Banjos & Baseball Bats: Mae & Al Capone Pt. 2

Al Capone took his wife and son to Miami to try and retire, but he ended up continuing his murderous, bootlegging, tax-dodging ways. When he was caught and sent to Alcatraz, Mae had to work against the system to get him medical care for the syphilis that was destroying his brain. When he finally got out, he went from #1 Public Enemy to #1 Dad!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody. Yeah you doing. Oh, I don't know what
you're talking about. It's only been a second. We've been
here the whole time. Moment, we've been here the whole time.
I don't know what y'all are talking about. A blip,
a blink of an eye. We were gone. But we're back.
That's all that matters right now, is that we're back.
We had a great Fringe festival this year. Oh Man, Diana,

(00:23):
phenomenal work. I just got to say it. I mean
I try to say it every day, and a lot
of other people say it who don't spend every minute
of their lives with you. But an incredible year and
just you and your team, really amazing stuff. I had
a really good time as an attendant and as a critic.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, that's true. You had to critique several shows.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Oh, and I let them have it.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I am excited to read.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
No, it was a really good year for shows. Actually, yeah,
I didn't. I didn't hate anything. I don't even think
I disliked anything. I think I mostly at the work.
I like, had some notes about a couple of them,
but I saw some that were just amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
It was kind of nice this year. There was no
no show that anyone hated or was talking shit about.
There was no artist that was a jerk like, there
was no It was almost like, well, where's all my
fun drama.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
About? You know what?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Even I was really happy about that.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
It was also kind of funny to be like, well, no,
I don't have an enemy, where is my friend enemy?
But no, it was a really good year. I was
really proud of it and good yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah. And you might hear a squeaking in the background
right now because we're dog sitting little Gunny. He's a joy.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Mostly that was the worst line.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
He's so snugly and sweet. He's a little angel, and
he has The thing is, Gunny has two settings. I'm
lying in your lap and I just want love and
a lot of the times he's like that and his
other setting on a scale of one to one hundred,
eight hundred and seventy six.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, a crazed lunatic. But he's just a puppy.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's a puppy.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, that's really all it is.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, And there's so much to catch you up on too.
I don't want to take too much time the Succession finale.
We're watching Silo now. We saw it. We saw Across
the Spider Verse.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Oh my god, the best movie ever made.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was really good.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Guardians three was really good.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Guardians three was really good. But you know, we got
to set all that aside because we've got a big
story to get to here. Huge story. I mean, this guy,
his name, his reputation precedes him. We know that because
in our last episode we learned about Al and May Capone.
Of course, al Capone one of the most notorious gangsters

(02:47):
of all time. He was from Brooklyn, but he ended
up the head of the Chicago Outfit, which is an
Italian American organized crime gang. His wife May was the
daughter of Irish immigrants, and so at the time him
Italian men marrying Irish girls was like a big no
no for both cultures. But these two were very They
were just total Romeo and Juliette like totally in love

(03:10):
and they got married. They had a son named Albert,
who was called Sonny. Eventually these two ended up being
stinking rich mobsters. Right well, al was a mobster and
May you know, knew about it. She hosted all of
his cronies. Now, when last we left, Al had tried
to semi retire by moving to Miami, and they and

(03:32):
the family ingratiated themselves with the locals. There's dropping cash
supporting local business like seemed pretty nice. But of course
he just ended up doing a bunch of crime again.
You know. Every time I get out, they pulled me
back in, and this included calling a hit on his
former boss and crime partner, Frankie Yale. Now Al's undiagnosed

(03:52):
syphilis was starting to affect his brain and it was
making him even more ruthless and violent than he all
he was, and things were about to get rough for
the Capone family. So let's dive in and see what
horrors await for public family number one.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Let's door, Hey, their friends come listen.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
It's just about ridiculous relation ships, a lover.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
There might be any type of person at all, and
abstract concept or a concrete wall. But if there's a
story where the second glance boot it and show ridiculous
romance a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
So Al Capone, his wife May, and their son Sonny
had moved to Miami in nineteen twenty eight after getting
chased out of basically every other city he tried to visit.
You know, al Capone would go visit Los Angeles and
they were like, you get out of here, or they
were like, uh, you like, get out of here, al Capone,
we don't watch you here. Or he would go to

(05:00):
Minnesota and they'd be like, I don't think so their
al Capone. You can keep back your bags and keep moving.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Take your hot dish somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
He'd go to Birmingham, Alabama.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
We don't take calmly to your sore around here, al
Capone exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
But Miami.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Who your people?

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Who your people? But he shows up in Miami and
he was determined to stay there. He called it quote
the Garden of America and the sunny Italy of the
New World. And he announced that quote, I'm gonna build
or buy a home here, and I hope my friends
will join me.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
I did really have a blast in Miami when I went. Yeah,
so I don't blame him.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Well, yeah, you also went down to escape your criminal past.
That's true. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
And it was a great escape too, Art Basil, Yeah,
oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well it turns out that at the time Miami was
in actually a really bad real estate bust because they'd
had a hurricane the year before that kind of screwed
everything up. So even if they were initially a little
skeptical of criminal mastermind Al Capone showing up in their town,
as soon as he suggested that he was looking to
buy property there, they were like abiosabi.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Party in the city with a few to them.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
He totally busted out the dancers. A headline in the
Chicago Tribune read quote, Capone hunted in Miami, but by
realty men.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
So, like we said in the last episode, Alan May
totally ingratiated themselves into Miami culture. They were throwing money around.
They leased a penthouse at the Punstilion Hotel and a
waterfront mansion. They were supporting local businesses. They were like
dropping thousand dollars bills on furniture makers and tailors and
generally just making Miami. We're real happy to have them. Sure,

(06:55):
police chiefs and other cities had basically all said, you know,
we don't want to hear a Capone, but Miami's chief
h Leslie Quiggs said, quote, if he's here for a
good time and behaves himself, he can stay as long
as he likes Wow, and the mayor of Miami, J.
Newton Lummis was a reialter.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Oh okay, so even.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Though he publicly denounced Capone, he also secretly worked for him.
Great job, Lomash.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Wait, like, you're not asking for organized crime if you
elect a realtor as your mayor. Oh, no dangerous crossovers there.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
So Lummis actually helped Capone buy this huge property, but
it was all very secretive. They had this buried paper
trail going on where the former mayor's son was the intermediary.
He laundered money from Chicago to Miami, eventually purchased the property,
and then put a lease in may Capone's name. So
the Copones didn't technically own the.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Right right from this guy from a.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
Totally random dude, A totally random dude who happened to
get a bunch of money coming in from Chicago for
some reason. Yeah, but this little maneuver was gonna be
another handy little piece of evidence in the case that
the Feds were building against al Capone. And so before
we settle down with the rest of Allen May's story,
let's take a quick fling with.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
History order in the court in the nineteen twenties. During Prohibition,
it was almost impossible to prosecute crime bosses because of witness,
intimidation or lack of hard evidence, and of course bribery
was just everywhere. But this woman, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who
had been the first public defender of women in Los

