Al capone biography gangster 1920s

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Al capone biography gangster 1920s: Al Capone was a gangster who

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Al "Scarface" Capone was an American gangster who rose to power during the Prohibition era — 33when the United States banned the production and sale of liquor. His vicious career illustrated the power and influence of organized crime in the United States.

His father was a barber. Capone attended school through the sixth grade, at which point he beat up his teacher one day and was himself beaten by the school's principal afterward. Like many other American children at the time, Capone was taught that the main purpose of life was to acquire wealth and that the United States was the land of opportunity.

He discovered that prejudice unfair treatment based on his ethnic background made it difficult to succeed in school and that others looked down on the children of immigrants and members of the working class. Angered by the gap between the American dream and his own reality, Capone began to engage in criminal activities as a way of achieving success in what he saw as an unjust society.

Capone worked at odd jobs for a while but found his calling when a gangster named Johnny Torrio — hired him to work in a bar owned by Torrio's friend. Torrio knew Capone did not mind violence and often had him beat up people who were unable to repay loans. Over time, Capone learned more and more about the criminal world. During a fight in a bar he received a razor cut on his cheek, which gained him the nickname "Scarface.

Capone and Coughlin married a short time later, on December 18, In the U. The same year, Capone fled Brooklyn for Chicago to avoid a murder charge. In Chicago he joined the Five Points Gang and quickly moved up its ranks. He became the top assistant to the gang's leader, his old friend Johnny Torrio, who had set up operations in the city.

Capone worked as a bartender and enforcer for Torrio and was arrested many times for assaulting people, but Torrio's influence saved him from jail. After Torrio fled the country, Capone found himself in control of part of the bootlegging illegal supplying of alcohol in Chicago that had sprung up after Prohibition preventing by law the production, sale, or transportation of liquor.

The citizens of Chicago had not been in favor of Prohibition. Many of them were more than willing to break the law by purchasing alcohol. Capone took advantage of this attitude and conducted his business openly. As he would tell reporter Damon Runyon, "I make money by supplying a public demand. If I break the law, my customers … some of the best people in Chicago, are as guilty as me.

Capone protected his business interests, which also included gambling houses, by waging war on rival gangs. During the St. Valentine's Day massacre inseven members of a rival gang led by George "Bugsy" Moran were shot to death in a Chicago garage. Protecting these businesses also often involved either bribing or beating up public officials. As Capone's profits continued to grow, he began to act as if he were a well-to-do businessman rather than a vicious criminal.

Many people, including members of the police and city governmentadmired him. Between and he was viewed by many as the real ruler of Chicago. The truth is that Capone was totally unworthy of admiration. He was a cold-blooded criminal who killed hundreds of people without a second thought. He paid off mayors, governors, and other elected officials to allow his crooked operations to continue.

He could even influence elections by having members of his gang intimidate people into voting the way he wanted. Capone's reign of terror gave the city of Chicago a reputation as a gangster-infested place that it would hold for years, even after he was long gone. Most of the rest of the country and even some people in Chicago correctly regarded Capone as a menace.

In the late s President Herbert Hoover — ordered his al capone biography gangster 1920s of the treasury to find a way to put Capone behind bars. Capone had up to this point managed to escape jail time for any of his crimes. The government's decision to crack down on him just added to the problems he was having. His profits from bootlegging had started to decline as a result of the coming of the Great Depression a period from to during which nearly half the industrial workers in the country lost their jobs and the ending of Prohibition.

After detailed investigations, U. Treasury agents were able to arrest Capone for failure to file an income tax return. Forced to defend himself while being tried on a different charge in Chicago, Capone's testimony regarding his taxes did not match previous statements he had made, and he was found guilty of tax fraud. In October he was sentenced to ten years of hard labor, which he served in a prison in AtlantaGeorgiaand in prison on Alcatraz Island in California 's San Francisco Bay.

Capone suffered from syphilis, a disease passed from person to person through sexual contact. The disease can affect the brain if left untreated. Capone became physically weak and started to lose his mind. As a result, his power within the nation's organized crime system ended. Released on parole inCapone spent the rest of his life at his estate in Palm Island, Florida, where he died on January 25, Hornung, Rick.

Al Capone.

