Al Capone’s Rise And Fall From Power In Startling Images

A native New Yorker, Capone quickly got caught up in the city’s underworld from a young age. He hung around with prominent mobsters and in turn began to develop a reputation for himself. His famous nickname of “Scarface” was bestowed upon him around this time, after he picked up a nasty cut on his face during a brawl.

Capone eventually made his way to Chicago, where he began to climb through the ranks of organized crime. Before long, he’d maneuvered his way right to the top of the infamous organization known as the Chicago Outfit. Thus the young mob boss was building a fearsome reputation that would be known far and wide.

Throughout the latter half of the 1920s, Capone was unequivocally the most famous gangster in all of the United States. Plus he’d made contacts with media officials and politicians, which helped him to craft a pretty savory public image. Behind the scenes, though, violence was always a big factor in his dealings.

Yet a life of crime caught up with Capone and he ended up in prison. The end of his life was also defined by illness, which ultimately got the better of him. So the man who’d conquered the underworld and become something of a celebrity had come to a sorry end. It was the most dramatic of rise-and-fall stories.

It was far from inevitable that Al Capone would become such a notorious figure of American history. His beginnings were pretty regular and humble, in fact. His parents Gabriele and Teresina had immigrated to Brooklyn from their native Italy, and their experience of the United States was pretty normal for people in their circumstances.

The Capones and their eight kids didn’t have a lot of money, with both mother and father employed in modest jobs. Gabriele worked as a barber, while Teresina earned her living from sewing. So this humble life growing up in Brooklyn was a far cry away from what would come down the line for Capone in his adult years.

Capone was apparently quite good in school as a young kid. The older he got, however, the more issues he encountered. And his work started to slip by the sixth grade, which he was forced to repeat. He didn’t exactly correct his school life, though, and he got into the habit of skipping class.

The breaking point in Capone’s education came after a pretty nasty incident at school. The young man was apparently struck for misbehaving in class, you see, but he didn’t take it lying down. Yep, Capone fought back, which led to a further beating and the end of his time as a student.

Around that same period, the Capone family relocated from their home to somewhere a little nicer in Brooklyn. The area they settled in ultimately proved to be really important for Capone, as it’s where he first met the woman he’d later marry. Plus it was where he encountered Johnny Torrio, the man who’d pull him into a life of organized crime.

Capone started to help out Torrio, who was involved in gambling activities at that time. Yet Capone didn’t become involved with anything too serious at first, instead sticking with more conventional work. Over time, though, the young man began to get more and more caught up in the activities of the underworld.

And it was through Torrio that Capone was introduced to a mobster named Frankie Yale in 1917. Yale evidently saw something in Capone, so he hired him as a barman and bouncer for one of his establishments in Coney Island. It was in this very place that Capone ended up getting his now infamous nickname.

Capone apparently insulted a woman in the bar one night, so the lady’s brother attacked him. The assault left marks running right across Capone’s face – and with that, “Scarface” was born. Who would have thought at that time that this name would still be known to people more than a century later?

Capone’s nickname of Scarface obviously stuck, but it appears that he may actually have been somewhat sensitive about the scars. Because whenever he was getting his photo taken, Capone would try to offer his right side for the shot. This hid the side of his face that bore the grizzly scars, like in this photo here. 

Not long after the incident, Capone and his partner Mae Coughlin had their first child together. They then tied the knot a few weeks later. It seems that Capone wanted to live a good life at this point, thanks to his familial obligations. Yet the mob was never far away, as illustrated by the fact that Johnny Torrio was Capone’s child’s godfather.

Capone gave the quiet life a go and moved to Baltimore. Here he took on a bookkeeping job with a company that worked in construction – but all this wasn’t to last. Torrio eventually reached out to Capone and asked him to come work in Chicago, which Capone was happy to do.

Torrio was finding success in a range of illegal industries in the Windy City – but things became lucrative from 1920 onwards. That was when prohibition, the banning of alcohol, was brought in across America, meaning a new black market quickly opened up: bootlegging. And Torrio moved into that business, with Capone proving to be a useful asset.

Torrio soon realized that Capone was extremely effective in this line of work, so he promoted him and gave him more power. Capone had become a prominent bootlegger, and he was quite open about it. He was once asked in public if he sold alcohol, to which he replied, “Sure, and some of our best judges use my stuff.”

Capone was undoubtedly a skilled bootlegger, but he wasn’t exactly subtle. Whereas Torrio liked to keep his head down, Capone was fond of living lavishly. Yep, he was a big drinker, which actually led to his first ever arrest. Intoxicated, he once drove into a parked vehicle – and then he needed Torrio’s help to get out of jail.

Capone really seemed to enjoy living a life of excess. In speaking about his tendency for gambling, he once remarked, “I’ve lost a million and a half on the horses and dice in the last two years. And the funny part is, I still like ’em, and if someone handed me another million I’d put it right in the nose of some horse that looked good to me.”

After a time of heady living alone out in Chicago, Capone’s family eventually moved over from Brooklyn. This apparently encouraged Capone to calm down a little and to settle into more of a family routine once again. He picked up a modest home in the south of the city for them all to live in.