(08:35):
Angeles in nineteen twenty one, became the US Assistant Attorney General,
and she was handling a lot of the prohibition cases.
And she steps in and she's like, Hey, these mob
bosses are living like kings and just dropping money everywhere
they go. But they never filed tax returns. Like when
they do their taxes, they say they don't have any
money or they didn't make any money. So shouldn't we

(08:57):
be able to prosecute them for that? Hmmm. They're like, uh, hey, Mabel,
good idea. Well, oh, woman with a good idea.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Actually they probably were like, oh whatever. Anyway, Hey, guys,
you know what I've been thinking, Uh, these mafia guys
are living like kings and they never put in tax returns.
I was just thinking I had this great idea, just
a second, brilliant thought. Henry and Mabel's like, okay, as
long as the work gets done. I guess I don't
need credit.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
That's correct, Mabell. I'll take coffee seven sugars please, I'll
prosecute you. Well. The first guy that they ended up
getting under this theory was Manly Sullivan in nineteen twenty one.
He was a bootlegger from South Carolina and they brought
him in, they arrested him. They said, hey, you must
not be paying taxes because you clearly have all this

(09:45):
money that you're not declaring. Well, his lawyer said that
for him to file a tax return on money that
he had earned illegally would violate his Fifth Amendment protections
against self incrimination. Like, basically, if he filed a return
that said I got I got all this money through bootlegging.
Here's the money I made, then he's basically saying, hey,

(10:07):
I committed a crime, and that's forcing someone to admit
a crime against their will. Fifth Amendment. You can't do that.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Okay, that makes sense yeah to me, I guess. But
it did not fly in federal court. He was totally convicted,
but a court of appeals reversed the decision and they
sent it to the Supreme Court. So Scotis took the
case and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes found quote no reason
why the fact that a business is unlawful should exempt

(10:33):
it from paying taxes that, if lawful, it would have
to pay, and the court agreed unanimously. They noted that
the Revenue Act of nineteen twenty one said that gross
income includes quote gains or profits and income derived from
any source whatever, right, and Holmes said that the Fifth
Amendment thing did not apply because everybody has to declare

(10:55):
their income, so earning it illegally should not get you
special treatment over everyone else. Also makes sense, I guess,
because it would just be like, oh, if you get
it illegally, you don't have to pay taxes. Yeah, loophole everyone,
Like that would be a really bad precedent to set it.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Not only can you break the law to make all
your money, you don't even have to tell me and did.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
It, you could also avoid that tax thing everybody.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
It does kind of encourage people to look in that direction.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
So the Feds were already working on a case against
Copone under this decision, and they were looking at how
much money he was spending in order to determine how
much he was earning.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, so they're seeing like, oh, okay, may Capone is
leasing this multimillion dollar mansion in Miami with what Yeah,
with what you moved down to Chicago with on paper nothing.
Side note, My favorite part of that ruling from the
Supreme Courts is where Justice Homes said that, sure, it
might be suggested that if you declare your illegal business income,

(11:52):
that you could also deduct illegal business expenses like bribery. Like, hey, look,
if I if I write down the I made a
million dollars in bootlegging, I'm going to deduct the three
hundred thousand dollars I spent in bribes. You know.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Now that's very interesting because it kind of incriminates the
people that you're bribing, right because you could be like, well,
I spent three hundred thousand dollars bribing the Chicago p D.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, which of course they wouldn't want you to do obviously. Well,
Justice Holmes said that I'm not saying this is a
logical conclusion that you could deduct your illegal expenses quote,
but it will be time enough to consider the question
when a taxpayer has the temerity to raise it. So
he's like, look, if somebody wants to come in here
and say, hey, I made illegal bribes and I should

(12:37):
be able to deduct those. We'll talk about it, then we'll.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Cross that bridge. When someone sets it on fire, I.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Kind of feel like it's not going to happen, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
You know, maybe there's someone out there right now trying
to figure out their case.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
It could be. I mean, it still says in the
IRS tax Code today that quote income from illegal activities,
which would include things like dealing drugs or accepting bribes,
must be included in the declaration of one's income, and
Steve Hargreaves of CCEN in Business wrote in twenty thirteen quote,
not surprisingly few criminals declare their loot, but he said

(13:11):
that some do. I was really surprised by. I'm like,
who would, because that is self incrimination. And he was
writing that usually it's when people feel like they're about
to get caught for their crimes and they don't want
a tax evasion charge slapped on top of whatever charges
they're already facing, so they'll be like, let me declare
this real quick. I see, so they at least I

(13:32):
only go to jail for the crime and.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Not I mean, do they file back taxes like every
year they've made illegal money or whatever. Also, interestingly, when
it came out that this house had a deed in
may Capone's name, insurance companies pulled their policy. Oh yeah,
they said, did not matter which copone owned this home.
It was just ensuring it was way too risky.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, I don't care if it's may Capone. You still
get end up with a bunch of bullet holes in
your windows. That can for that, and also not mention alls.
You probably don't want to ensure a house that has
known illegal activities going on in.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
It really true anyway. In nineteen twenty seven, just before
al moved to Miami, President Coolidge had appointed a new
US attorney in Chicago named George Emerson Q. Johnson, who
was like a tall, wiry, rumpled old man who Lawrence
Bergreen says, quote might have been mistaken for a poet,
but perhaps a drama critic, that is until he opened

(14:25):
his mouth. Because this guy was a real nerd for
the justice system. US attorney's made about ten thousand dollars
a year in that era, which is close to one
hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year today, But
that was nothing compared to what a corrupt official could
bring in in bribes of course, real for real, So
it took a real nerd for justice to resist corruption,

(14:46):
like a real mister Smith goes to Washington.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, totally right, Like you know, the whole amount of
money could buy me off. I'm here for lady liberty,
Lady liberty. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh. Also side note, the Q stood for nothing. Oh,
it was just to stand out from other George Johnson
South there, Wow, Peter Q.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Parkers seven, George Emerson Johnson's in the phone book, throw
a Q in there, s Q stand up.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
But anyway, all that to say a case was being
built against Capone without his knowledge for years.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, all the background, they're just like watching his I mean,
like surely Capone knows the FBI's watching him, right, all
the mobsters did. That's why they were so careful, and
that why they were always dropping bribes. But they were
like they I think that's the thing they weren't expecting, Like,
you know, he's been real careful about his murders and
his bootlegging and his drugs and all that stuff. He's

(15:39):
not paying attention the accounting, right, the boring.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Park which is why it was a pretty smart angle. Yeah,
for Mabel to take yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Why you've got people like elliottness and it was the
Treasury Department that ended up taking him down. Now, obviously
we're really trying to stay focused, y'all know, on on
the romance side of al Capone's life here and do
other people have done longer and better research series on
al Capone's crimes?

