During Prohibition, Al Capone became the biggest bootlegger in American history, and ruled
the Chicago Mob for six years.
But there's more to this legendary gangster than you might think.
Let's open the vault and explore the tragic life of Al Capone.
In 1930, the city of Chicago named Al Capone as "Public Enemy No. 1."
Most knew Capone by a completely different nickname: Scarface.
The gangster sported three prominent scars on the side of his neck and left cheek, and
they gave him a pretty intimidating look.
Whenever he was asked about them, the crime lord would say that he was injured in World
War I.
"Hand-to-hand with the Kaiser himself?
That is how you got your scars, right Al?"
The truth, however, was very different.
As a young man, Capone worked as a bouncer for Frankie Yale.
One fateful evening, the 18-year-old Al spotted a girl named Lena across the bar, but when
he tried asking her out, she turned him down… twice.
As she was leaving, Capone tried out one last line, giving her a foulmouthed compliment
on her figure.
Lena didn't take it as a compliment, and neither did her brother, Frank Galluccio.
Infuriated, Galluccio pulled a knife and went to work on Capone's face, slashing him to
ribbons and forcing Capone to get 80 stitches.
Frankie Yale intervened before things could get any more violent, and it would eventually
turn out that Capone could be a surprisingly forgiving guy... when he wanted to be.
"I want him dead!
I want his family dead!
I want his house burned to the ground!"
After experiencing his knife work firsthand, Capone later hired Galluccio to work as his
bodyguard.
As one of nine children, Al Capone had quite a few brothers, but James Vincenzo Capone
chose a very different career from his most famous relative.
After leaving New York at a young age, James made his way out West, arriving in Nebraska
in 1919.
Inspired by Hollywood cowboy William S. Hart, the older Capone brother started wearing spurs,
ten-gallon hats, and ivory-handled revolvers.
He even changed his name, calling himself Richard "Two Gun" Hart.
Before long, Hart was a legend across the state.
A deadly accurate marksman, he became a Prohibition enforcement agent, going undercover to bust
up stills, track down murderers, fistfight bootleggers, and even rescue an entire family
from a flash flood.
In true romance novel fashion, he even wound up getting married to a woman he pulled from
the water just a few months later.
Eventually, Hart would be tasked with catching moonshiners on reservations and once served
as President Calvin Coolidge's bodyguard.
Unfortunately, things eventually got pretty rough for Hart.
He was fired after killing a fugitive and suffered from failing eyesight.
Desperate and out of money, he eventually asked for some cash from his brother Ralph,
who was very much involved in Al's family business.
Hart and Scarface himself reunited in 1939, after the crime boss was freed from Alcatraz.
Then in 1951, the government subpoenaed Hart to testify against Ralph, and the Prohibition
agent was finally forced to admit he was a Capone.
Hart passed away at the age of 60 in 1952, just five years after his infamous brother.
Of all of Al Capone's many crimes, the most infamous by far is his murderous magnum opus,
the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
As the name implies, it went down on February 14, 1929, but the trouble behind the slaughter
had been brewing for years.
Chicago was divided between two gangs.
George "Bugs" Moran ran the Irish mob on the north side, and there was bad blood with Capone's
gang that involved more than a few machine guns.
Eventually, Capone decided to end it all by sending Bugs a love letter made out of lead.
On February 14, seven members of Moran's North Side gang showed up at a garage on North Clark
Street to buy some whiskey from a bootlegger.
Once they stepped inside the garage, four or five men showed up on the scene, some dressed
as police officers.
Probably thinking this was a raid, Moran's men didn't fight back when these "cops" ordered
them up against a wall.
Seconds later, their bodies were riddled with bullets.
Armed with shotguns and Tommy guns, Capone's men unloaded 70 rounds, which has got to be
the world's worst Valentine's present.
Moran himself was late for the appointment and took off when he saw the "cops" at the
garage, a decision that saved his life, but that was the end of the North Side gang.
Nobody was ever arrested for the crime, and no one could prove Capone was behind the murders.
He'd been in Florida at the time, soaking up some sun.
Even though he was the most famous crook in America, Al Capone was incredibly difficult
to catch.
The mobster was skilled at distancing himself from anything illegal, and it was almost impossible
to prove he was earning money from his criminal enterprises.
Capone spent millions on bribes to buy friends in high places, and since most ordinary folks
were too scared to testify against him, Capone lived beyond the law.
"You got nothing!
Nothing!
And if you were a man you woulda done it now!"
But not every cop in Chicago was corrupt.
Take Prohibition officer Eliot Ness, for example.
One of the few clean men in a dirty city, Ness headed up a crew of agents known as "The
Untouchables," so-nicknamed because they refused to accept bribes.
While their impact has been exaggerated in pop culture, the Untouchables were definitely
a pain in Capone's side, as they made a habit of busting up his illegal breweries.
