September 6, 2025 • 27 mins
💰 From Brooklyn street thug to Chicago's $100 million crime lord—Al Capone rewrote the rules of organized crime during Prohibition. 🔫 The Valentine's Day Massacre, beer wars, and how "Scarface" turned bootlegging into America's deadliest business. 🏙️ Exclusive access to newly declassified Treasury files reveals: Capone's bribery network, political puppets, and how he controlled an entire city. 💀 From luxury hotels to Alcatraz—the tax evasion case that finally brought down America's most notorious gangster. ⚠️ Warning: Contains graphic details of mob violence and corruption. 😱
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
In the nineteen twenties, the sprawling, brawling, skyscraper studded city
of Chicago ruled the American heartland, and one man seemed
to rule Chicago, a racketeer, hemp bootlegger, and cold blooded
killer named Al Capone.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Capone ran things with an iron fist. He had so
much of the city locked up. You know, politicians, policemen.
Capone once said, you know, to him, anonymous politician was
a politician, a stay bought once you brought him.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
But running Chicago took more than bribes.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Capone was a warrior. He had scurs on his face
to show his apprenticeship in that do or die environment.
He had what it took to create an empire.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Capone's empire lasted just six blood soaked years, but his
image as the ultimate American mobster still survives decades after
his days of gangland glory.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
With his larger than life persona, that hat, the cigar,
the scarface. He is the single icon of the American gangster.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
He's a role model to the criminal elements. Even today,
the young street gang guys. You know, if you Capone
is some sort of icon, they sort of view him
as you know, quote the original gangster.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Finally come to pass. And here's the proof.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
With ral Fons Capone alias with Terraul Brown alias the
big Shot.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Has met the enemy and he is there. It won't
be long now before the world's most notorious gangster will
be only an offensive memory. Four nine, teen thirty two,
Al Capone, on his way to serve an eleven year
sentence in a federal penitentiary, makes his final exit from Chicago,
the city he had once ruled as his own. Capone's
(02:12):
hectic departure marks a big change from his arrival just
over a decade earlier. Back then, Capone had slipped silently
into the city, unnoticed and unannounced. But back then he
wasn't the most notorious criminal in America. He was just
a young mobster from Brooklyn who was on the lamb.
(02:35):
Capone's troubles had started while he was working as a
bouncer for a Coney Island crime boss named Frankie Yale.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Capone began in a bar that Yale owned. It was
called the Harvard End. That was a big joke, you
see Yale Harvard. So this bar in Coney Island was
a diamond dance kind of place, probably institution was being
run out of there. Although it was just a one
(03:02):
story sort of shabby building.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yale very early recognized a very unique combination in Capone
of brains and bron and Capone moved up quite quickly
in the Yale organization.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
But Capone's rise almost ended when he made a pass
at a customer's sister, and at.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Some point what Capone supposedly said to her was honey,
you've got a really nice ass, and I mean that
as a compliment. Now what she thought about that is
lost to history. We do know that her brother, seeing
this big, hulking bouncer, took out a knife and cut
(03:47):
him three times, cut him bad.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Capone was left with permanent scars across his cheek and
a nickname he would come to despise.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
He became Scarface at that point, but I don't believe
that Scarface is a nickname that very many people ever
used in front of him. His real nickname was Snorky,
which apparently is Italian for elegant.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
But that elegance hit of vicious mean streak. By nineteen nineteen,
Capone had already killed at least one man in Brooklyn
and roughed up plenty of others. Word on the street
was that one of his victims was out for revenge.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
And supposedly Frankie Yale said to Capone, look, if this
guy's coming after if you stay around her, he's going
to find you. Look, you know, for your own good,
We're going to get you out of town. And they
made arrangements for Capone to pick up and moved to Chicaudo.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
In Chicago. Capone settled his wife May and son Al
Junior in a respectable house on a quiet street. Then
he went out to look up another gangster from Brooklyn,
Johnny Torrio. Torrio had headed west years earlier to work
for his uncle by marriage, Chicago crime lord Big Jim Colisimo.
(05:05):
Now Torio was Big Jim's trusted right hand man.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It was really Big Jim Calisimo's organization, but Torio was
pretty much running it even though Big Jim was the boss.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Torio soon became Capone's role model.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
There's no question that Al Capone's serious life of crime
begins with Johnny Torrio, but he was also a model
in that he dressed well, he had good manners, he
was a businessman, and that really appealed to Capone.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Torio and Capone would go on to form a partnership
that would shape the future of organized crime. It all
began on January seventeenth, nineteen twenty, when a new constitutional
amendment prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages went
into effect. Promised huge profits to those willing to flout
(06:03):
the law. Gangsters in Chicago and across the nation rushed
to grab their share. But when Torio and Capone urged
Colossimo to join in, Big Jim said no.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
He was quite content with what he was doing with
his vice operations of prostitution and gambling. He enjoyed his club.
