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Al capone

Al capone There have been a lot of things written and said about Al Capone in newspapers and magazine articles, books, and movies that is completely untrue. One of the most common fictions is that like many gangsters of that era, he was born in Italy. Absolutely not true. This amazing criminal was strictly domestic, taking the Italian criminal society and fashioning it into a modern American criminal enterprise. Certainly many Italian immigrants, like immigrants of all nationalities, frequently came to the New World with very few assets. Many of these immigrants were peasants trying to escape the lack of opportunity in Italy. When they came to the American port cities they often ended up as laborers because of the inability to speak and write English and their lack of professional skills. This was not the case with the family of Al Capone. Gabriele Capone was one of 43,000 Italians who arrived in the U.S. in 1893, from Naples, Italy. He was a barber by trade and could read and write his native language. Gabriele, who was thirty years old, brought with him his pregnant twenty-seven-year-old wife Teresina, his two-year-old son Vincenzo and his infant son Raffaele. Unlike many Italian immigrants he did not owe anyone for his passage over. His plan was to do whatever work was necessary until he could open his own barbershop. Along with thousands of other Italians, the Capone family moved to Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Gabriele's ability to read and write allowed him to get a job in a grocery store until he was able to open his barbershop. Her fourth son and the first to be born and conceived in the New World was born January 17, 1899. His name was Alphonse, also known as Al. Al came from a large family and was the fourth oldest of nine children. As a child, Capone was very wise when it came to living on the streets of New York. He had a clever mind when it came to street smarts. As far as school goes, Al was near illiterate. Education was not a top priority for immigrants. At the age of five in 1904, he went to Public School 7 on Adams Street. The school system was deeply prejudiced against them and did little to encourage any interest in higher education, while the immigrant parents expected their children to leave school as soon as they were old enough to work. At about the age of eleven Capone became a member of a juvenile gang in his neighborhood. While this was taking place, around the year 1900, about eleven percent of all the foreign born population in the United States were Italian. Capone was forced to either deal with a miserable low wage job with a hopeless future or make an improvement for himself by committing first minor crimes, then moving on to bigger ones. While in the “Bim Booms gang, Capone was taught ho to defend himself with a knife, and a gun. By the time Capone reached the sixth grade he had already become a street brawler. Capone never responded well to authority and for that very reason his schooling would soon come to an end. At fourteen, he lost his temper at the teacher, she hit him and he hit her back. He was expelled and never went to school again. After dropping out of school, Capone took up jobs such as working as a pinsetter at a bowling alley, and working behind the counter at a candy store. A few blocks away from the Capone house on Garfield Place was a small unobtrusive building that was the headquarters of one of the most successful gangsters on the East Coast. Johnny Torrio was a new breed of gangster, a pioneer in the development of a modern criminal enterprise. From Torrio, a young Capone learned invaluable lessons that were the foundation of the criminal empire he built later in Chicago. Al Capone’s philosophy was that laws only applied to people who had enough money to live by them. The “Five Point Juniors” was the most powerful gang in New York City and was the gang Al was now a part of. The gangs’ leader was Johnny Torrio and was made up of over 1,500 gangsters who specialized in burglary, extortion, robbery, assault, and murder. While Al was working as a strong-arm enforcer under Torrio, he learned all the lethal tricks that would help him get from rags to riches in no time. While working under Torrio, Al met a man by the name of Francesco Ioele, also called Frankie Yale. Yale was both feared and respected. Frankie Yale built his turf on muscle and aggression. Yale opened a bar on Coney Island called the Harvard Inn and hired, at the recommendation of Johnny Torrio, the eighteen-year-old Al Capone to be his bartender. This is where Al received his infamous nickname “Scarface”. Although the story is not fully clear, because Capone often lied about how he got the scar. The scar extended four inches across his left cheek. On December 18, 1918, Capone was married at the age of 19, to a 21-year-old Irish girl named Mae Coughlin. A short time later Albert Francis Capone was born to the couple. Albert also known as Sonny was the godchild of Torrio and a victim to congenial syphilis at birth. At this time in New York, Johnny moved his operations to Chicago. Torrio’s prospects in New York looked low because Capone was charged for two murders. He was released when a witness lost her memory, and evidence suddenly vanished from the court. Al Capone knew that he had Torrio to thank for this. Chicago was a perfect place to build a criminal empire. It was a rowdy, fierce, hard-drinking town that was open to anyone with enough money to buy it. When Al Capone came to the city in 1920, the flesh trade was becoming the province of organized crime. The kingpin of this business was "Big Jim" Colosimo. Big Jim owned the Colosimo Cafe, one of the most popular nightclubs in the city. Nobody cared that he was a pimp. It never stopped him from hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Big Jim, with huge diamonds glittering on every one of his fat fingers and diamond-studded belts and buckles, was a true product a Chicago society --handsome, generous, and larger than life. Johnny Torrio grew very jealous of Colosimo and soon sent for his most loyal hit man, Frankie Yale. “Big Jim” Colosimo was killed on the night of May 11, 1920 in his own nightclub. The reason for his death was mostly due to the prohibition act to be passed in 1920. The prohibition act was a