Al Capone

I

Introduction

Al Capone (1899-1947), American notorious crime overlord and gang leader of the 1920s, also known as Scarface because of a knife cut to his left cheek. Capone became a well-known gangster in Chicago, Illinois, controlling many illegal activities and amassing a large personal fortune.

II

Becomes a Gangster

Alphonse Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1899. He left school at an early age and spent nearly ten years with gangs in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, he moved to Chicago to work for the gangster Johnny Torrio. Capone gradually moved up in Torrio’s organization, helping to run the gambling, prostitution, and illegal liquor activities.

During the 1920s, gang activity increased because of Prohibition, the ban by constitutional amendment on the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States. Prohibition generated a wave of organized criminal activity in America, and gangsters made huge amounts of money selling liquor illegally and running clubs that sold liquor.

III

Consolidates Power

When Torrio retired in 1925, Capone took over his organization. In the following years, Capone consolidated his control over organized crime in Chicago by eliminating his competitors one by one in a series of gang wars. The most notorious slaying was the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day massacre, in which Capone’s gunmen, dressed as policemen, lined up seven members of the rival Bugs Moran gang and cut them down with machine guns. After the massacre, Capone had won control of Chicago’s underworld. Running most of Chicago’s large-scale criminal activities, Capone built a fortune worth millions of dollars.

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IV

Downfall

Although Capone was a well-known gangster, he had stayed out of the reach of the law and defeated several murder charges. The law finally caught up with him in 1931, when Capone was convicted of income tax evasion. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and spent part of the time at the high-security facility on Alcatraz island, but he was released on parole in 1939. Crippled by syphilis, he spent the rest of his life in Miami, Florida. He died in Miami on January 26, 1947.

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