He had recently divorced and married a singer named Dale Winter.
He was quite happy in his life, very content.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
Jim Colsimo, who they loved and revered, was going to
pass up on the opportunity to making millions of dollars
for the group. So in the gangster world, Big Jim's
Gotta go.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
On May eleventh, nineteen twenty, shortly after returning from his honeymoon,
Colossmo was lured to his own speakeasy for a meeting.
As he walked in, a lone gunman stepped out of
a phone booth and shot him twice in the head.
Some think the trigger man may have been Copone. There
(07:02):
is little doubt that Torio ordered the hit. Now, with
their former leader lying dead in a pool of his
own blood, the most profitable criminal gang in Chicago was
Theirs to run as they pleased, and no town in
America offered more opportunities to ambitious young crooks during those
(07:23):
years than Chicago.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Chica was a very corrupt place during provision, so it
was a wonderful breeding ground for organized crime and the
bootlegging that went on at the time. The politicians were
very corruptible, the police were very corruptible.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But you didn't have to be a greedy politician or
a crooked cop to find yourself rooting for the bootleggers.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
The real culprit here is prohibition, because it turned the
average joe into a lawbreaker. It made Capone and his
cronies the conduit for a product that had been legal
until yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
The city of Chicago, for example, it voted five to
one against prohibition. It was doomed before it even went
into law. All of the bootleggers, they were sort of
viewed as public benefactors. They were giving the people what
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Toreo and Capone were eager to do their part, and
to do it with the least amount of bloodshed. So
Torio came up with a plan to organize Chicago's rival
gangs into a cooperative cartel.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
He called the various major gang leaders together and said, guys,
here's what we need to do. To make this as
profitable as possible, we need to cooperate. We'll all have
our areas of the city. Will agree to stay in
our areas and not go in the other guys area
so that we can make maximum profit and they'll be
minimum strife.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Soon, Torio and Capone had most of Chicago's crooks working
together to arrange bribes and payoffs, share the expense of
acquiring their booz, and coordinate their deliveries. But one local boy,
Dean O'Banion, the North Side gang's volatile and charismatic leader,
wasn't too happy about sharing his business with two tough
(09:07):
guys from Brooklyn. A brewery he and Toreo owned together
gave O'Banion his chance to get rid of them once
and for all. In early nineteen twenty four, O'Banion offered
to sell his half of the brewery to Toreo.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
So Toreo, ever, the diplomatic statesman, sees this as a
wonderful opportunity, says yes, ranges the purchase from Obanion. They
agreed to meet on a certain night, you know, sort
of the transfer the possession, as you would do when
the closing on a house or something. And that night
the Chicago cops show up from the North Side and
raided the Sieben Brewery and arrest everybody in sight.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It was a setup. O'Banion knew about the bust ahead
of time and had lured Torio into a trap.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Toreo had one conviction over his head already. A second
conviction carried a mandatory jail sentence, so there was no
way too could avoid jail, and O'Banion knew that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
O'Banion also knew that, as a first offender, he would
walk away from the bust with nothing more than a fine.
But Torio's trial was delayed for months, giving him and
Capone plenty of time to plot their revenge. O'Banion's front
as a legitimate businessman made it surprisingly easy.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
In nineteen twenty two, he bought a half interest in
the William Schofield flower Shop at seven thirty eight North
State Street. Obanian would be in that flower shop nine
to five Monday to Friday, quite often preparing the flower
arrangements ringing up the sales himself.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
O'Banion naturally became the florist of choice for every mob
funeral in Chicago. So when a local gang boss died,
Torio and Capone knew their moment had arrived.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It was a perfect opportunity for Torio to strike because
O'Banion was expecting gangsters to be coming in and out
of the shop during that interval between the death and
the funeral, friends and enemies.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
On November tenth, nineteen twenty four, three of Torio and
Capone's men arrived at O'Banion's shop to pick up flowers
for the funeral. By the time they left, o'banian was
ready for a funeral of his own. But the bullets
that ended O'Banion's life also put an end to the
(11:27):
shaky peace between Chicago's gangs. The city's headline writers would
dub the bloodshed that followed the beer Wars.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
The violence started, and then it was always a killing,
revenge back and forth and it just continued. Its actually
a pretty sad state of affairs and earned Chicago Dot
notorious reputation, even though New York had far more organized crime.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
In fact, Lucky Luciano, Capone's old friend from New York,
came to visit and his comment was, this is a
real goddamn crazy place. Nobody's safe in the streets.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Not even Torio or Capone. On January twelfth, nineteen twenty five,
Capone barely escaped death when his car was riddled with bullets.
Twelve days later, two of Obanion's most loyal lieutenants caught
up with Torrio on a street corner.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
They were Heimiweiss and Bugs Moran Weiss, carrying a shotgun,
Miriam with a pistol. They converged on Torio and opened fire.