Al capone biography gangster 1920s: Born of an immigrant family

New York: Park Lane Press, Al Capone became famous in the s as one of the most notorious criminals in American history. He considered himself a businessman, but his business was organized crime. Even in the twenty-first century, Capone remains a symbol of the Roaring Twenties. Capone was born on January 7,the fourth of nine children of Italian immigrants.

His father was a barber and his mother a seamstress. Capone grew up in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New Yorkwhere he learned at an early age how to survive street life. As a teen, he joined several youth gangs. Capone dropped out of school at the age of fourteen after getting into a fight with a teacher. Capone learned racketeering illegal business transactions through his gang affiliation.

During this time, he also held legitimate jobs. At one point, young Capone worked as a bartender, where he made the mistake of insulting a female patron. The woman's brother defended his sister's honor by slashing Capone's face three times with a knife. While still a teen, Capone met Mae Coughlin, a department store clerk two years his senior.

Sonny was their only child. InCapone received an invitation from a gangster he knew from his Five Point Gang days to move to Chicago, Illinoisand join the operation of James Colosimo — Capone moved his family to the city just as Prohibition the constitutional ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages that was intended to improve society was beginning.

Despite the new law, people still wanted to drink alcohol. Gangsters the popular term for members of organized crime knew this and realized they could make a great deal of money by providing the illegal beverages. The sale and distribution of illegal liquor, known as bootlegging, quickly became a focus of organized crime, alongside gambling and prostitution.

Soon after his arrival in Chicago, Capone became second in command of organized criminal activity on the south side of the city. His boss, Johnny Torrio —was the man who had apprenticed him in his early gang days and summoned him to Chicago. Torrio recognized in Capone a shrewd businessman who did not act without careful consideration. Capone and Torrio formed relationships—not all good—with other criminal organizations across the country.

Moran's gang tried to kill Capone and Torrio in January Capone and Torrio survived the attempt, but Torrio was seriously wounded and retired to Italy, leaving Capone in charge. Capone's empire included speakeasies places where illegal liquor was sold and consumedgambling establishments, prostitution rings, nightclubs, racetracks, and liquor distilleries.

With these powerful authority figures accepting his bribes, Capone made Chicago nearly lawless. It was a city of intense violence and corruption. Everyone knew who Capone was. With a penchant for flashy suits and jewelry, he made quite a spectacle wherever he went. He was not all bad, as he used his wealth to help the needy. Capone opened one of the city's first soup kitchens during the Great Depression — As the s progressed, the level of organized crime violence escalated.

Al capone biography gangster 1920s: salvatore "sammy" gravano speaks into a

This increase in crime only served to make the public outcry against Prohibition even louder. On February 14,an event of catastrophic violence occurred that shocked the nation. Capone's feud with Moran was well-known. A recent attempt on the part of Moran to kill a close associate of Capone's led Capone to seek revenge. Moran's gang used a garage as a drop-off site for shipments of illegal liquor.

Seven members of that gang were at the garage on February 14,when a group ambushed them. The men were dressed as police officers, so Moran's men assumed this was a raid on their bootlegging operation and turned to al capone biography gangster 1920s the wall with their hands in the air. All the men except Frank Gusenberg were killed outright in cold blood.

The plan appeared to go brilliantly except for one major detail: Moran was not among the dead. Moran had seen the police car and took off, not wanting to be caught up in the raid. Even though Capone was conveniently in Florida, the police and the newspapers knew who had staged the massacre. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre became a national media event immortalizing Capone as the most ruthless, feared, smartest and elegant of gangland bosses.

Even while powerful forces were amassing against him, Capone indulged in one last bloody act of revenge — the killing of two Sicilian colleagues whom he believed had betrayed him. Capone invited his victims to a sumptuous banquet where he brutally pulverized them with a baseball bat. Capone had observed the old tradition of wining and dining traitors before executing them.

Somewhat ironically, it was the pen pushers from the tax office who posed the greatest threat to the gangsters' bootlegging empires. In Maythe Supreme Court ruled that a bootlegger had to pay income tax on his illegal bootlegging business. Capone left for Miami with his wife and son and bought Palm Island estate, a property that he immediately started to renovate expensively.

This gave Elmer Irey his chance to document Capone's income and spending. But Capone was clever. Every transaction he made was on a cash basis. The only exception was the tangible assets of the Palm Island estate, which was evidence of a major source of income. I want that man in jail. Mellon set out to get the necessary evidence both to prove income tax evasion and to amass enough evidence to prosecute Capone successfully for Prohibition violations.