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Many many his life's monster, right.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
So we're just dropping a little bit of info to
sort of set up what he and his family ended
up doing. But one of the big ones was on
February fourteenth of nineteen twenty nine, when al Capone executed
the Saint Valentine's Day massacre, or well, al Capone almost
definitely executed this. Nobody was ever officially convicted, and it's

(16:30):
an elaborate story, but basically, in Chicago, seven men who
were working for Capone's rival, Bugs Moran, were executed by
four guys, two of which were dressed as police officers.
So there was a whole thing for a while where
people were like, oh, the cops did it, you know
they were, but they were not. Actually, I mean, we
don't know who they were, but the ideas that the

(16:51):
don't know they were not cops. Again, big long story.
I'm not going to speculate on it right here because
there's way more evidence than I have handy. But at
the time Capone had been chilling in Miami with his family.
Like the night that this happened, they were having a
little dinner party. Capone had not had contact with anyone
in Chicago for days beforehand, like suspiciously little contact. He

(17:16):
was always talking to Chicago, but the four or five
days before this happened, just no communications. But that night, yeah,
they were holding a dinner party. Al was walking Sonny around,
introducing him to all his new Miami friends. May was
refilling drinks. She's socializing. Real just casual, fancy dinner party stuff. Now,

(17:37):
up to this point in Chicago, public opinion of Al
Capone was actually really not that bad. He was mostly
known as a bootlegger, and people kind of respected alcohol
smugglers because almost everyone wanted to drink.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
That's what's so funny about prohibition. How hugely monumental of
a failure it was.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, a lot of ways, Yeah, and most people were
on the on the bootlegger's side to some degree, and
as long as they didn't know, you know what else,
they were doing. They were like, oh, they're just running gin.
I'm not worried about al Capone. He's just bringing me
the booze that I sneak in the speakeasy. Yeah. But
once the Saint Valentine's Day massacre happened and his name

(18:20):
was attached to it, and actually pictures of the crime
scene were leaked, so the public saw it this really
horrible carnage, and then his public image took a turn
for the worse. Within days, al Capone was called to
Chicago to testify, and again a lot more crime history
stuff happening there where he actually managed to get out

(18:41):
of it and weasel away from this with no charges.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
That's right, because yeah, I was not convicted for this crime,
but we do know they got him of it, and
we'll find out how right after this break.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Welcome back, you stool pigeons, all right.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
So al Capone was a criminal mastermind who just got
more cruel and violent as time went on. And we
talked about this a little bit before, but modern scholars
think this really had a lot to do with his
undiagnosed syphilis, which can affect the mind and it makes
people act very differently sometimes violently.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Oh yeah, whole personality changes that straight.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, but very very long story short. Al's crimes continued
until he was arrested in nineteen thirty one and indicted
for tax evasion. At the beginning of the episode, we
took that quick fling with history to talk about the
Revenue Act of nineteen twenty one stated that you had
to declare your income, even for illegal activities. So while

(19:36):
Capone managed to dodge every other accusation thrown at him,
including this violent massacre that he was almost definitely orchestrated,
this was their angle to get him off the streets
and it worked.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah. Chicago Magazine reports that Al and May's lavish lifestyle
helped prosecutors put them away, particularly Al's insatiable appetite for food.
They were spending upwards of one thousand dollars a week
on groceries, and this was more than most depression era
families spent in a year.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Good God, I can't even just you know, you got it.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
I'm imagining just buffet tables every night, paste, lobster, lobster.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, it must be really expensive food. Oh yeah, one
thousand dollars a week in nineteen thirty one.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh my god, Jesus, forget it.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
You're buying too much.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Right, And it's not just him, of course, he's hosting
big parties all the time. He's wining and dining the
you know, politicians and stuff, because he was very into
Miami politics as well as a mobster. All this money
spending on food was a big part of the evidence
that we used against him to prove that he was
making way more money than he claimed. A Capone was

(20:48):
convicted and he was sentenced to eleven years in prison,
And first he was sent to Atlanta. Now he was
officially diagnosed with syphilis here during a medical inspection, and
he was also suffering from cocaine withdrawal because he had
been a huge cocaine user. It actually gave him a
perforated septum, which would cause him some serious health problems

(21:09):
later on. He was only allowed three visitors at prison,
and of course that was his wife, May, his son Sonny,
and Al's own mother who was allowed to come see
him as well. While he was in the Atlanta prison,
he was actually really weak. He was having a hard
time standing up for himself. He was getting bullied a
lot because his health had taken such a bad turn,

(21:30):
and other groups of prisoners started picking up and defending
him kind of randomly, and he started to get some
pretty nice accommodations too. His room got upgraded, he got
a nicer bed with a more comfortable mattress, like all
these kind of suspicious things that made some accusations come
out that he was getting special treatment. Now there was
never any evidence brought forth that this was officially happening,

(21:54):
but it was enough to get him transferred out of
Atlanta to Alcatraz. And here, of course he's on an island.
He's on the rock with Sean Connery. Uh, and he
is no longer allowed visitors. But due to good behavior,
he was allowed to play the banjo in the Alcatraz
prison band. They were called the Rock Islanders, and they

(22:17):
played every Sunday for other inmates. I would love to
go see the Rock Island, you know, like.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Travel. Yeah, there we go play, But you just go
see a concert of the rock on Rock Islanders concert
at little striped out fit to wear.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
My guess is they didn't take uh you know, it
wasn't a public concert. Probably couldn't buy tickets. My second
guess is they're probably okay.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
I mean, how good could they be.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I don't know. I mean I guess they don't have
you know, all they can do is practice, So maybe
they're great and they don't have day job.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Story only allowed to play it when they're playing concert
and they're terrible.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Actually. So one of the letters Al wrote home to
his son, he talked about how he worked. Some days
he was he would stitch up boots. That was his job,
and he was supposed to be really good at it,
and he had days off. And he said, from up
until three pm, I'm they let me play the banjo,
and from three pm onto the evening, I'm just writing songs. Wow. Yeah,

(23:17):
so he might have plenty of time with his music artist. Yeah.
And Al loved music. He was actually really good with music.
He'd grown up in this Italian family. They loved music.
It was a big part of his life. And one
day he passed a piece of paper with the lyrics
of a song to a priest friend of his. You know,
take these out, I want someone to have them. So

(23:39):
let's go down to poetry Corner for a selection from
Capone's song Madonna Mia.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
In a quaint Italian garden, while the stars were all aglow.
Once I heard a lover singing to the one that
he loved. So in that quaint Italian garden, neath the
starry sky above.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Every night he'd serenade her with his tender song of love.
Once again, I see that garden.

Speaker 5 (24:06):
Many years have hurried by, I can see that sweet Madonna.
There's a tear drop in her eye for her soldier
has departed, left his loved one.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
With a sigh, she.