He ended up falling to the ground, with half of
his job blown away and his body torn by bullets.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
The story goes that they even ran up to him
and tried to shoot a final round in his head,
but the gun jammed.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Toreo survived, and that was when he called Capone to
his hospital bedside and he said, al it's yours. I
don't want it anymore. The syndicate that Torrio had started
in nineteen twenty was now the Capone organization.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
But it's during a hot gang warf so it's his
if he's man enough or strong enough to hold it
against opposition, and it's all about survival.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
To survive, Capone would have to win the beer wars,
but if he wanted his business to thrive, he had
to win the hearts of his potential customers.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
At the same time, he was a pretty crafty image builder.
It's no accident than when he was seen in public,
he always had the borcelina on at an angle, he
always had the same kind of stylish top coat, and
he also had this charismatic, larger than life persona. Capone
(13:44):
certainly became a celebrity and even beloved. I mean, you
would see him at baseball games almost throwing out the
first pitch. This is a pop culture figure already, and
he's got a lot more story to write.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
At that point, much of that story was being written
in blood, but Capone's fans didn't seem to mind the
corpses piling up in their streets, and the cops didn't
seem to care either.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
I think it showed just how bad things had gotten
and how brazen the gang elements were becoming. But there
was always somewhat of a feeling that well, as long
as it's only gangs being killed, who cares?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Capone cared. If he didn't watch out, the next corpse
found on the city's streets could very well be his.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think everybody sees out Capone as he's the big,
powerful boss. He's got the beautiful Cadillac, it's bulletproof, he's
got the fancy clothes. The truth is he's under constant threat.
Friends of his are being killed. People are being killed
all the time, back and forth. So it's not like
he was enjoying these times.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Capone was shot at in restaurants, he was shot out
on the street. There are rumors that someone tried to
poison his food. He had to have a food taster.
He became a prisoner of his own fancy suite at
the Hawthorne Hotel.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Capone paid for that fancy suite with the vast profits
rolling in from his illicit empire. But he knew his
enemies were eager to get their hands on that money
and on him, and none of those enemies frightened Kpone
more than the men who had tried to kill Johnny Toreo,
Bugs Moran and Heimi Weiss.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Jimi Weiss was a frightening sort of guy. You look
at pictures of him even today and day, I think
you could be afraid of Heimie Weiss. And Heimi Weiss
apparently was terminally ill and knew it, so he wasn't
afraid of anything. He wasn't afraid of dying.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
In September nineteen twenty six, Weiss and his men pulled
up in front of a cafe where Capone was having
coffee and demolished the entire block with my machine gun fire.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It was something that you'd see during wartime, and not
in one of America's biggest cities. Capone knew that Weiss
would stop at nothing to kill him, so therefore Weiss
had to go.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
He went on October eleventh, nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
Has a leary pad.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The but ending Weiss's life didn't bring an end to
Capone's troubles. Not while Bugs Moran was still alive.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Capone recognized that Moran, in his own way, was just
as adaptable, just as volatile, just as determined as Capone was.
There was no way that this could be resolved by
a peace treaty by talking to him. There was too
much at stake. It was a conflict that only could
(16:55):
be resolved by one of them being killed.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Capone decided to make his move in early nineteen twenty
nine when he learned that Moran was using a dingy
North Side garage to meet with his top lieutenants. But
the timing had to be just right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
They rented apartments across from the garage, one to the
north of the garage, one to the south of the garage,
where they could constantly see the front of their garage,
so they knew exactly who was coming and going at
all times.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
The lookouts kept watch for weeks. Then, on the morning
of February fourteenth, nineteen twenty nine, the signal finally came
bugs Moran had arrived for a meeting. Capone's waiting hit
men leapt into action to catch their victims off guard.
The killers disguised themselves as Chicago cops. The North Siders,
(17:58):
who had nothing to fear from the city corrupt and
ineffective police, were fooled completely.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Moran's guys just thought it was a routine bust, something
they've been through. They'd be out in no time. They
were ordered up against the wall, they were frisked, they
were relieved of their weapons.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The rest is history. The famous Saint Valentine's Day massacre.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The carefully planned operation had gone off without a hitch,
except for one thing. Bugs Moran wasn't among the dead.
The lookouts had fingered the wrong man.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Moran was late for his appointment at the garage that
morning because he had a barbershop appointment in the Parkway Hotel. Barbershop. Yeah,
and that haircut. However much he paid for it, it
was worth his life.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Moran was apparently frightened to death by this. One would
think he might say, well, you missed me, But he
also had, you know, a bunch of his men shop
from under him. And it had a demonstration of just
what Ng's copone would go to. So Moran becomes increasingly
a minor figure after that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
But intimidating Moran and eliminating his gang didn't make the
Saint Valentine's Day massacre a success for the embattled capone.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Even though the gangsters were still killing gangsters. This had
escalated to something that they couldn't even imagine. One of
the newspapers ran the headline that said ganglan graduates from
murder to massacre, and it just shocked I even to
this day, when I look at those photos, it is shocking.