Eliot Nessa dynamic young agent with the U. Prohibition Bureau, was charged with gathering the evidence of Prohibition violations. He assembled a team of daring young men and made extensive use of wiretapping technology. While there was doubt that Capone could be successfully prosecuted for Prohibition violations in Chicago, the government was certain it could get Capone on tax evasion.

In MayCapone went to a "gangster" conference in Atlantic City. Afterward, he saw a movie in Philadelphia. When leaving the cinema, he was arrested and imprisoned for carrying a concealed weapon. Capone was soon incarcerated in the Eastern Penitentiary, where he stayed until March 16, He was later released from jail for good behavior but was put on America's "Most Wanted" list, which publicly humiliated a mobster who so desperately wanted to be regarded as a worthy man of the people.

Elmer Irey undertook a cunning plan to use undercover agents posing as hoods to infiltrate Capone's organization. The operation took nerves of steel. Despite an informer ending up with a bullet in his head before he could testify, Elmer managed to amass enough evidence through his detectives, posing as gangsters, to try Capone in front of a jury.

With two vital bookkeepers, Leslie Shumway and Fred Reis, who had once been in Capone's employment, now safely under police protection, it was only a matter of time before Capone's days as Public Enemy No. Agent Ness, angered by Capone for the murder of a friend, managed to enrage Capone by exposing Prohibition violations to ruin his bootlegging industry.

Millions of dollars of brewing equipment was seized or destroyed, thousands of gallons of beer and alcohol had been dumped and the largest breweries were closed. The jury returned an indictment against Capone that was kept secret until the investigation was complete for the years to Capone and 68 members of his gang were charged with 5, separate violations of the Volstead Act.

These income tax cases took precedence over the Prohibition violations. Fearing that witnesses would be tampered with, and having doubts that the six-year statute of limitations would be upheld by the Supreme Court, a deal was secretly struck between Capone's lawyers and government prosecutors. Capone was to plead guilty to a lighter charge and would receive a sentence of between two and five years.

When word got out, the press was outraged and campaigned against what they saw as a blatant whitewash. The overconfident Capone, who believed he would receive less than five years in prison, became less cocky when he realized that his plea bargain was now null and void. Early on, Capone stuck to legitimate employment, working in a munitions factory and as a paper cutter.

He did spend some time among the street gangs in Brooklyn, but aside from occasional scrapes, his gang activities were mostly uneventful. Her brother punched Capone, then slashed him across the face, leaving three indelible scars that inspired his enduring nickname. When Capone was 19, he married Mae Coughlin just weeks after the birth of their child, Albert Francis.

Now a husband and a father, Capone wanted to do right by his family, so he moved to Baltimore where he took an honest job as a bookkeeper for a construction company. Capone jumped at the opportunity.

Al capone biography gangster 1920s: Capone was born in New York

In Chicago, Torrio was presiding over a booming business in gambling and prostitution, but with the enactment in of the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol, Torrio focused on a new, more lucrative field: bootlegging. But unlike the low-profile Torrio, Capone began to develop a reputation as a drinker and rabble-rouser.

After hitting a parked taxicab while driving drunk, he was arrested for the first time. Torrio quickly used his city government connections to get him off. Capone cleaned up his act when his family arrived from Brooklyn. His wife and son, along with his mother, younger brothers and sister all moved to Chicago, and Capone bought a modest house in the middle-class South Side.

Inwhen Chicago elected a reformist mayor who announced that he planned to rid the city of corruption, Torrio and Capone moved their base beyond the city limits to suburban Cicero. But a al capone biography gangster 1920s election in Cicero threatened their operations. To ensure they could continue doing business, Torrio and Capone initiated an intimidation effort on the day of the election, March 31,to guarantee their candidate would get elected.

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Joe Aiello North Side Gang. Alcohol prohibition. Eighteenth Amendment U. Constitution Twenty-first Amendment U. Martha Meir Allen Harry J. Edgar Hoover Clinton N. Howard Bumpy Johnson Enoch L. Prohibition documentary miniseries. The Untouchables. Eliot Ness William Gardner. Prohibition Volstead Act. Wilson Elmer Lincoln Irey. The Untouchables The Untouchables of Elliot Mouse.

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