Even with his family around, though, Capone’s notoriety as a gangster continued to grow. Yet he never used to carry a firearm with him. He saw that as a gesture of confidence in his own power, though he did always take bodyguards along no matter where he went.

Starting around 1923 the authorities in Chicago had vowed to stamp out corruption, which represented a direct threat to Capone and Torrio. A new mayor had been elected, and he’d promised to clean up the city. The two mobsters, then, felt that they needed to deal with these new circumstances.

On March 31, 1924, a mayoral election was scheduled to take place in the Cicero area of Chicago, where Capone and Torrio had recently relocated their business operations. The pair got involved and tried to intimidate voters into choosing their preferred candidate. Some people were even killed, which then led to the police shooting one of Capone’s siblings. Things were getting messy alright.

By 1925 things had seemingly become too much for Torrio to handle, so he retired. Thus Capone was left to run the Outfit for himself. His rule was different to Torrio’s, who preferred to stay as quiet as possible. Capone, on the other hand, spent lots of money and attracted attention from the media and the public.

Capone was really popular with certain sections of the public, for a time. People who were getting sick of prohibition, for example, saw him almost as a sort of folk hero for providing them with booze. As time went on, though, Capone’s name became so synonymous with violence that people began to turn away from him.

The brutality of Capone’s activities continued to garner attention, with one crime in particular upsetting the public. In 1926 Capone ordered a hit on two of his adversaries somewhere in Cicero. The deed was done, but someone else got caught up in the attack, too. This was William McSwiggin, a prosecutor who had previously tried to pin murder on Capone. 

Calls for justice were sounded throughout Chicago, as people grew sick of gang-related crime. Plus the police raided Capone’s premises, which allowed them to accumulate some evidence in relation to the mobster’s tax crimes. They couldn’t pin the murder on him, though, while Capone tried to calm things down in the underworld. 

By the end of the 1920s Capone was unequivocally at the top of the bootlegging trade in Chicago. As such, he made plenty of enemies who wanted to take the mantle from him, like a man named “Bugs” Moran. Moran had tried to kill Capone in the past, so Capone himself decided to retaliate in 1929. What transpired next shocked the city.

On February 14, 1929, a group of hit men linked to Capone disguised themselves as police officers and descended upon a garage in Chicago’s North Side. Bugs Moran himself was alerted to the danger approaching him, and he actually managed to escape. Seven members of his crew, however, weren’t so lucky.

The so-called St.Valentine’s Day Massacre caused a media sensation and the public quickly turned on Capone. Because it seemed obvious that he was connected to the bloodshed, even though he couldn’t be linked closely enough to face charges. So the U.S. president himself, Herbert Hoover, pushed the federal government to finally pin tax fraud on Capone.

Changes to the law over the years had provided the government with a strong justification for taking Capone to court. And by February 8, 1931, it finally saw some results. Capone was sentenced to six months in jail, which wasn’t all that long in the greater scheme of things. But it certainly represented a start.

Then the Treasury Department began building a big case against Capone and many of his associates. So by June 1931 he was in court again, pleading guilty to crimes related to tax fraud and illegally selling alcohol. Capone had bragged about cutting a deal with authorities, but the judge had other ideas, telling him that no such thing would be permitted. Capone thus altered his plea and claimed innocence.

In October 1931 Capone was found guilty, but he had to wait until the following month to learn how long he’d be spending behind bars. It was an 11-year sentence that was delivered to the mobster, plus a hefty fine. The good times had well and truly come to an end for Al Capone.

“Scarface” was sent to prison in Atlanta, but he didn’t last long there. He was accused of getting better treatment in this jail, so he was transferred somewhere more secure. The authorities sent him to the island penitentiary on Alcatraz, which sits in San Francisco Bay. Here, it would be more difficult for Capone to exert his power to ease his life behind bars.

In 1939 Capone finally left Alcatraz and was sent to another California-based jail called Terminal Island. Then, some months later, he was freed outright. Having been locked away for over seven years and paying all his fines, Capone was a free man once again. But he was now only a shadow of his former self.

Capone was no longer the same powerful and fearsome gangster that he once was. His criminal connections had weakened, plus the man himself was suffering from a terrible illness. His mental faculties had deteriorated to such an extent, and he needed to seek treatment to help with the situation.

But things never got better. Capone was forced to give up his life as a gangster, and he never again went back to Chicago. Instead he stayed with his family in Florida, where he languished without much hope of recovery. Then, on January 25, 1947, he passed away from a stroke and pneumonia at the age of 48.

The New York Times ran the headline, “End of an Evil Dream,” upon news of Capone’s death. The story of one of the most famous gangsters in history had come to an end, though it would be retold again and again in books and movies. For better or for worse, the man had left his mark on American culture.

Capone was a ruthless man, with the deaths of many, many people on his hands. Yet he nonetheless elicited a morbid fascination in many people, which remains true to this day. His life was so full of twists and turns, and it will undoubtedly be remembered for a long time to come.