It is shocking to see those photos.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Capone had won the Beer Wars, but would lose his
place as one of Chicago's most beloved figures.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
His organization flourished, but for Capone, we're talking Capone personally,
it was the end. He was booed at baseball games.
He was reviled, whereas previously he'd been viewed as like
a celebrity, like a monarch. The massacre really opened the
public eyes and showed them the dark side of the
(20:14):
whole bootleg industry that figuratively, if not literally, there was
blood mixed with that alcohol that they were drinking.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Capone tried to salvage his reputation by sponsoring a soup
kitchen on Chicago's skid Row and inviting newsreel cameras in
to record the opening.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I've been walking all around town. I've been seeing a
good many places to give the poorest supe I ever got,
what is it? The finest oop I ever take it
in my life and shift my rate gods.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
To this place.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I wouldn't we run out problem, sit out thirty five
shop safe fleet?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Wait?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
What't me?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But most of Capone's fans wouldn't be so easy to
win back. The outrage over the massacre even drove a
group of local reformers to brand Capone with a nickname
he hated almost as much as Scarface, Public Enemy number one.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Capone was the original public Enemy number one, and it
was an effort to embarrass him.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
And I think Capone, who saw himself as a very
benign presence in Chicago, was greatly offended that. You know,
after all I've done for you people, you're gonna call
me public Enemy number one.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But someone in Washington was about to do more than
just call Copone names. President Herbert Hoover was calling for
his head to deliver it. The FEDS devised a plan
to attack Copone on two fronts at once, both as
a bootlegger and a tax cheat. Prohibition agent eliot Ness
(21:57):
grabbed the headlines by busting up Capone's bootlegs operations, but
the IRS agents working behind the scenes to get the
goods on Copone for income tax evasion, would have the
greater impact.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
One of probably history's favorite ironies is that the only
way Capone could be taken down was for not paying
his taxes, and it is a sweet irony. But it
should be mentioned that there were also close to one
hundred and twenty indictments against him on prohibition charges.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
But by nineteen thirty one, more and more Americans were
demanding that prohibition be repealed.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Repeal was around a corner. So putting this guy away
for something that's going to be legal in a few
months is so inherently hypocritical that they just said, we
got to forget this, and so they went with the
irs charges.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
In nineteen thirty one, the US government charged Al Capone bootlegger, himp, gambler,
and murderer with tax evasion. Capone's lawyers struck a deal
with the prosecutors for a light sentence, but the judge said.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
No, and they have to roll right into a trial.
So this is a disaster for the Capone forces. So
what do they do. They do what they always did.
They got a jury list of potential jurors and they
started bribing them, they started threatening them. They did all
the good stuff that they would always do. But the
(23:28):
day that the trial began. The judge said, you know what,
there's another judge across the hall who's starting a civil trial.
And what we're going to do today is we're going
to switch juries. And all the bribe jurors went over
to the civil case. And now Capone is facing a
judge who clearly isn't sympathetic to him, and a jury
(23:51):
that they haven't touched.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That untouched jury found Capone guilt. He on October eighteenth,
nineteen thirty one, he was sentenced to eleven years behind bars.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
This was an incredible victory and in fact, it effectively
ended his reign because it took him out of the
play for a good long time.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Al Capone's train is arriving from Chicago and the crowd
is rushing to get a glimpse of the X big shot.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
A sedan is waiting to take him to prison. An
area is still spawning.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
His big white hat, which will probably be all out
of style when he gets a chance.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
To wear it again.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
After a short stint in Atlanta, Capone became one of
the first prisoners transferred to the new maximum security penitentiary
in San Francisco Bay Alcatraz.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
And then he remains in Alcatraz until nineteen thirty nine,
at which point, because of ill health, an advanced case
of syphlis and everything that goes with that, he's paroled earlier.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Came out of Alcatraz. You know, a fraction of what
he was. He was no longer, you know, he was
no longer Big Al Capone.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Capone did not return to Chicago, and his wife May
was very loyal to him. This beautiful mansion they had
in Florida. He lived there virtually as a patient. He
had a little room where bodyguards watched over him. He
would sit by the swimming pool. Some say he with
fish in the swimming pool. Apparently he did have good
(25:34):
days and bad days, and he was seen in public
from time to time. Might see him at the racetrack,
but mostly he was home, and in the last few
years he was essentially an invalid.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Syphilis not bullets finally killed Capone on January twenty fifth,
nineteen forty seven. He was only forty eight years old.
But Hollywood, true crime books and popular legends have kept
alive Capone's image as a cruel yet elegant gangster.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
That stamp is still on our culture. Tony Soprano is
an extremely Copone esque figure. The Godfather is played by
Marlon Brando, was in his way a Copone esque figure.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But the Hollywood glamour can make viewers forget the grim
reality behind Capone's rise and fall.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
A lot of people sort of had this fascination where
if you're like a now Capone, you can do whatever
you want, you can get away with it, and that's
just not true. They have to remember he was convicted,
he did go to jail, he served a hard time.
