Ask 100 individuals to name a well known gangster and 95% of them will answer Al Capone. Alphonse Capone may not have been the main man in implimenting the foundations of organized crime in the USA, but he is still, to most people Public Enemy Number One and one of the most well known mobsters ever to have lived.
Capone gained that notoriety among the public and indeed his rivals and associates by becoming more feared than his enemies, more ruthless and more cunning. Capone had in fact to change his whole outlook toward earning money and gaining respect from the thoughts he held as a young man. If he hadn`t made that transition from brawler to thinker he would have sank without trace in a world where would be gangsters and hitmen were a dime a dozen, his own kind would have swallowed him up whole and spat him out. Capone changed from being a dime-a-dozen thug to becoming one of the most feared and respected criminals of his time.
Capone gained that notoriety among the public and indeed his rivals and associates by becoming more feared than his enemies, more ruthless and more cunning. Capone had in fact to change his whole outlook toward earning money and gaining respect from the thoughts he held as a young man. If he hadn`t made that transition from brawler to thinker he would have sank without trace in a world where would be gangsters and hitmen were a dime a dozen, his own kind would have swallowed him up whole and spat him out. Capone changed from being a dime-a-dozen thug to becoming one of the most feared and respected criminals of his time.
By his very nature Capone was a thug and out and out bully, he had a heart as black as coal. By the time he had reached the age of twenty-six he had changed from those rough house beginings into one of the most feared and respected gangsters the world has ever known. Capone could still throw a guy a beating if the need arose. He used a baseball bat as an implement for crushing a mans skull as easily as baseball player would swing the bat at a ball, most times though he left the muscle work to his minions. Capone was now heading a multi-million dollar business enterprise which would owe it`s wealth and power to crime. He became so rich and powerful his claim of "I own Chicago" was not an idle boast. At the hieght of his power Capone`s men numbered 1,000 easily, and most of them could handle a gun well to help keep that power. He also had most of Chicago`s police force in his pocket, add to that states attoreys, governors, and congressmen, and you will have some idea of the power held by Al Capone.
Capone controlled the whole of Chicago's underworld and with his corruption of the politicians his power was almost total. In the suburbs od Cicero, Illinois, it was in fact total. Whatever Al wanted Al got, there were no questioning Big al's orders. If any politician failed to deliver the goods when `Big Al` asked, then there would be hell to pay. One time the Mayor of Cicero, without thinking, made a move without first getting the nod from Capone. Al pounced on the guy right there on the steps of City Hall and while in full view of a police officer kicked the guy unconcious.
Born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1899, Capone was one of nine children born to immigrant parents who had originated from Naples. He did not too badly at school up untill 6th grade where he punched out a teacher, and recieved a beating in return from the priciple! After that he joined up with the neighborhood gang called the James Street Gang, these were a tough gang of young thugs headed by Johnny Torrio who was older than Capone, this is where he earned his `street smarts` and honed his criminal skills. The James Street Gang was like a junior branch of the notorious Five Point Gang, a gang which Capone later joined. A friend of Capone`s in the gang was Charlie Luciano who was to go on in later years to become a major crime figure also, the two remained friends for the rest of their lives.
When he was 18 or 19 years old Capone was given the job as bouncer in a saloon come brothel in Brooklyn run by Johnny Torrio and Frankie Yale. It was in this `club` that Al recieved the scar that earned him the name "Scarface Al" he got into a fight over a girl with another hoodlum by the name of Frank Galluccio, during the fight Galluccio pulled a blade and slashed Capone across the face. In 1919 Capone was wanted by the police in connection with two murders, he decided it was time he blew town so he moved to Chicago at the invite of Johnny Torrio. Torrio was looking for some help to help run the whorehouses owned by his uncle Big Jim Colisimo, Colisimo was the main whoremaster in Chicago. Capone arrived at a time when Torrio and Big Jim were at each others throats. Torrio had wanted Big Jim Colisimo to shift his assets into the bootleg racket where Torrio knew that the rewards were financialy huge. Big Jim wasn`t interested he had become lazy and couldn`t see the point in bothering himself with the bootleg industry when he was already a wealthy man and made for life. He told Torrio not to get involved with bootlegging.
Torrio knew that if he wanted a piece of the bootleg rackets then he needed the power behind big Jim`s organization, and now that Big Jim had indicated he wanted no involvement in bootlegging, it was obvious he had to be exterminated. Torrio and Capone plotted Big Jim's murder and arranged cast iron alibi`s for themselves, before putting a call through to New York for a few men to do the take care of the hit.
