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... temper stayed under control for about five weeks. But then, Joe Howard, a small-time thug, assaulted Capone's friend Jack Guzik when Guzik turned him down for a loan. Guzik told Capone and Capone tracked Howard down in a bar. Howard had the poor judgment to call Capone a dago pimp and Capone shot Howard dead. William H.
McSwiggin, called "the hanging prosecutor, " decided to get Capone, but in spite of his diligence he wasn't able to win a conviction, mostly because eyewitnesses suddenly developed faulty memories. Capone got away with murder, but the publicity surrounding the case gave him a notoriety that he never had before. He had broken out of the Torrio model of discreet anonymity once and for all. " (Bergeen) "At the age of twenty five after only four years in Chicago, Capone was a force to be reckoned with. Wealthy, powerful, master of the city of Cicero, he became a target for lawmen and rival gangsters alike. He was keenly aware that the next lavish gangster funeral he attended could be his own. The fragile peace that Torrio had constructed with other gangs was blown apart by Prohibition.
Gangland murders were reaching epidemic proportions" (Bergeen) "While Capone's name was often linked with these murders, the fact was that there were many other gangsters responsible that Capone and Torrio had tried to keep in line. One flamboyant example was Dion O'Banion who had a burgeoning bootlegging and florist business. " (Schoenberg) O'Banion was known for bizarre behavior which included gunning down a man in front of crowds of people for the flimsiest of reasons and then killing a man after meeting him at Capone's Four Deuces, which dragged Capone into a murder investigation needlessly. There was a growing sense of realization that something was going to have to be done about Dion O'Banion's irresponsible and childishly impulsive behavior. (Schoenberg) On November 10, 1924, 3 gangsters went into Dion's flower shop in which he expected them to pick up a wreath. O'Banion went to shake the hands of the men, a clerk in the back was heard to have said he heard 6 gunshots, he ran in to help his boss only to discover him dead lying in a pool of his own blood. Dion's funeral was a celebration for Torrio and Capone because they took over excellent bootlegging territory and they had finally rid themselves of a dangerous colleague. While the police scratched their heads over who killed O'Banion, Dion's friend "Hymie" Weiss knew exactly who was responsible and he vowed revenge.
From that moment on, Capone and Torrio looked over their shoulders constantly for "Hymie" Weiss and his another Dion associate, Bugs Moran. "Hymie" Weiss's real name was Earl Wajciechowski, which he shortened to Weiss. The nickname "Hymie" stuck somehow and everyone assumed he was a Jewish gangster, when he was in fact a very devout Catholic. George Moran was a violent and unstable man who got the nickname "Bugs" because everyone thought he was nuts or "buggy." Torrio was so concerned for his life that he decided to leave Chicago for awhile and went to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Capone was just as worried and took every possible security measure. Still, over the next 2 years, the former colleagues of Dion O'Banion would make a dozen attempts to assassinate Capone. In January of 1925, twelve days after the Weiss-Moran gang tried to assassinate Capone; Johnny Torrio came back to Chicago.
He and his wife Ann were just returned from a shopping trip and got out of their car to walk to the door of their apartment building. Torrio walked behind her carrying packages. Weiss and Bugs Moran jumped out of a car and, thinking that Torrio was still in his automobile, fired wildly, wounding the chauffeur. When they finally saw Torrio, they shot him in the chest and neck, then his right arm and his groin. Moran held a gun to Torrio's temple and pulled the trigger, but the firing chamber was empty and poor Johnny Torrio, the peacemaker, heard only a faint click.
At the hospital, Capone took over while surgeons removed the bullets in Torrio's raw body. The hospital was a dangerous place for a gangster. The security was rotten. So Capone arranged for Torrio's security on his own, which included Al sleeping in his room on a cot making sure that his beloved mentor was safe. Torrio.
He called Al to the jail in Waukegan in March of 1925 and told him that he was retiring from the Chicago rackets and going to live abroad. Torrio was turning over his vast assets to Al. Shortly after he took over Torrio's empire, it was clear that Capone was a major force in the Chicago underworld. " Now Al was almost respected in Chicago, he was a prominent figure" (Bergeen) He was a devoted family man and the illness of his son prayed on his mind. In the next few years Al Capone established himself as the most powerful crime czar in the U. S.
He was involved in countless murders and assassinations including that of Frankie Yale and the notorious St. Valentines Day Massacre in which Capone's men slaughtered 5 members of the Bugs Moran gang. Witnesses in Capone trial's constantly " lost their memory" and just seemed to forget what happened. Al Capone's streak of good luck was soon to come to an end.
His lavish spending was beginning to be noticed by many government officials. When he bought his 14 room, Spanish style estate on Palm Island in Florida he brought on unneeded attention especially from that of Herbert Hoover who at the time was the President of the U. S. Hoover then pressured Andrew Mellon who was the Secretary of Treasury to spearhead the government's battle against Capone. Al was now nationally recognized as a gangster and was treated as one, police were constantly following him and harassing him. U.
S. Attorney, George E. Q. Johnson gathered evidence to prove income tax evasion and prohibition violations on Capone. Also involved in the case were Eliot Ness who was a prohibition agent and Elmer Item who was with the IRS special intelligence unit. Capone was now considered public enemy # 1.
Now all Capone's bootlegging breweries, gambling joints and speakeasies were being shut down and raided which was helping the team to convict Capone gather more evidence against him. The team of investigators watched Capone for almost 5 years and finally convicted him on 22 counts of tax evasion. He was to spend 11 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. The syphilis that he had contracted as a very young man was moving into the tertiary stage called neuro syphilis. By 1938, he was confused and disoriented. Al spent the last year of his sentence, which had been reduced to six years and five months for a combination of good behavior and work credits, in the hospital section being treated for syphilis. He was released in November of 1939. Mae took him to a hospital in Baltimore where he was treated until March of 1940.
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 died of cardiac arrest, his grieving family surrounding him. "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 folly 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 fleeting, a passing sensation, but instead it lodged permanently in the consciousness of Americans, for whom he redefined the concept of crime into an organized endeavor modeled on corporate enterprise.
As he was at pains to point out, many of his crimes were relative; bootlegging was criminal only because a certain set of laws decreed it, and then the laws were changed" (Bergeen). Bibliography: Bibliography Killer, John. Capone: the Life and World of Al Capone. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992.
Ness, Eliot. The Untouchables. New York: Messner, 1957; 1987 reprint. Bergeen, Laurence. Capone: the Man and the Era. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Murray, George. The Legacy of Al Capone: Portraits and Annals of Chicago's Public Enemies. New York: Putnam, 1975. Schoenberg, Robert J. Mr. Capone: the Real - and Complete - Story of Al Capone.
New York: Morrow, 1992.
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