Speaker 5 (24:17):
Said, I will wait forever, as he sang this.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Last goodbye, kind of beautiful, lovely.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
It was reported for a while that al Capone wrote
this song as a tribute to May, and it might
have been a tribute to her, but The Boston Globe
reported in twenty eighteen that he actually did copy the
lyrics out of a song book, like this was a
song that had been written probably a few years earlier,
and we don't know that al ever claimed it as
his own song, Like it's not like he signed it

(24:47):
was like, hey, this, take this song out there and
tell everybody you what a musical genius I am. You know,
my opus. Yeah, But when this slip of paper made
it to an auction in the early two thirds, that
was definitely the story. They were like al Capone song
he wrote for his wife doy Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, they got thousands of thousands more dollars then,
just like al Capelle wrote this copy of this out of.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Them actually, so in nineteen ninety nine, according to Boston Globe,
this song went on sale for forty five thousand dollars.
They expected that that's what it would fetch, but it
did not sell. It was returned to the consigner apparently,
and then later it was sold to a private collector.

(25:31):
That was in two thousand and nine. Now Wikipedia suggests
that this song was put up for sale for sixty
five thousand dollars, but I don't know if that's what
they paid for it or not. But Rich Larson with
al caponefanclub dot Com had the sheet music and more
than seventy years later, he described it as a tear jerker,
and he formed a group of musicians and a vocalist

(25:52):
to record the song, and then he released it on
CD in two thousand and nine. So you can hear it.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Oh that's cool.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, the Modonomia song. But it's had quite a journey.
Fact of the matter is he did not write the
lyrics himself, but he probably did arrange this musical version
of it because he was he was able to compose.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Like a Robert Burns.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, kind of like that in jail. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Now, May Capone kept out of the public. She only
resurfaced periodically to defend Al's character from rumors.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Right, and we should say not in any lengthy interviews
or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
But once it was like even reported that she had
filed to divorce him, and she shot that down real hard.
Hell no, I did not. The press like hounded her
all the time, especially as Al's health began to deteriorate,
but she always gave short positive answers. She never let
on that he was actually getting sicker all the time
from syphilis. And after al was committed to a prison

(26:49):
hospital and rumors were leaked to the press, May wrote
to the warden requesting that she be able to visit him,
which the warden denied, and eventually May and the rest
of Alice Fan repleading for his release because his condition
had gotten so bad. Yeah, they were like, please let
us just care for him at home or something.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
It was really bad, and of course prison healthcare was awful.
It was reported that they were doing some experiments with
syphilis on him, Like they had these experimental treatments that
are really nasty, very low chance of success. So he
was just getting really rough treatment. Would she would call,
like there'd be a rumor in the press, like al

(27:28):
Capone's in the medical hospital, and they would have to
call them up, send a telegram rather and say what's
going on? Can I come see him? And they're like, nah, nah,
he's fine, don't worry about it. So it was really rough,
and he was only getting worse. He suffered at one
point what a prison health report called quote a sudden
disturbance of consciousness, described as a fainting attack or possibly

(27:51):
a hysterical episode. That was in nineteen thirty eight, and
this is followed by an epileptic fit over the next
few days. After that, he got very quiet and distant,
like clearly his mind was changing. And he recovered to
the point that he felt well and he actually had
a really positive mood, but he had a harder time concentrating,
he had a harder time moving around on his own.

(28:13):
And they also reported that he quote here's God and
the angels verbally reply to prayers. But al Capone himself
even admitted to the doctors that these are probably hallucinations.
He just liked hearing them. I think it's so interesting.
You're like, I know, I'm hallucinating, but it's nice. It's
not like they're not freaking me out.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
I mean, that was one of the things that was
so like arresting. I guess about Beautiful Mind. That movie
Mind was how lonely he was without his I mean
his I mean his hallucinations, spoiling his friends. Sorry, it's
a very old movie, so get it together. It came
like twenty years ago, but you know, it was just

(28:52):
like after we you know, they put him on meds
to help him, and he was helped by them, but
he was hella lonely and he was like one of
his friends back. It's just a I never would have
thought about it that way, because a lot of ways
they portray schizophrenia, especially is that it's a torment, you
know what I mean, Like they're like, I'm hearing these
voices and they're freaking me out, and they're saying mean
things and whatever. But it had never been presented to

(29:13):
me until that movie that they might be a comfort
and a friend and like someone you would miss, right.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
And like kind of the opposite. Sometimes I think about, like,
how wonderful would it be if I found out that
some of my friends were actually just hallucinations and I
could pop some pills and they would just go away?
Oh my god, ice cold, Like I just take these
once a day and you're gone. Damn.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Friends are going to start texting like.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Hey, who is it?

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Who are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Which? Which one of you is it?

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Listen if you listen to the show, it's not you.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
How about that.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
I'll tell you this. If you ask me, I'll give
you the honest answer.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Oh yeah, well you really.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, I'll tell you if it was you. Yeah, is
it me? No?

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Okay, I had to ask.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Okay. So Capone's family was finally allowed to visit him
again at Alcatraz, but the first time he got to
see Sonny was in five years. So he had seen
him when he was fourteen and then didn't see him
again until he was nineteen years old. So this, you know,
his son walks in and he's like six foot two,

(30:27):
he's a you know, it's nineteen thirty eight. Is a
grown man for nineteen years old. Back then, nineteen was
like you had two houses, and you were all it's
almost time to retire from your.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Job done at the salt factory or whatever, and yeah,
I mean Al everything else notwithstanding great dad, Apparently I
loved his kid a lot, and he and Sonny had
kept a close relationship through letters during his time at Alcatraz,
so even when he wasn't present present, he still tried
to keep a relationship going. And Al was always intent

(30:59):
on not involved Sonny in the mob. Once when he
was working in Chicago, Al reportedly told a friend quote,
I don't want to die shot in the street. I've
got a boy. I love that kid.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
And then when Sonny was applying to schools, he listed
his father's occupation as retired and just kind of hoped
the name wouldn't come up. Capone unrelated to that other copone? Right, Yeah,
I wonder if that's like, how you know, I don't
know their names, Britney Schwarzenegger is trying to go to school.
It's just like an unrelated Schwartzenegger, just another crazy.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Common names.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
And while in Alcatraz, one of Al's letters to Sonny
read quote, well, heart of mine, sure hope things come
our way for next year. Then I'll be there in
your arms and maybe that will sure be a happy
feeling for May and you, well, Sonny, keep up your
chin and don't worry about your dear dad.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
So you know, he didn't want to involve his son
in crime. And it's almost that sort of like, I'm
doing this so you don't have to. And I see
him like and there's a really dark moment in al
Capone's life. It's in the movie The Untouchables, but it's
like way scaled down from what it was where al
Capone took a baseball bat to a couple of guys.