He did suffer these effects as syphilis which ravaged his brain.
This is not a good story. This is a tragic story.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Sir whoed wh spardncer Lord Mode Lord, Mode Lord
In the nineteen twenties, the sprawling, brawling, skyscraper studded city
of Chicago ruled the American heartland, and one man seemed
to rule Chicago, a racketeer, hemp bootlegger, and cold blooded
killer named Al Capone.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Capone ran things with an iron fist. He had so
much of the city locked up. You know, politicians, policemen.
Capone once said, you know, to him, anonymous politician was
a politician, a stay bought once you brought him.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
But running Chicago took more than bribes.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Capone was a warrior. He had scurs on his face
to show his apprenticeship in that do or die environment.
He had what it took to create an empire.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Capone's empire lasted just six blood soaked years, but his
image as the ultimate American mobster still survives decades after
his days of gangland glory.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
With his larger than life persona, that hat, the cigar,
the scarface. He is the single icon of the American gangster.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
He's a role model to the criminal elements. Even today,
the young street gang guys. You know, if you Capone
is some sort of icon, they sort of view him
as you know, quote the original gangster.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Finally come to pass. And here's the proof.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
With ral Fons Capone alias with Terraul Brown alias the
big Shot.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Has met the enemy and he is there. It won't
be long now before the world's most notorious gangster will
be only an offensive memory. Four nine, teen thirty two,
Al Capone, on his way to serve an eleven year
sentence in a federal penitentiary, makes his final exit from Chicago,
the city he had once ruled as his own. Capone's
(02:12):
hectic departure marks a big change from his arrival just
over a decade earlier. Back then, Capone had slipped silently
into the city, unnoticed and unannounced. But back then he
wasn't the most notorious criminal in America. He was just
a young mobster from Brooklyn who was on the lamb.
(02:35):
Capone's troubles had started while he was working as a
bouncer for a Coney Island crime boss named Frankie Yale.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Capone began in a bar that Yale owned. It was
called the Harvard End. That was a big joke, you
see Yale Harvard. So this bar in Coney Island was
a diamond dance kind of place, probably institution was being
run out of there. Although it was just a one
(03:02):
story sort of shabby building.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yale very early recognized a very unique combination in Capone
of brains and bron and Capone moved up quite quickly
in the Yale organization.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
But Capone's rise almost ended when he made a pass
at a customer's sister, and at.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Some point what Capone supposedly said to her was honey,
you've got a really nice ass, and I mean that
as a compliment. Now what she thought about that is
lost to history. We do know that her brother, seeing
this big, hulking bouncer, took out a knife and cut
(03:47):
him three times, cut him bad.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Capone was left with permanent scars across his cheek and
a nickname he would come to despise.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
He became Scarface at that point, but I don't believe
that Scarface is a nickname that very many people ever
used in front of him. His real nickname was Snorky,
which apparently is Italian for elegant.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
But that elegance hit of vicious mean streak. By nineteen nineteen,
Capone had already killed at least one man in Brooklyn
and roughed up plenty of others. Word on the street
was that one of his victims was out for revenge.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
And supposedly Frankie Yale said to Capone, look, if this
guy's coming after if you stay around her, he's going
to find you. Look, you know, for your own good,
We're going to get you out of town. And they
made arrangements for Capone to pick up and moved to Chicaudo.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
In Chicago. Capone settled his wife May and son Al
Junior in a respectable house on a quiet street. Then
he went out to look up another gangster from Brooklyn,
Johnny Torrio. Torrio had headed west years earlier to work
for his uncle by marriage, Chicago crime lord Big Jim Colisimo.
(05:05):
Now Torio was Big Jim's trusted right hand man.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It was really Big Jim Calisimo's organization, but Torio was
pretty much running it even though Big Jim was the boss.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Torio soon became Capone's role model.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
There's no question that Al Capone's serious life of crime
begins with Johnny Torrio, but he was also a model
in that he dressed well, he had good manners, he
was a businessman, and that really appealed to Capone.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Torio and Capone would go on to form a partnership
that would shape the future of organized crime. It all
began on January seventeenth, nineteen twenty, when a new constitutional
amendment prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages went
into effect. Promised huge profits to those willing to flout
(06:03):
the law. Gangsters in Chicago and across the nation rushed
to grab their share. But when Torio and Capone urged
Colossimo to join in, Big Jim said no.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
He was quite content with what he was doing with
his vice operations of prostitution and gambling. He enjoyed his club.
He had recently divorced and married a singer named Dale Winter.
He was quite happy in his life, very content.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
Jim Colsimo, who they loved and revered, was going to
pass up on the opportunity to making millions of dollars
for the group. So in the gangster world, Big Jim's
Gotta go.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
On May eleventh, nineteen twenty, shortly after returning from his honeymoon,
Colossmo was lured to his own speakeasy for a meeting.
