Epoc Boulevard Blog

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t recognize the name Al Capone. He was, without question, America’s most famous mafia gangster. Few people today, however, really know Al Capone’s story.

Al Capone was born in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York. He was one of nine children born to law abiding, hard working Italian immigrants. He fell into gangs early and quit school at the age of 14. For a while he also worked as a candy store clerk and in a bowling alley He soon became a gang member in Frankie Yale’s notorious “Five Points” gang. He was a bartender and bouncer at Yale’s Harvard Inn. His famous scar that won him the nickname “Scarface” was the result of an altercation at the Inn. He insulted a female patron and was knifed by her brother.

In December, 1918 Capone married Mary Coughlin, and she gave birth to their son, Albert.

After hospitalizing two rival gang members in New York, Frankie Yale sent Capone to Chicago to get him out of town. He had already killed two men in New York by this time, but was never charged with the murders. Capone moved to Chicago in 1919, and this is where he ran his most famous and lucrative crime business for most of his years.

In Chicago, Capone began to work for Frankie Yale’s old mentor, John Torrio, and soon became Torrio’s number two guy in running his bootlegging business. Soon Capone was a full partner in all of Torrio’s illegal operations, including gambling houses, brothels, bookie joints, speakeasies and horse tracks. Capone is said to have made $100 million a year. Torrio was shot by a rival gang member and decided to leave Chicago, leaving Capone in charge of the whole operation. He was known as the “big fellow” and was well liked by his underlings. Between 1925 and 1930, he widely expanded the vice industry that Torrio left to him. He maintained offices all over Chicago, including a 5 room suite at the Metropole Hotel, along with other swanky Chicago hotels. He often fronted as an antiques dealer to front these operations.

In 1928, the mayor of Chicago ran Capone out of town, deciding that he was bad for his image. Capone settled on an estate in Palm Island Florida, but continued to run his operations in Chicago from a distance.

Capone’s gang and his members were masters at killing rival gangs. Their most famous killing was their St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on February 14, 1929. They entered the garage that was the main headquarters for rival gang lord Bugs Moran’s bootleg business. Two of Capone’s men were dressed as police, so Moran’s gang dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Capone’s men fired more than 150 bullets and the seven men in the building were killed. Moran was not in the building and Capone was never charged, because he was at his home in Florida at the time of the shooting.

Several unsuccessful attempts were made on Capone’s life. But, he was also well liked in many Chicago neighborhoods. He opened a soup kitchen after the 1929 stock market crash, and often paid for food and clothes for the needy.

Capone was convicted of tax evasion in 1931. He was sentenced to ten years in a federal prison plus one year in a county jail. He was sent to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta to serve out his sentence, but was transferred to Alcatraz when it was realized that he continued to run his operation from prison. Alcatraz offered him no access to the outside world. He served the rest of his sentence there and then moved to Terminal Island to serve his misdemeanor sentence. He spent much of the last years of his prison terms in the hospital with dementia caused by syphilis.

Once released from prison, he lived out the rest of his life at his home in Palm Island, where he was too weak to run his business. He had a stroke in 1947 and died from cardiac arrest four days later.

P. Zerkle aims to help people find the right program for a master of criminology.