(32:15):
It's really brutal. And I'm, you know, picturing him in
this room, like I'm doing this for my son, that kid,
you know, so he doesn't have to. I my hands
looked like this, so his.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Could look like that, you know, Like, oh my god,
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
The sentiment you want, you know what I mean, Like
it's not as sweet as you think it is.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Al, I know, I mean, you can justify anything.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah. Well, after a few years in prison, Al's health
had gotten so bad that in nineteen thirty nine, he
was released from Alcatraz to a California correctional institute where
he would get more health focused care that may appealed
to the court at this point, and in November of
nineteen thirty nine, al Capone, one of the the most
notorious criminals in US history, was paroled and released after

(33:05):
only seven years, six months, and fifteen days behind bars.
It's one of those weird feelings in some of the
stories we do where I'm like.

Speaker 6 (33:14):
Oh, he got to go back to his wife because
he was so sick, and that's really sweet. And also,
you know, I just said, this guy severely destroyed three
people's bodies with a baseball bat.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Right and like a lot of people on his orders, Yeah,
a lot of horrible things.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
He should have probably spent the rest of his life
by bars.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Or at least the full eleven years.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
But also, like, is that not sort of an indictment
of the prison system or there is that you're like,
you're not taking good enough care of the people in
your custody that they're getting out. I mean, he's not
really getting away with anything because he's clearly not comfortable,
like he's not going back to like hang out with
all his friends in Abote great time. But still, I
mean it does say something about it and Shitaly, we

(33:58):
are treating our prisoners. He can't even keep them in jail.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
And there is something to be said about, like, you know,
we're going to let you go home to die in
your own bed, you know, like there's certainly a humaneness
to that that I think is important. But yeah, again,
larger conversation about what's the point of prison. Are we
doing it because we want vengeance and punishment or is
it meant to deter and rehabilitate blah blah.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Blah at all crazy, right, very complicated conversation at any rate.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Al Capone was so badly affected by the disease at
this point, not to mention his years of drug and
alcohol abuse, and also, of course the terrible healthcare he
did receive in prison that his brain had regressed to
that of a twelve year old, so May cared for
him personally at their home in Miami. In nineteen forty two,

(34:52):
al became one of the first people ever to be
treated for syphilis with penicillin. They's sort of known that
it would work, and there had been experiments with mold
growth treating disease for a couple of decades now, but
the Army had just started mass producing it in a
way that it could be taken specifically for syphilist now
one of the first guys to take it.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
I didn't realize it was so recent in his say
that we were yestributing penicillin's.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Early nineteen forties. So al Capone starts taking penicillin. It
wasn't going to undo the damage that had already been done,
but it did seem to stop the progression of the disease,
and it kept him alive for several more years.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
At this point, Sonny or Albert Junior, now had kids
of his own, and May and al visited them regularly.
Al delighted in spending time with his grandchildren, and the
FBI watched Sonny really close because they wanted to make
sure that he did not go into the family business.
But that was not ever really very likely because both
his parents had such an aversion to involving him and

(35:51):
all that right. An FBI reports said quote, it is
known that both al and May have made a determined
and conscientious effort throughout the life of the boy to
shield him from such influences that surrounded al And to
preclude any possibility of his falling into a life of crime.
It is a parent that may has exerted a great

(36:12):
deal of effort to see that Sonny led a clean life.
So Sonny was a used car salesman for a while,
but he quit when he found out that his boss
was manipulating the odometery. Wow, just like Matilda's dad, mister
Worm would, right.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
I think that's funny it Sonny like sees this one
crime happening and he's like, no, nope, I'm out. I'm
not doing that, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I mean he might have been extra for himself, not
just because of his parents, but kind of because of
his parents. I don't want to deal with all that. Yeah,
I cannot even next to a crime because my name
is Capone. So there's no way that I won't be
implicated in some way, shape or form. Like there's stereotypes
about our I guess, preconceived notions about who I might be,

(36:58):
and so.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
I have to be extra knowing full well that he's
got the FBI watching him all the time too, and surely,
you know, maybe he is trying to protect his boss.
He's like, do you know who I am and who's
watching me?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
You should not be manipulating these daughters.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Right, the FBI is like, we didn't have time for that.
We used car salesman as like knocking his price up
a thousand bucks whatever.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
I did love because we you know, we have such
a stereotype of used car salesman all being like total
lemon sellars or whatever. That's funny. He's like, I'm going
to lead a clean life by selling used cars.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
And the FBI knew that May was getting six hundred
dollars every week just a check showed up in the mail,
and that seemed to be her only source of income.
Very likely that that was hush money from the MOP, right,
I mean, obviously they're gonna want to throw a little
money because it's Al Capone, right, like you were, you
were the guy around here, so out of respect, little money, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
But also I bet they were also like, well we got
to pinch it off the Why sure. I mean, you know,
if you go to jail and stuff like, you can't
just leave the ladies out to drive.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Got to take care of family.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
You're in the family here, the kids.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Well, the mob had restructured quite a bit since Capone
was incarcerated, but he still knew a lot about their operations,
and this made things a lot harder for May because
as al was getting sicker, he became prone to talking
to himself or invisible guests at their home. So, according
to the Vintage News dot Com, May had to be

(38:28):
extra careful to keep him away from the press because
if he, you know, said something he shouldn't have quote
old friends might have had to pay him a visit
and silence him for good. So not only has she
taken care of him, she's also like keeping him from
getting himself.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Killed right by a guy who's definitely going to cry
a single tear before he pulls the tiger those why
do you make me do this?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Like what I'm trying to take of, There's like a
movie or something where someone's protecting someone they love who has,
you know, a mental disability of some sort, and they're like,
I got, I'm working so hard to keep you from
doing something? What is that movie work? It's so hard
to keep you from getting yourself killed? Right? Oh my god,
I know what I'm thinking of? What Ozark?

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Oh of course, Oh my god, that was very upsetting. Well, anyway,
that whole storyline, if you want to feel it's good,
it's good.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
It's so good and one of the best monologues on TV.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
I'll just say that the actor is amazing.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, he's so good, all right. Anyway, anyway, no spoiling,
so Alice continuing to get worse and worse. May is
trying desperately to take care of him, and she did
make sure that he got the best medical care possible,
and she made sure that he was comfortable in their
Miami home. But Al suffered a stroke in January of
nineteen forty seven, and shortly after contracted pneumonia. On January

(39:55):
twenty fifth, nineteen forty seven, Al Capone died of cardiac arrest.
May was so devastated when they closed his eyes as
she collapsed, and she needed medical attention herself that night.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
But she and Sonny would live under Al's shadow for
many years to come. We'll take a quick break, here's
some fine words from our sponsors, and we'll come back
and talk all about that right after this. Welcome back, everybody.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
So May had loved Al so much and seemed to
be focused on his well being for most of his life. Yeah,
their granddaughter once said, quote, it's as if the house
died when he did. May was a very devoted grandmother.
She spent most of her time with Sonny, his wife
and their children, but she was always really lonely and sad,
and she reportedly never slept in their bedroom again.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
She told her grandchildren quote, I had such happy times
there with Papa, and he's not there, and I don't
want to go into that room anymore. Oh my god,
takes my heart.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
It does like that. It's so weird to be like,
oh my god, al Capone, let's breaking my heart here.
But love is love, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
I mean, I think that's what I like about this
show is that, you know, as terrible as some of
the people that we've covered have been, yeah, the emotion
is still so real and it's so human. Yeah, and
it is still romantic at times. I mean not Carl Tandler,
but like a lot of them, it's just like, oh,
they fell in love. Look a normal person, but they