As he walked in, a lone gunman stepped out of
a phone booth and shot him twice in the head.
Some think the trigger man may have been Copone. There
(07:02):
is little doubt that Torio ordered the hit. Now, with
their former leader lying dead in a pool of his
own blood, the most profitable criminal gang in Chicago was
Theirs to run as they pleased, and no town in
America offered more opportunities to ambitious young crooks during those
(07:23):
years than Chicago.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Chica was a very corrupt place during provision, so it
was a wonderful breeding ground for organized crime and the
bootlegging that went on at the time. The politicians were
very corruptible, the police were very corruptible.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But you didn't have to be a greedy politician or
a crooked cop to find yourself rooting for the bootleggers.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
The real culprit here is prohibition, because it turned the
average joe into a lawbreaker. It made Capone and his
cronies the conduit for a product that had been legal
until yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
The city of Chicago, for example, it voted five to
one against prohibition. It was doomed before it even went
into law. All of the bootleggers, they were sort of
viewed as public benefactors. They were giving the people what
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Toreo and Capone were eager to do their part, and
to do it with the least amount of bloodshed. So
Torio came up with a plan to organize Chicago's rival
gangs into a cooperative cartel.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
He called the various major gang leaders together and said, guys,
here's what we need to do. To make this as
profitable as possible, we need to cooperate. We'll all have
our areas of the city. Will agree to stay in
our areas and not go in the other guys area
so that we can make maximum profit and they'll be
minimum strife.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Soon, Torio and Capone had most of Chicago's crooks working
together to arrange bribes and payoffs, share the expense of
acquiring their booz, and coordinate their deliveries. But one local boy,
Dean O'Banion, the North Side gang's volatile and charismatic leader,
wasn't too happy about sharing his business with two tough
(09:07):
guys from Brooklyn. A brewery he and Toreo owned together
gave O'Banion his chance to get rid of them once
and for all. In early nineteen twenty four, O'Banion offered
to sell his half of the brewery to Toreo.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
So Toreo, ever, the diplomatic statesman, sees this as a
wonderful opportunity, says yes, ranges the purchase from Obanion. They
agreed to meet on a certain night, you know, sort
of the transfer the possession, as you would do when
the closing on a house or something. And that night
the Chicago cops show up from the North Side and
raided the Sieben Brewery and arrest everybody in sight.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It was a setup. O'Banion knew about the bust ahead
of time and had lured Torio into a trap.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Toreo had one conviction over his head already. A second
conviction carried a mandatory jail sentence, so there was no
way too could avoid jail, and O'Banion knew that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
O'Banion also knew that, as a first offender, he would
walk away from the bust with nothing more than a fine.
But Torio's trial was delayed for months, giving him and
Capone plenty of time to plot their revenge. O'Banion's front
as a legitimate businessman made it surprisingly easy.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
In nineteen twenty two, he bought a half interest in
the William Schofield flower Shop at seven thirty eight North
State Street. Obanian would be in that flower shop nine
to five Monday to Friday, quite often preparing the flower
arrangements ringing up the sales himself.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
O'Banion naturally became the florist of choice for every mob
funeral in Chicago. So when a local gang boss died,
Torio and Capone knew their moment had arrived.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It was a perfect opportunity for Torio to strike because
O'Banion was expecting gangsters to be coming in and out
of the shop during that interval between the death and
the funeral, friends and enemies.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
On November tenth, nineteen twenty four, three of Torio and
Capone's men arrived at O'Banion's shop to pick up flowers
for the funeral. By the time they left, o'banian was
ready for a funeral of his own. But the bullets
that ended O'Banion's life also put an end to the
(11:27):
shaky peace between Chicago's gangs. The city's headline writers would
dub the bloodshed that followed the beer Wars.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
The violence started, and then it was always a killing,
revenge back and forth and it just continued. Its actually
a pretty sad state of affairs and earned Chicago Dot
notorious reputation, even though New York had far more organized crime.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
In fact, Lucky Luciano, Capone's old friend from New York,
came to visit and his comment was, this is a
real goddamn crazy place. Nobody's safe in the streets.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Not even Torio or Capone. On January twelfth, nineteen twenty five,
Capone barely escaped death when his car was riddled with bullets.
Twelve days later, two of Obanion's most loyal lieutenants caught
up with Torrio on a street corner.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
They were Heimiweiss and Bugs Moran Weiss, carrying a shotgun,
Miriam with a pistol. They converged on Torio and opened fire.
He ended up falling to the ground, with half of
his job blown away and his body torn by bullets.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
The story goes that they even ran up to him
and tried to shoot a final round in his head,
but the gun jammed.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Toreo survived, and that was when he called Capone to
his hospital bedside and he said, al it's yours. I
don't want it anymore. The syndicate that Torrio had started
in nineteen twenty was now the Capone organization.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
But it's during a hot gang warf so it's his
if he's man enough or strong enough to hold it
against opposition, and it's all about survival.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
To survive, Capone would have to win the beer wars,
but if he wanted his business to thrive, he had
to win the hearts of his potential customers.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
At the same time, he was a pretty crafty image builder.