law that forbid alcohol to be distributed to all the bars in Chicago. Torrio, the nephew of Colosimo, often asked him to start an underground operation that could supply all the bars with beer and liquor, but Colosimo would never let him. After Yale’s hit on Colisimo, Torrio agreed to give Capone control of his new alcohol distributing operations, since he had such big plans for it. Al Capone's mob ran the streets of Chicago. While Capone's street mob was at its peak, it had over 1,000 members and half of the Chicago police force. Capone's payroll at the time consisted of police officers, state's attorneys, mayors, legislators, governors, and even congressmen. At the time Capone was known as the "King of Chicago". Being the king of Chicago had its downfalls. There were numerous threats on his life caused by rival mob members. Capone was shot at in the streets, and even had poison slipped into his food at clubs. In a near death experience a rival gang member, Dion O'Banion, shot 1,000 rounds into the Hawthorn Inn where Capone was staying. After he had cheated death, the arranging of O'Banion's death would be marked as one of Capone's greatest accomplishments. Capone’s two best hit men, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, performed this assassination. Unfortunately for Al Capone, the hit on Dion O’Banion was not very successful. The killing of O’Banion led to hostility between one of O’Banions fellow leaders, Bugs Moran. Capone’s sought to strike first on Moran and his gang before it was too late. The plan to knock off Moran’s gang was later nicknamed The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Capone's men dressed as police officers and lined seven of O’Banion and Morans gang members up across a garage wall. The gang offered no resistance because they thought it was a regular police routine. Instead Capone's men opened up over 1,000 rounds of machine gun fire slaughtering the gang members. Unfortunately for Capone, Bugs Moran was not present among the seven men who were killed. After Capone's failed attempt to knock off Moran, his operations became very sloppy. The man charged with gathering the evidence of Prohibition violations, also known as bootlegging, was Eliot Ness, who began to assemble a team of daring young agents like himself. Elmer Irey of the IRS Special Intelligence Unit, who redoubled his ongoing efforts shortly after Hoover’s mandate, led the biggest effort. This team of officials were known as the Untouchables, thus the movie. While there was doubt that Capone could be successfully prosecuted for Prohibition violations in Chicago, regardless of the weight of evidence, Mellon felt sure that with the Sullivan ruling the government could get Capone on tax evasion. Capone’s eventual downfall was caused by one of his own business agents who ran Capone's dog and horse race tracks. The man's name was Eddie O'Hare. O’Hare was working undercover under the IRS. He informed the IRS where books containing Capone's income could be taken. Capone had never paid any taxes and for this very reason he was brought up on charges of tax invasion in front of the federal court. Capone tried to bribe the federal government by offering them $400,000 to drop the case against him, but they rejected the offer. Capone was convicted and given the maximum sentence, which was a $50,000 fine, court costs of $30,000, and eleven years in jail. Initially, Al was a prisoner at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta and quickly became its most famous prisoner. There were charges almost immediately that he was living "like a king." While that was certainly an exaggeration, he clearly lived better than the rest of the prisoners. He had more socks, underwear, sets of sheets, etc. than anyone else. He maintained these extravagances by virtue of a hollow handle in his tennis racket in which he secreted several thousand dollars in cash. In August of 1934, Capone was sent to Alcatraz. His days of living like a king in prison were gone. Capone would run nothing on or from Alcatraz; he wouldn't even know what was happening outside. There would be no smuggled letters or messages. All incoming letters were censored, and then retyped by guards with prohibited subjects omitted, which included the faintest sight of business or the doings of former associates. Censor’s deleted even mention of current events. No newspapers were allowed; magazines had to be more than seven months old. The only source of news was new arrivals. At best, prisoners could write one letter a week, rigorously censored, and only to their immediate family members. Only immediate family could visit, only two of them each month, and they had to write the warden for permission each time. Visitors and prisoners made no physical contact. They sat on opposite side of plate glass. No one could smuggle money into Capone, and he could not have spent it anyway. Five years later he was released from Alcatraz due to a case of untreated syphilis he received from sleeping with prostitutes during his reign over Chicago. Later that year, Al Capone was judged insane and was released to the care of his family. For his remaining years, Al slowly deteriorated in the quiet splendor of his Palm Island palace. Mae stuck by him until January 25, 1947 when he had a massive brain hemorrhage and died. His body was removed from his estate in Florida and transferred back to the seen of his underworld triumph, Chicago. The family held a private ceremony at the cemetery, but were afraid of grave robbers taking the body so they reburied Capone in a secret place in Mt. Carmel Cemetery. In his forty-eight years, Capone had left his mark on the rackets and on Chicago, and more than anyone else he had demonstrated the stupidity of Prohibition; in the process he also made a fortune. Beyond that, he captured and held the imagination of the American public as few public figures ever do. Capone's fame should have been a passing sensation, but instead it stuck permanently in the consciousness of Americans. He redefined the concept of crime into an organized venture modeled on corporate business. As he was at pains to point out, many of his crimes were relative; bootlegging was only criminal because a certain set of laws decreed it, and then the laws were changed. Bibliography:

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