(41:27):
just chose a really shitty way to act to other people.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
I guess, Yeah, And it just shows to me that
it's like there's like, oh, I wish we could stop
being so horrible. And it's such a like hippy hippy
thing to say, but I truly wish we could stop
being so horrible each other, because everybody wants the same thing, right,
Like if you're a murderer, a thief or a you know,
if you're a politician, or you're just a good old,

(41:52):
you know, normal ass person living a good life, like
you just want to be loved and love somebody, right.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, it's true everybody. Well, may became increasingly pious. Aside
from seeing her family, she basically only left home to
attend Mass, and she was also a diligent observer of
Omertach the mafia code, where you don't talk to nobody
about nothing else.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, you keep your mouth, just keep your mouth shut.
You don't say nothing, talk about the business.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
According to burg Green quote, not once did she yield
to the temptation to give an interview in defense of
her husband.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Must have been so hard to because we know she
loved him so much and she really hated the attacks
on his character.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
I mean, then the fact that she would come out
and be like, I'm not divorcing him. Yeah, got that idea.
That shit ain't real, like h it tells you. Yeah,
she was clearly fiercely protective of him in a lot
of ways.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
But we also learned in the first episode about how
that backfired the one time that she did come out
because her son, the Sonny, was getting bullied in school
after al you know, had gotten arrested for something else
at some point, and she was like, look, can everybody
just keep our names out of the press? Al Capone
he's not so bad blah blah blah, and my son's
getting bullied, and the press turned it into al Capone's

(43:05):
wife says his behavior is so bad that her son
is is taking the blame for it, you know, so
it ended up looking bad. So she probably knows too.
There's no winning.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
There's a yeah, I can't say the right thing, yeah,
at any at any point.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
And that's still true. I mean you get all the
time we're seeing headlines manipulated to make something look more
absurd than.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
It is, especially if you're on the defense. Yeah, Like
if you're a the defense side, there's I mean, it's
like impossible to sound like you're not trying to cover
your ass or you're talking shit or justifying or whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, but one particular public event did get May and
Sonny all fired up, and that is going to give
us a great, big crossover Alert no one of our
previous episodes is coming in hot, because in nineteen fifty nine,
a TV studio made a show about Elliot Ness and

(43:57):
his incorruptible band of prohibision bureau agents who helped take
down Capone. These men had been called the Untouchables by
the press, and that is what the title of this
four season TV series was called. And of course we
know the movie in nineteen eighty seven with Kevin Costner,
also The Untouchables. But this TV show was greenlit and

(44:17):
produced by none other. And if you know the show, well,
you might already know because we talked about it in
their episode by our old friends lucieale Ball and Desi Arnez.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, The Untouchables was one of the big, huge shows
that made Desilu one of the biggest TV studios in
the country. Lucy green lit the show herself, Desi produced it.
Desilu Productions made a two part pilot based on elliot
Ness's memoir, and this pilot ended with Capone's conviction, so

(44:50):
that the beginning of the show was all about them
going after al Capone. Those two episodes aired on CBS.
CBS declined to pick up the show. Afterwards and ended
up running it for four years. And The Untouchables is
basically the predecessor to countless cop dramas that we see
on TV today. Right, once again, Desi Arnez set in

(45:13):
the tone for TV for a century, And.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Of course cop dramas are the predecessor to my favorite
hit TOOM for the nine nine. So thank you, Desia.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Currently in her fourteenth re watch of Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
I already did Parks and rec and the Good Place,
you know, so it's time to go back.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, I know. Well, it's not just that this show
caught the attention of May and Sonny. Desi Yarnez actually
knew that he was going to get a phone call
about it because he had been childhood classmates with Sonny
Capona after al moved his family down to Miami. Sonny

(45:52):
and Desi Arnez were in the same grade school together
and they were actually really good friends. Oh now, they
hadn't seen each other in years, but Desi knew that
this series was going to bring Sonny out of the woodwork.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
So when the news broke that Desi Lou was adapting
Nessa's book into his show, long before they even finished production,
Sonny got in touch with Desi and said, quote why
you Why did you have to do it? Because he'd
always hoped that Elliott Ness's autobiography would just kind of
fizzle out. People don't like to read. You know, this
is not gonna be a problem. But this show brought

(46:27):
it to every house in America, and Desi made the
argument that if he had not produced the show, someone
else quote with less appreciation for the Capone family would
make the show. So he's kind of like, I'm the
best person to do this. It's gonna happen no matter what.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Right now.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
The call ended abruptly when Sonny, furious with Desi, said
I'm gonna sue you, and he hung up. Now, Desi
actually did handle the character of Capone with restraint. After this,
he kind of glossed over his brutality, right although it
was still a shockingly violent show for its time.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
That baseball scene, that baseball bat scene we talked about
earlier was cut, okay from it was in the script apparently,
and they ended up not using it. Now some people
say that never would have made it to air anyway,
But Desi Arnez had told Sonny in this phone call,
like look, I'll do my best to not make your
dad look too bad and he helped a little.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Okay, yeah, so it might have happened anyway, but it
might have yit Deasi. So Sonny and May did sue
Desilu and CBS for their depiction of al Capone. They
said it infringed on their privacy and it brought them
humiliation and shame, and Sonny said he even had to
move cities to protect his kids who were getting bullied
in school, kind of like Sonny himself had experienced. Right,

(47:41):
But the Chicago Circuit Court rejected the suit, and even
after going to the Supreme Court, it was rejected as
well because they decided that privacy rights don't extend to
the next of ken.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Wow. Yeah, so you.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Can say whatever you want about al Capone.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah? So is any TV show could come out and
talk about Yo Mama and say whatever they want and
you can't do nothing about it.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
That seems kind of weird because of where it bleeds
into your life.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, is kind of affect. They're like if they and
the show didn't depict May or Sonny, So they're like, so, hey,
we didn't say anything about you. I guess that makes sense,
you know, Yeah, I don't know. It's rocky for the
legal scholars, not for me. And it wasn't just the
Capones who were upset about this show either. Other Italian Americans,

(48:27):
including All Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra, called out the show
for promoting negative stereotypes. He's like, you.

Speaker 7 (48:34):
Can't say shit about Italians beautiful. We're just as good
as everybody else.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
So why I don't want.