It's no accident than when he was seen in public,
he always had the borcelina on at an angle, he
always had the same kind of stylish top coat, and
he also had this charismatic, larger than life persona. Capone
(13:44):
certainly became a celebrity and even beloved. I mean, you
would see him at baseball games almost throwing out the
first pitch. This is a pop culture figure already, and
he's got a lot more story to write.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
At that point, much of that story was being written
in blood, but Capone's fans didn't seem to mind the
corpses piling up in their streets, and the cops didn't
seem to care either.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
I think it showed just how bad things had gotten
and how brazen the gang elements were becoming. But there
was always somewhat of a feeling that well, as long
as it's only gangs being killed, who cares?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Capone cared. If he didn't watch out, the next corpse
found on the city's streets could very well be his.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think everybody sees out Capone as he's the big,
powerful boss. He's got the beautiful Cadillac, it's bulletproof, he's
got the fancy clothes. The truth is he's under constant threat.
Friends of his are being killed. People are being killed
all the time, back and forth. So it's not like
he was enjoying these times.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Capone was shot at in restaurants, he was shot out
on the street. There are rumors that someone tried to
poison his food. He had to have a food taster.
He became a prisoner of his own fancy suite at
the Hawthorne Hotel.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Capone paid for that fancy suite with the vast profits
rolling in from his illicit empire. But he knew his
enemies were eager to get their hands on that money
and on him, and none of those enemies frightened Kpone
more than the men who had tried to kill Johnny Toreo,
Bugs Moran and Heimi Weiss.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Jimi Weiss was a frightening sort of guy. You look
at pictures of him even today and day, I think
you could be afraid of Heimie Weiss. And Heimi Weiss
apparently was terminally ill and knew it, so he wasn't
afraid of anything. He wasn't afraid of dying.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
In September nineteen twenty six, Weiss and his men pulled
up in front of a cafe where Capone was having
coffee and demolished the entire block with my machine gun fire.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It was something that you'd see during wartime, and not
in one of America's biggest cities. Capone knew that Weiss
would stop at nothing to kill him, so therefore Weiss
had to go.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
He went on October eleventh, nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
Has a leary pad.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The but ending Weiss's life didn't bring an end to
Capone's troubles. Not while Bugs Moran was still alive.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Capone recognized that Moran, in his own way, was just
as adaptable, just as volatile, just as determined as Capone was.
There was no way that this could be resolved by
a peace treaty by talking to him. There was too
much at stake. It was a conflict that only could
(16:55):
be resolved by one of them being killed.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Capone decided to make his move in early nineteen twenty
nine when he learned that Moran was using a dingy
North Side garage to meet with his top lieutenants. But
the timing had to be just right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
They rented apartments across from the garage, one to the
north of the garage, one to the south of the garage,
where they could constantly see the front of their garage,
so they knew exactly who was coming and going at
all times.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
The lookouts kept watch for weeks. Then, on the morning
of February fourteenth, nineteen twenty nine, the signal finally came
bugs Moran had arrived for a meeting. Capone's waiting hit
men leapt into action to catch their victims off guard.
The killers disguised themselves as Chicago cops. The North Siders,
(17:58):
who had nothing to fear from the city corrupt and
ineffective police, were fooled completely.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Moran's guys just thought it was a routine bust, something
they've been through. They'd be out in no time. They
were ordered up against the wall, they were frisked, they
were relieved of their weapons.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The rest is history. The famous Saint Valentine's Day massacre.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The carefully planned operation had gone off without a hitch,
except for one thing. Bugs Moran wasn't among the dead.
The lookouts had fingered the wrong man.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Moran was late for his appointment at the garage that
morning because he had a barbershop appointment in the Parkway Hotel. Barbershop. Yeah,
and that haircut. However much he paid for it, it
was worth his life.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Moran was apparently frightened to death by this. One would
think he might say, well, you missed me, But he
also had, you know, a bunch of his men shop
from under him. And it had a demonstration of just
what Ng's copone would go to. So Moran becomes increasingly
a minor figure after that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
But intimidating Moran and eliminating his gang didn't make the
Saint Valentine's Day massacre a success for the embattled capone.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Even though the gangsters were still killing gangsters. This had
escalated to something that they couldn't even imagine. One of
the newspapers ran the headline that said ganglan graduates from
murder to massacre, and it just shocked I even to
this day, when I look at those photos, it is shocking.
It is shocking to see those photos.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Capone had won the Beer Wars, but would lose his
place as one of Chicago's most beloved figures.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
His organization flourished, but for Capone, we're talking Capone personally,
it was the end. He was booed at baseball games.