Torrio and Capone soon flexed their muscles and used the many men at their disposal to bully and terrorise other mobs into submission and eliminated those who tried to make a stand. In 1924 they also arranged for Dion o`Bannion to be killed. O`Bannion headed the Northside Gang who were largely Irish in origin. They used Frankie Yale to do the hit. Even with O`Bannion dead the Northsiders continued to be a thorn in Torrio`s Side for years to come. In 1925 Torrio was badly shot up when he was ambushed outside his apartment, he spent over a week in hospital,and was gravely ill for a time. When he had rested and recuperated he decided enough was enough and got out while still ahead of the game. Torrio told Capone " Al, it`s all yours " he spent some time abroad before returning to spend the rest of his `retirement` in Brooklyn.
In a way this made Capone rely more on his brains than on his muscle, which he was prone to in the past. Being left on his own by Torrio, at the head of what by now had become a major multi-million dollar business meant Capone had to learn fast or sink. He had over 1,000 people on his payrole which was running at over $300,000 a week, he also had to work with non Italians, the Jews, Irish, Poles, and Blacks. Capone excelled at this, he was truelly an equal oportunity employer if you could kill, hustle, be of any kind of use to Capone then you were in , no matter your race or religious background.
Capone would still killed ethnics, if they refused to do as he said, but he did the same also to Italians, the Gennas and Aiellos among them, if they also chose to defy him. Capone did a lot to rid Chicago of it`s mustache Petes a long time before Luciano had did likewise in New York. Capone was a murderer and responsible for giving the order on countless underworld hits but surprisingly for the most part he was liked, or at least tolerated by the general public who saw his crimes as being largely directed at other mobsters. The public also saw Capone as providing a service by keeping the speakeasy`s supplied with booze, his gambling joints were popular also, he was always seen with political figures and business men even well known society figures. This in it's self gave Capone a level of respectability in the eyes of the general public. When Big Al went to the ballpark he was cheered, a coutesy not extended to Herbert Hoover in 1929.
Capone always had men around him he could trust, this trust was mutual. As long as you played it straight with Al, Capone would back you to the hilt when you needed him to. Capone had working for him as a bodyguard Galluccio the very man who had scarred him in the bar-room brawl years earlier, this told his men that he was magnanimous. A lot of rival gangs heard tales of Capone`s loyalty and that he could be trusted and hooked up with him, knowing it was better to profit under his leadership, than to run the risk of being overtaken completely if trying to go it alone. The Valley Gang and and The Saltis-McErlane mob were two who pledged their loyalties to Capone.
He was transfered to Alcatraz in 1934, his health deteriorated while in prison. He was released in 1939 suffering immensly from his untreated syphlis a disease he no doubt contracted by his numerous exploits in his own whore-houses. Capone was also said to be showing psychotic symptoms while in Alcatraz. Alphonse`Big Al`Capone was taken to live in his Florida Mansion by his family, he remained there drifting in and out of reality for another 9 years before finally passing away on February 25th 1947.
It wasn`t always plain sailing for Capone though, he was always on his guard against assasination. In 1926 The O`Bannion mob sent a fleet of cars past the Hawthorne Inn, Capones Cicero headquarters, and over a 1,000 rounds were fired at the place, Capones luck held out when a bodyguard threw Capone to the floor and lay on top of him just like a human shield. In 1929 Capone made one of the biggest mistakes of his criminal career, he gave the order for the St.Valintines day Massacre, in an attempt to take out one of his main rivals Bugs Moran, who was at that time leader of the O`Bannion gang. Capones men dressed as police officers lined seven men against a garage wall and machine-gunned them to death, the men had not put up any resistance they had thought they were being shaken down by genuine policemen. Bugs Moran was not among the dead he hadn`t been at the garage at the time. What was even worse for Capone was the fact that this act of bloody violence had turned public opinion against Capone, Washington was also exerting pressure to have something done about the violence in the city and Capone in particular. They could get nothing on Capone to connect him to the murders. The G-men had to come up with some other means to halt the capone regime, and they did. They had accountants work on any piece of financial information they could gather pertaining to Capones enterprises, they employed many accountants who because of their jewish background had found work hard to get at that time. It didnt take long before the teams of accountants realised by the figures that Capone was shy on paying his taxes. He was eventualy nailed on income tax evasion and he was sentenced to 11 years at the federal prison in Atlanta.
AL CAPONE
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