Needless to say, that made them plenty of enemies.
The mob tapped Ness' phone, repeatedly stole his car, and filled one of his informants
full of lead, but the Untouchables soldiered on, building an indictment against the crime
lord with a staggering 5,000 counts of bootlegging.
However, despite Ness' hard work, the Untouchables weren't the ones who brought Capone down.
Instead of hitting Scarface with bootlegging charges, the federal government decided to
focus on the mob boss' income taxes.
After all, the feds figured tax evasion would play better with a jury, since Prohibition
had fallen out of favor, and indicting a guy for providing people with booze wouldn't exactly
turn the public against him.
The FBI, the IRS, and the Treasury Department spent a lot of man hours linking Capone to
his illegal establishments, and luckily, they discovered he'd once endorsed a check related
to his gambling business.
That, coupled with the testimony of a few brave souls, was enough to build a case, and
in 1931, Capone was put on trial.
Of course, he tried bribing the jury, but when the judge swapped out juries at the last
minute, Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion, earning the 32-year-old
crime lord 11 years behind bars.
Life in the slammer was pretty easy for Al Capone... at first.
The gangster was initially shipped to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, where Big
Al basically had his run of the joint.
He had his own radio, he had a carpeted prison cell, and he kept a whole lot of cash lying
around so he could bribe the guards for favors.
The warden was at his beck and call, and he was allowed visitors every single day.
But that all changed in 1934, when Scarface was sent to Alcatraz.
Things on the Rock were a bit different for Capone.
Alcatraz was a long way from Chicago, housed some of the most notorious criminals in American
history, and boasted a warden who did not play games.
Instead of lounging in luxury, Capone spent his days working in the laundry or mopping
up the showers.
The mob boss also found out, perhaps surprisingly, that he was pretty low in the Alcatraz pecking
order.
When Capone refused to take part in a prison-wide protest, for example, two separate inmates
attacked him on two separate occasions.
Another time, Capone made the mistake of trying to cut in line at the prison barber shop.
This didn't sit well with bank robber James "Tex" Lucas, who would later teach Capone
about prison etiquette by slicing up the gangster with half a pair of scissors.
Along with the standard recreation options you'd expect from Federal Prison, the one
special comfort that warden James A. Johnston did allow Capone during his time in Alcatraz
was permission to start his own band.
The little group was called The Rock Islanders.
Capone himself played banjo, and believe it or not, he wrote plenty of love songs for
the band.
The most famous was called "Madonna Mia," and most believe it's about his wife Mae.
Apparently, he missed her quite a bit while he was behind bars.
The original sheet music sold for $65,000 in 2009, and a new version of the song was
released the same year.
Give it a listen, and you'll find some heartwarming lyrics in there, like,
That's shockingly sappy for the man whose most famous Valentine's Day involved the massacre
of his enemies, but it just goes to show that even notorious murderers can have a romantic
side.
There's no indication of whether Capone's band was any good, but even if it wasn't,
it was probably worth the racket to keep Capone away from the baseball field.
The guy had a killer swing.
While Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison, he only served about seven, and
the reason for his early release meant that he definitely couldn't enjoy it.
Capone was suffering from a devastating case of syphilis that had made its way to his brain.
After being treated in Baltimore, Capone spent his final years with his wife at his Florida
home, surviving on an underworld stipend of just $600 a week, a far cry from the millions
he once spent.
Even worse, Capone spent most of his time talking with people who weren't really there.
Finally, the infamous Al Capone, sick, tired, and confused, died in January 1947 at the
age of 48.
Capone both experienced and caused a lot of tragedy in his life, but one of his most cringe-inducing
effects was felt long after his death.
April 21, 1986 was supposed to be a big comeback for Geraldo Rivera.
The TV personality had recently been fired from ABC News and was hoping to hop back into
the limelight with a little help from Scarface.
It turned out that underground tunnels had been discovered beneath Capone's old hangout,
the Lexington Hotel, and Rivera was going to excavate the ruins and see what treasures
had been hidden beneath the streets by the 20th century's most notorious gangster.
Titled The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, this two-hour special aired live on national
television, and featured talking head historians and old-timey footage interspersed with scenes
of Rivera firing a Tommy gun.
Hoping to build suspense, Rivera had IRS officials and crime scene investigators on-scene, just
in case he discovered some of Capone's cash or a stack of dead bodies.
Unfortunately for both the host and his viewers, Rivera stepped inside these long-hidden passageways
after cracking open the wall with dynamite and discovered… a whole lot of nothing.
Other than dirt and a couple of bottles, the place was completely empty.
It was a major embarrassment, but hey!
Despite the disappointing ending, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults was watched in 30 million
homes across America, beating out major TV shows, and definitely gave Rivera's career
a boost.
Then again, having your most brutally anticlimactic fail broadcast to 30 million people is the
kind of thing most of us would have nightmares about.
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