Speaker 7 (48:45):
To see this TV shown because otherwise will come to
your house with the bat.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Frank Sinatra also very involved in the.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Mob, so I was just about to say, I mean,
it's not like his mop. Your friends were not like, hey, Frank, yeah,
you gotta say, you gotta get out there. You have
the face of the mob.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Basically, well, Italian American groups did organize protests and boycotts
for all being portrayed as criminals and mobsters. And I
mean this was a big problem on the show. Every
time there was like some low level henchmen, it was
always like Johnny Tucci or you know Barbarrino Barbarelli, you
know whatever.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yes, Barbarino Barbarelli. Hey a great character.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
He beats Lasagna and I'm going to break your knees.
You know, they would do stuff like that, and I'm
mocking them for doing it, not saying that that's what
I would say now.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
And it makes sense because we talked about in the
first episode with May and Al getting together, how much
Irish people, you know, they were kind of it's that racism,
things like how much closer you are to whiteness is
you're closer to power. So they'd be like, I'm trying
to say, Italian people ain't white, you know, And so
there was like a lot of that going on. Yeah,
at this time.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
And as a person with a lot of Italian background
in my own family who very white myself, I am
a very white person. That's so insane to me. I mean,
it's it's ridiculous, right.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
And also Irish you have a.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
B oh yeah, my mom's got a ton of Irish
blood too, So yeah, I'm like, yeah, man, maybe I
wouldn't do so well in the nineteen thirties. That's sure
that any of us do so well in the nineteen thirties.
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
None of us were made for the nineteen thirties, and
that's why we're here today.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, but after four days of picketing by these Italian
American groups. The main sponsor of the show, Ellen m Cigarettes,
said all right, we're going to drop our sponsorship. We
hear you. You know, we're going to change our Facebook
Facebook profile picture to an Italian flag. You know, we're
all going to be seen eating stromboli out in public.

(50:47):
You know, we're doing our part sponsorship. But this did
work because after this, Desi Arnez and ABC announced a
three point manifesto for the show moving forward and for
I think all ABC shows. The first was that there
would be no more fictional hoodlums with Italian names in
future productions, no more PiZZ Lasagna breaking the jobs. Right,

(51:08):
if it wasn't a real historical person, they weren't going
to make one.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Up, okay.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Number two was that more attention would be paid to
the character of Rico Rossi, who was elliot Ness's right
hand man, so he was one of the law enforcers,
and they were like, let's make him more of a hero.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Because I'm assuming he's Italian. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
And number three, an emphasis would be given to the
quote formidable influence of Italian American officials in reducing crime
and focus on the quote great contributions made to American
culture by Americans of Italian descent. So it was very
much like that sort of I don't know, I feel
like we've seen it in recent years in media with

(51:48):
black culture, especially where they're like, okay, all right, we
have been super racist. We're going to try and do
better and focus on a few things, and you know,
some progress.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
I'm a little jealous that only took four days of picketing.
I mean, you know that wouldn't work well.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Back then. The corporations had not yet learned how to
dodge that kind of stuff, so they had to be
a little more responsive to protests because you know, they
hadn't completely rewritten the laws in their favor yet. Right,
But that this is probably what made him start working
on Oh.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Surely, I guess maybe some pencil necks in here.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Now, overall, as other women of her era were stepping
up and being more vocal, May was looking for anonymity
in the fight against prohibition. She aggressively stayed out of it,
probably because her husband had profited from the laws of right.
Had he to say, and I don't really want you
to stop prohibition because it's been really a.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Boon for me, or even if she did, she might
get some side eyes like, oh, yeah, you always had
a real problem with illegal booze, didn't she?

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Sure, although that I feel like that would make it
more credible. Even though I have profited off the prohibition law,
I think we should all get rid of it.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
I have all the money I need, so let's stop.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Now that I'm done making money. But it was report
that she did want the law repealed because many mothers
of the time did not want their sons growing up
quote in the hip flask speakeasy atmosphere that polluted their
own youth.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Sure that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
So yeah, she reportedly was like, I'm good with it
going away. But she just never took a public stance
on the matter. And while other mob wives had written
books about their wild lives, you know, getting on that
memoir train, may never wrote or published anything. She allegedly
even burned all of her diaries and the love letters
al sent her from prison so that no one could

(53:32):
read them after her death.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Wow, that's that takes. That takes something I don't have
because I'm sentimental, you know, I know, I agree, I
got these love letters. These will outlast me. Seriously, what
if I need to read them when I'm lonely in
eighty six years old? Yact what I.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Was about to say, It seems like something you would
more have put in your will, like, Sonny, make sure
you burn all my shit after I've bead But she's like,
I'm gonna do it so that I see that it
was done. Yeah, Like that's kind of a sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Well, also, you look at someone who grew up in
the early twentieth century America, she's probably not very sentimental.
It's probably used to things like being like, oh, this
journal my great great grandfather wrote, but I can't start
a fire for the soup tonight, so here it's kindling.
Now you know that's so true.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
I got there. I was thinking about that because there
so many of our stories are about letters getting lost
or aren't around anymore. They got burned or destroyed or whatever.
And I'm like, well, how could you you know? In
my mind, I'm like, how could you destroy a walk
Wootman letter to about or whatever. But at the time,
of course, you're cleaning out, you know, your grandma's apartment
or whatever, and it's stacked full of letters because there's

(54:39):
no phone calls, so you're just like, obviously, I'm gonna
burn this happy. These things are just like, hey bitch,
where's my shit?

Speaker 1 (54:45):
It doesn't matter for real.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
So yeah, anyway, so she burned all that shit, and
then she eventually sold the mansion. She moved to a
retirement home in Hollywood, Florida, where she lived until nineteen
eighty six, when she passed at eighty nine years old.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Well now, Sonny ended up changing his name to Albert
Francis Brown because, according to his lawyer, quote, he was
just sick and tired of fighting the name.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Can't believe.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah, it's true. I mean, he mostly was fine. He
did get arrested once for like really petty shoplifting, like
a pack of cigarettes or something, and they arrested him
and he was like, everybody steals a little something now,
and then I just yeah, right. But he did live
a quiet, law abiding life. He married three times, and

(55:32):
when he died in July of two thousand and four,
his wife America told a reporter quote, al Capone has
been dead a long long time. His son had nothing
to do with him. Let him rest in peace. For
crying out loud. He suffered enough in his life for
being who he was, So we can imagine that things
were kind of tough for Albert Francis Brown. You know,

(55:54):
how do you escape the shadow of al Capone?

Speaker 3 (55:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (55:58):
I mean this guy was, first of all, like Laurence Bergreen,
who wrote the book that we've been quoting for the
most part, said al Capone was quote the best known,
least understood gangster of all And that's got for someone
who's close to him. That's got to be so hard
because we probably understand this better today. The image of

(56:20):
you in the press is nothing like what you're like
to the people who know and love you. Right, And
that's not to say al Capone was not a monster.
He absolutely murdered a bunch of people, committed a bunch
of crimes drugs. You know, he was out there pushing
drugs on the street, like a lot of bad stuff
and a lot of bad things to happen to a
lot of you know, otherwise probably good people because of him.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
But also the picture they paint, the idea that everyone
who ever would come up and try to talk to
this kid about his dad is probably also totally inaccurate
or fictitious or you know, blown out of proportion.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Well, and Sonny doesn't know that. Al, he knows a
different al right. Like That's the other thing that I
find fascinating about our show sometimes is that when you're
focusing on these intimate lives and the internal feelings and
emotions of somebody, that's that multitude bring Walt Whitman again, right,
that's those multitudes where you're like, there's a soft person

(57:20):
in here. This is a guy who loved his kid,
and he probably played catch with him, and he was
super nice to his wife, and you know what I mean.
At home, right, he's a great guy. Right, and then
outside of the home, he's something else. But Sonny only
knew one side of him. He probably didn't want to
hear about the other sides at all, so he could
maintain his own memories and the person he respected and loved.

