder itself appeared to have attended both the planning and the event itself.

Capone, who learned of Aiello's continuing plots against him, vowed to ban him in 1930. Capone's men followed him to Rochester, New York, where he had connections with Buffalo crime chief Stefano Magaddino and planned to murder him there, but Aiello returned to Chicago before the plot could be carried out. Aiello, who was angst-ridden by the constant threat of escape and the murders of several of his men's men, began firing at Aiello with a submachine gun at 205 N. Kolmar Ave. on October 23, when escaping Prestogiacomo's apartment. Aiello was expected to have fired at least 13 times before he collapsed off the building steps and turned around the corner, attempting to get out of the line of fire. Rather, he moved directly into the range of a second submachine gun, which was positioned on the third floor of another apartment building, and was fired immediately.

Walter A. b. Is a teacher who taught at the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Strong, the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, has requested President Herbert Hoover for federal intervention to end Chicago's lawlessness. Only two weeks after Hoover's inauguration, he arranged a clandestine meeting at the White House. Strong, joined by Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission and Laird Bell, made their case to the President on March 19, 1929. Strong argued that "Chicago was in the custody of the criminals," the former president wrote in Hoover's 1952 Memoir, implying that the federal government was the sole power by which the city's power could be restored. "I ordered that all federal agencies concentrate on Mr. Capone and his allies at one time."

Capone's multi-agency coalition was launched at the meeting. Plans for income tax prosecutors against Chicago gangsters were developed by the Treasury and Justice Departments, and a small, elite team of Prohibition Bureau agents (whose members included Eliot Ness) was sent against bootleggers. These lawmen were incorruptible in a city that was accustomed to corruption. They were dubbed Untouchables by Charles Schwarz, a Chicago Daily News reporter. Strong secretly used his newspaper's funds to gather and publish intelligence on the Capone company in order to support federal efforts.

Capone was arrested by FBI agents after leaving a Chicago courthouse after testifying to a grand jury that was looking at federal prohibition abuses. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning sickness in order to avoid a return to a previous appearance. Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 16, 1929, for carrying a concealed weapon. Capone was charged by a grand jury on May 17, 1929, and a hearing was held in front of Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh. Capone was sentenced to one year in prison for entering a guilty plea by his counsel. Capone was transferred to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia on August 8, 1929. Capone was ranked as the number one "Public Enemy" on the Chicago Crime Commission's unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's highly circulated list a week after his inception in March 1930.

Capone was arrested on vaping charges while visiting Miami Beach in April 1930; the governor had ordered sheriffs to arrest him out of the state. Capone said that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making those remarks but was cleared after a three-day trial in July. A Chicago judge granted a warrant for Capone's detention on suspicion of vaping conduct in September and used the publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. Capone was tried on contempt of court charges in February 1931. Judge James Herbert Wilkerson continued to question Capone's doctor, causing the prosecutor to press suspicions. Capone was sentenced to six months in prison, but he stayed free while appealing the contempt conviction.

Capone's company was implicated in the death of Julius Rosenheim, a Chicago police informant who worked as a police informant for 20 years, in February 1930.

According to Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the tactic of charging clearly wealthy criminal suspects with federal tax evasion was introduced by purely wealthy people's lifestyles. In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in United States vs. Sullivan that the tactic was constitutionally correct: illegally earned income was subjected to income tax.

Capone's conviction on tax returns was not based on his spending, but proving his income, and the most relevant evidence in that regard came from his pledge to pay taxes. In 1930, Ralph, his brother, and a gangster in his own right, were all attempting to avoid tax evasion. After being found guilty in a two-week trial in which Wilkerson presided, Ralph spent the next 18 months in jail. Al Capone wanted to prevent the same fate, so he ordered his accountant to regularize his tax position, and although his lawyer was unable to do so, his advocate made significant claims in establishing the sum that Capone was able to pay taxes for several years, despite acknowledging $100,000 for 1928 and 1929. Hence, the government had received a note from a lawyer representing Capone acknowledging his substantial tax obligation for certain years he had paid no attention to. Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924 by a unethical grand jury on March 13, 1931. Capone was arrested by a federal grand jury on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 to 1929, and he was released on $5,000 bail on June 5, 1931. Capone was charged with 5,000 offences of the Volstead Act (Prohibition laws).

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Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act in the Chicago Federal Building on June 16, 1931, as part of a two-year prison term compromise. Wilkerson refused to accept the plea bargain on July 30, 1931, and Capone's counsel dismissed the guilty pleas on July 30, 1931. Wilkerson ruled that the 1930 letter from federal prosecutors could be admissible into evidence, overruling allegations that a lawyer may not confess for his client. Wilkerson later appeared before Capone just on the income tax evasion charges, determining that they took precedence over the Volstead Act prosecutions.

More evidence was later discovered of other sources, such as witnesses and ledgers, but Capone's control was more apparent than asserting it. Capone's lawyers, who had relying on the plea bargain Wilkerson refused to honor and, therefore, had no time to prepare for the trial, but were led to believe that no money was lost to gambling. This would have been irrelevant regardless, since gambling winnings can only be reduced from gambling earnings; Capone's spending was even more undercut by Capone's spending, which was considerably more than what his estimated income could afford; Wilkerson encouraged Capone's spending to be out at a long time; and Capone's spending was certainly beyond what his claimed income was able to support. During the five-year cycle, the government charged Capone with evasion of $215,000 in taxes on a total income of $1,038,654. Capone was found guilty of five counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931 and was sentenced to 11 years in federal jail a week later, for over $50,000 more in court charges, and he was suspended for $215,000 in interest due to his back taxes. Concurrently, the contempt of court sentence was served concurrently. Capone's tax experts, who were based in Washington, were recruited to represent Capone. They filed a writ of habeas corpus based on a Supreme Court decision that tax avoidance was not fraud, not fraud, which meant Capone had been found guilty of crimes relating to years that were well beyond the time limit for indictment. However, a judge interpreted the statute so that Capone's time in Miami was deferred from the conviction and sentence, effectively ending both Capone's conviction and sentence.

Capone was sent to the United States Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Capone was definitively diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhoea on his arrival in Atlanta. He was also suffering from withdrawal from cocaine use, the use of which had persisted his nasal septum. Capone was fine at his solitary stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. Capone's cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, was seen as a weak personality and so out of his depth dealing with bullying coworkers that he feared that Capone would have a breakdown. Rudensky, a small-time criminal associated with the Capone family, was soon to find himself a Capone protector. Rudensky and other prisoners' protests drew suspicion from less friendly prisoners, fueling fears that Capone is getting special care. No solid evidence has ever existed, but it served as part of Capone's transfer to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco in August 1934. Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow-Alcatraz prisoner James C. Lucas on June 23, 1936.

Capone was allowed to play banjo in the Alcatraz jail band, the Rock Islanders, which also performed Sunday concerts for other prisoners due to his good conduct. Capone also transcribed the song "Madonna Mia" for his own arrangement in honor of his wife Mae.

Capone's decline became more apparent at Alcatraz, as neurosyphilis gradually eroded his mental capabilities; his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz term in the hospital department, confused and disoriented. Capone completed his sentence in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and he was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution in Terminal Island, California, to serve out his term for contempt of court. On November 16, 1939, he was released after his wife Mae appealed to the court based on his reduced mental capacity.

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