"A SMILE CAN GET YOU FAR, BUT A SMILE WITH A GUN CAN GET YOU FURTHER"
Brooklyn, New York. January 17, 1899. The end of a century, the birth of a criminal.
A city full of new beginnings, new chances. Barber and seamstress Gabriele and Teresa Capone left their home and found themselves in New York, where they would have 9 children, one of whom would become one of the most feared men of the 20th century: Alphonse Gabriel Capone better known as notorious gangster Al Capone.
Teenage Al Capone turned to a life of crime, leading him to meet his lifetime mentor, gangster Johnny Torrio. Around the same time, at 19, Al met the love of his life, Mae Josephine Coughlin, whom he married in 1918. They had one son, Albert Francis “Sonny” Capone.
Initially, the young Al Capone live in New York City, where he became involved with the Five Point Gang. During this period, he found himself taken under the wing of renowned mobster Frankie Yale. While working for him, Al Capone earned his nickname “Scarface”, a title that he would despise for the rest of his life. It came to be when Capone, while working at Yale’s Harvard Inn, insulted a woman, leading to his brother, Frank Galluccio, to slash him across the face three different times.
Shortly after, in 1919, he left the big city to go and work for crime boss Big Jim Colosimo in Chicago. The latter was later assassinated, in 1920, suspected to have been committed by either Yale or Capone himself to position Torrio as the new boss who would start to take part in the bootlegging business during the Prohibition era.
Once Torrio retired and left for Italy, Al Capone took over the Chicago Outfit. He ran gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging across the city. He grew to be feared by many as he gunned down rivals who stood in his way to power. It was said that he was worth about $100 million.
The one crime that stands out from all the rest during his time as a crime boss, was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. This was the execution of seven unarmed members of the Bugs Moran gang. They were lined up against a wall and shot with a machine gun by members of Al Capone’s outfit, who had disguised themselves as cops. Capone was never charged with this crime.
(If you want to read more about this crime, here is the link to its Wikipedia Page)
He was good at what he did, that can’t be argued. Al Capone was never arrested for murder, he got away with all of them, even when it was clear that he was responsible. They never had proof. When he was finally arrested, he was sent away for tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He lived out these years in the Atlanta penitentiary and then was transferred to Alcatraz, a new prison at the time.
After 8 years in prison, he was released due to his worsening health, caused by syphilis, a disease he had been living with for years. At the age 48, he died of a cardiac arrest in his Florida estate.
WANT TO KNOW MORE? Here are some trivia facts that might pique your curiosity.
1. Did you know that while working many jobs as a young man, Al Capone played semi-pro baseball? 2. Also, out of all the Capone children most of them turned out to be mobsters, but there was one named Vincenzo Capone who became a Prohibition agent and changed his name to Richard Hart. Talk about family drama! 3. Referencing the well-known movie “The Untouchables”, the famous baseball bat scene was based on reality as Al Capone did do something quite similar in real life.
4. Incidentally, he was also the first “Public Enemy Nº1”, as the list was created when he was running the Chicago Outfit. 5. And want to talk about paranoid? His favorite car was a 1928 Cadillac V-8 Town Sedan which he customized to have 3.000 pounds of steel armor and bulletproof windows. I guess being part of the mafia will do that to you.
You can find The Untouchables movie scene here:
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