(57:44):
I mean, that's really difficult, I think for anyone with
a very infamous or famous relative, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
It's yeah, and it's so it's tough. We go back
to part one, We look at how tod al get
into this, because sometimes I'm like, Al, you could have
been a very successful businessman. He was really good at accounting,
He had like a legit job at a construction firm.
You know, he was raising his family. Everything was fine,
and then his dad died. He got depressed and Johnny
Torreo showed up and said, how'd you like to be

(58:12):
one of the richest people in the world. And money corrupts,
you know, and also, like, you know, his situation, while fine,
was probably not great, and he was depressed because his
dad died, and he was also taking care of his
mother because his older brothers weren't doing very well financially.
So all these factors come together and al Capone's like, okay,

(58:34):
I'll get into organized crime. Then undiagnosed syphilis case makes
him crazy and he turns into this violent monster. He
was a pretty violent guy to begin with, not saying
he wasn't, but they a lot of these scholars are
saying syphilis was a big part of why al Capone
was so brutal. Yeah, and so it's just this perfect

(58:56):
storm that creates this horrible person who probably otherwise to have
been a perfectly good person. And that's kind of sad.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Yeah, true, we just can't divorce people from their circumstance rights.
Because he came up in a violent world, right, So
that's another thing that makes it hard sometimes. Go again
with the prison conversation. Yeah, where you're like, obviously you're
hurting people, you're doing crazy things, you need to be
removed from society, Like you have proven that you're not
a reliable roommate for the rest of us. But there's

(59:24):
also so much to be said about if you grow
up in a violent place where that's your only chance
of surviving, you're stupid to not be a brutal person, right, Like,
it's not smart. Yeah, it's not a survival instinct. We
as humans are trying to survive. So anyway, it's just
one of those things that makes it hard to Yeah,
because humans are very complicated. We don't have one thing.

(59:45):
We're not all malice, we're not all good, you know.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah, And you look at another very common denominator in
most crime activity in this country. He grew up in
a very poor neighborhood, but an under certain neighborhood at least,
you know, or is full of Italian Americans who are
very looked down on. They probably had a hard time
getting out of that neighborhood, didn't have a lot of
opportunities because of racism and what happens then a group

(01:00:12):
of people go to all the teenagers and say, hey,
why don't you come work for me. You can make
some money, Yeah, have some fun and you can go
spend it down at the five and dime, but you
can give your mom some of it and she can
make a good dinner tonight. Like what attempting opportunity that
grown ass criminals are making to young men, you know,
who are not only impressionable, but kind of desperate for

(01:00:34):
a something to do and be something to make their
lives better. Yeah, So, like you said, of course he
grew up ready to be a criminal. That was normal
to him. So not to say that plenty of kids
in that neighborhood didn't grow up to be criminals. And
there's not a choice at a certain point you make
that you're responsible for, because there is. But I don't know,

(01:00:57):
we just we have such a hard time looking at
the circumstances that you enterate crime in here. We're so
focused on what we do after Yeah, crime that uh
that we were not We're really not good at preventing it.
We really think that oh, if we scare people with
the punishments enough, they just won't do it. Like people
aren't doing it because they think they can get away

(01:01:19):
with it, or they just want to because it's fun.
They're doing it because they kind of have to, or
they see it as their only opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, exactly, And like well even experts like recently, not
that recently even came out and said, yeah, crime does pay,
but like, oh fucking does, and a lot of people
don't get caught, you know, or especially if you're freaking
al Capone and you got all the cops on in
politicians and you locket, how can you ever feel fear

(01:01:45):
of that retribution? You know, like there's nothing anyway, We're
bad at prevention because it's not sexy. But but it
is annoying the conversation because you're like, I'd rather know
that you tried really hard to keep someone from becoming
a criminal and then say, well, they chose it anyway,
and now we can react to that that choice. But

(01:02:07):
if I know, wow, you came from a place where
like literally no one gave a shit about you, so
you started doing bad things. It's like, well, what did
you expect?

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Anyway, But I do feel sorry for Sonny that he was,
you know, having he was trying so hard not to
be his father, and he is still associated that he
had to change his name. That kind of sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
There are a lot of Capone descendants out there somewhere,
but again probably last name Brown.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Oh wait a minute, could it be?

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Could it be you're the descendant of the Earl of
Rochester and al Capone Dudley?

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Than it could be. Maybe that's it. On one side,
we got Dudley maybe sleeping with the Queen, the Virgin
Queen Man. So you're on the other side we got
Copones speculation station.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
The blood in your veins is the air to the
throne of England and also the air to the Chicago
crime outfit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
All right, either one of y'all that want to get
in touch with my just Desserts.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
You would be either very good or very bad at
both of those jobs, because part of me thinks you
would bring an organizational mindset, an administrative mindset that they've
probably been lacking for a long time, and a humility
that they could probably stand.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
To have to the crime to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
The Royal family and the Chicago crime outfit. I see,
And part of me thinks you would just hate it
so much. Oh, you'd be too nice. You'd be too sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
I would not like it. I would not like it.
It would have to be a sitcom situation where I
come in and I'm really sweet and it changes everyone's
entire personalities, which is not realistic.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
So HBO, Apple TV. If you want the next Ted
Lasso on your hands, right here, it's where a podcaster
from America ends up the Queen of England and head
of the Chicago crime outfit. Look, I'll watch it. I'm
gonna watch every episode.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
I'll tell you right now to go to that blue
grotto my Euros.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Look, let's do it. I'm ready. I'm ready. Call us up.
All right, don't know how to get in touch with us?

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Right and whatever you're called? Now, get on, get on
the horn.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
It's time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
We'll write this one on spec.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
You can reach out to us and tell us that
you're ready to sign us for a TV show by
writing the ridict Romance at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
That's right, or reach out on Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Booth.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
And I'm at Oh great, It's Eli.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
And the show is at ridict Romance.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Thanks y'all so much for sticking with us during this
busy time of the year. We should be all back
to it now and we're so excited to be back
in your ears again.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
And we will see you soon for another great episode
of Adigulous one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Now we'll see then, Love you bye solo friends, just
time to go. Thanks for listening to our show. Tell
your friends, neighbors, uncles, and dance to listen to our
show Ridiculous Well Dance

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
M