He was reviled, whereas previously he'd been viewed as like
a celebrity, like a monarch. The massacre really opened the
public eyes and showed them the dark side of the
(20:14):
whole bootleg industry that figuratively, if not literally, there was
blood mixed with that alcohol that they were drinking.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Capone tried to salvage his reputation by sponsoring a soup
kitchen on Chicago's skid Row and inviting newsreel cameras in
to record the opening.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I've been walking all around town. I've been seeing a
good many places to give the poorest supe I ever got,
what is it? The finest oop I ever take it
in my life and shift my rate gods.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
To this place.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I wouldn't we run out problem, sit out thirty five
shop safe fleet?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Wait?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
What't me?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But most of Capone's fans wouldn't be so easy to
win back. The outrage over the massacre even drove a
group of local reformers to brand Capone with a nickname
he hated almost as much as Scarface, Public Enemy number one.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Capone was the original public Enemy number one, and it
was an effort to embarrass him.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
And I think Capone, who saw himself as a very
benign presence in Chicago, was greatly offended that. You know,
after all I've done for you people, you're gonna call
me public Enemy number one.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But someone in Washington was about to do more than
just call Copone names. President Herbert Hoover was calling for
his head to deliver it. The FEDS devised a plan
to attack Copone on two fronts at once, both as
a bootlegger and a tax cheat. Prohibition agent eliot Ness
(21:57):
grabbed the headlines by busting up Capone's bootlegs operations, but
the IRS agents working behind the scenes to get the
goods on Copone for income tax evasion, would have the
greater impact.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
One of probably history's favorite ironies is that the only
way Capone could be taken down was for not paying
his taxes, and it is a sweet irony. But it
should be mentioned that there were also close to one
hundred and twenty indictments against him on prohibition charges.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
But by nineteen thirty one, more and more Americans were
demanding that prohibition be repealed.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Repeal was around a corner. So putting this guy away
for something that's going to be legal in a few
months is so inherently hypocritical that they just said, we
got to forget this, and so they went with the
irs charges.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
In nineteen thirty one, the US government charged Al Capone bootlegger, himp, gambler,
and murderer with tax evasion. Capone's lawyers struck a deal
with the prosecutors for a light sentence, but the judge said.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
No, and they have to roll right into a trial.
So this is a disaster for the Capone forces. So
what do they do. They do what they always did.
They got a jury list of potential jurors and they
started bribing them, they started threatening them. They did all
the good stuff that they would always do. But the
(23:28):
day that the trial began. The judge said, you know what,
there's another judge across the hall who's starting a civil trial.
And what we're going to do today is we're going
to switch juries. And all the bribe jurors went over
to the civil case. And now Capone is facing a
judge who clearly isn't sympathetic to him, and a jury
(23:51):
that they haven't touched.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That untouched jury found Capone guilt. He on October eighteenth,
nineteen thirty one, he was sentenced to eleven years behind bars.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
This was an incredible victory and in fact, it effectively
ended his reign because it took him out of the
play for a good long time.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Al Capone's train is arriving from Chicago and the crowd
is rushing to get a glimpse of the X big shot.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
A sedan is waiting to take him to prison. An
area is still spawning.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
His big white hat, which will probably be all out
of style when he gets a chance.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
To wear it again.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
After a short stint in Atlanta, Capone became one of
the first prisoners transferred to the new maximum security penitentiary
in San Francisco Bay Alcatraz.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
And then he remains in Alcatraz until nineteen thirty nine,
at which point, because of ill health, an advanced case
of syphlis and everything that goes with that, he's paroled earlier.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Came out of Alcatraz. You know, a fraction of what
he was. He was no longer, you know, he was
no longer Big Al Capone.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Capone did not return to Chicago, and his wife May
was very loyal to him. This beautiful mansion they had
in Florida. He lived there virtually as a patient. He
had a little room where bodyguards watched over him. He
would sit by the swimming pool. Some say he with
fish in the swimming pool. Apparently he did have good
(25:34):
days and bad days, and he was seen in public
from time to time. Might see him at the racetrack,
but mostly he was home, and in the last few
years he was essentially an invalid.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Syphilis not bullets finally killed Capone on January twenty fifth,
nineteen forty seven. He was only forty eight years old.
But Hollywood, true crime books and popular legends have kept
alive Capone's image as a cruel yet elegant gangster.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
That stamp is still on our culture. Tony Soprano is
an extremely Copone esque figure. The Godfather is played by
Marlon Brando, was in his way a Copone esque figure.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But the Hollywood glamour can make viewers forget the grim
reality behind Capone's rise and fall.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
A lot of people sort of had this fascination where
if you're like a now Capone, you can do whatever
you want, you can get away with it, and that's
just not true. They have to remember he was convicted,
he did go to jail, he served a hard time.
He did suffer these effects as syphilis which ravaged his brain.
This is not a good story. This is a tragic story.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Sir whoed wh spardncer Lord Mode Lord, Mode Lord
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