Born: January 17, 1899, Brooklyn, New York
Died: January 25, 1947, Palm Island, Florida
Nicknames: Scarface, Snorky, the Big Guy, Big
Al
Associations: Johnny Torrio, Jim Colosimo,
Lucky Luciano, the Outfit, Bugs Moran Alphonse
Capone may be the most celebrated, or infamous,
mobster in American history. His story has been told
in dozens of fictionalized and true-to-life movies,
television shows, books and other media. It’s an
impressive collection for a man whose success and
indeed whose life were relatively brief.
Growing up in New York City, Capone was active in
the Five Points gang, a criminal enterprise of
mostly younger Italian-Americans in Manhattan that
also graduated such well-known mobsters as Charlie
“Lucky” Luciano and Johnny Torrio. It was in New
York that Capone suffered a facial wound in a fight
at a brothel, earning him the nickname “Scarface.”
Torrio moved to Chicago in 1909 to work for
syndicate boss “Big Jim” Colosimo, and in 1920
Torrio called upon Capone to join their growing
enterprise in the Windy City. Colosimo operated
hundreds of brothels and gambling rackets, but he
reportedly refused to go into bootlegging, which,
with the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, was a
huge growth opportunity for organized crime groups.
Colosimo was shot to death the same year Capone came
to Chicago. Although nobody was ever arrested for
Colosimo’s murder, many believe Torrio ordered the
hit, and that Capone was an accomplice in the
killing. Torrio inherited Colosimo’s organization
and quickly capitalized on the illegal alcohol
industry. His leadership was relatively short. In
1925, Torrio was shot and injured by a rival gang,
and then he was sentenced to nine months in prison
for operating an illegal distillery. Torrio resigned
as leader of the criminal organization that became
known as the Outfit and, for three years, moved back
to Italy. (He later returned to the United States
and became something of an elder statement among
mobsters, helping to found the national Commission
of the American Mafia in 1934.) With Torrio’s
resignation, Capone took control of the Outfit.
From 1925 through 1929, Capone was the most-visible
mobster in America. Capone worked with local media
and friendly politicians to cultivate an image of a
businessman concerned with the welfare of his fellow
Chicagoans. But Capone’s tenure was also a period of
rising rivalries with other Chicago gangsters,
conflicts that frequently turned violent.
The escalating Mob violence in Chicago culminated
with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on February
14, 1929. Seven members or associates of the Bugs
Moran gang – rivals of Capone — were lined up
against the wall of a garage by men posing as police
and machine-gunned to death.
The brutality of the murders made headlines
throughout the country. Although Capone was at his
vacation house near Miami at the time of the
massacre and never arrested for the crime, he was
widely suspected of ordering the massacre. The St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre happened just a month
before Capone was arrested by federal agents for
contempt of court for his failure to answer a
federal subpoena, and he would ultimately be
sentenced to six months on that charge.
But before he served his time on the contempt
charge, Capone and his bodyguard were arrested in
Philadelphia for carrying concealed weapons. Capone
was sentenced to one year in Pennsylvania’s Eastern
State Penitentiary. He served nine months, earning
time off for good behavior, and was released in
March 1930. Capone’s troubles were just beginning.
The U.S. Treasury’s Special Intelligence Unit had
started compiling a tax evasion case against him. In
contrast to the standard movie plot of tommy
gun-firing G-Men bringing down the Mob, accountants
and prosecutors assembled the most effective cases
against people like Capone. They did not have to
prove Capone was orchestrating gambling, protection,
prostitution and bootlegging rackets, simply that he
wasn’t paying taxes on his income from those
rackets. And it was clear that Capone had to have
substantial income to support such a lavish
lifestyle.
On October 18, 1931, Capone was convicted of tax
evasion and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
He served his time in the Cook County Jail and the
Atlanta and Alcatraz federal prisons. The prison
time was severe – a longer term than most tax
evasion cases yielded — but that wasn’t Capone’s
biggest problem. Capone was infected with syphilis,
a sexually transmitted disease, which in advanced
cases was then incurable. By the time he left
Alcatraz in 1939, the disease had profoundly
affected his mental and physical health. Doctors
reported that Capone had, in 1939, the cognitive
processes of a 12-year-old child. He essentially
retired with his family to his Florida mansion,
where he died in 1947 at age 48. Capone essentially
retired from the Mob after his imprisonment in 1931,
but the Outfit he had built up through bootlegging
and other rackets went on without him under the
leadership of Capone disciples such as Frank Nitti,
Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana.