(by Student #9 AMH 2010)
Note: This student did not follow instructions to start their research with one of the Casefiles I assigned.
Note: This student did not follow instructions to start their research with one of the Casefiles I assigned.
One of the most interesting stories
of the early 1900s has to be the one of Al (Scarface) Capone who I have heard
his name before but never really knew what exactly he did or why he was so
famous and looking at his name for so long I finally got the opportunity to
really research and find out everything about him. Since I only know the basics
of Al Capones life I hope to find out more about his criminal activity and how
he was able to be such an infamous criminal for so long and how he was caught
or died. I also want to know what happen to him to make him choose the life of
a criminal and how he was able to grow so much.
According to
www.fbi.gov Al
Capone was born on 1899 in Brooklyn New York and got his first exposure to
criminal life and gangs in the 6th grade when he dropped out to join
a notorious street gang. Al Capone would end up growing up in the gang and becoming
one of the most notorious members and in 1920 would become a very influential
member in the Colosimo mob. The Prohibition act is what apparently skyrocketed
Al Capone and his mob into a lucrative market of selling alcohol and other
drugs for massive amounts of profit and giving them massive amounts of power.
In 1925 Capones long time partner and leader of the gang Torrio who was wounded
in an assassination attempt. Once Capone took over the mob things changed
really quickly in Chicago because other mobs and gangs were being silenced or
nullified by the Capone mob so after about a year or less there was a complete
monopoly and was ruled by
Capone. One of the most famous moments in Al Capones life
comes in 1929 February 14, which is Valentine’s day known as the Valentine’s
day massacre in which 7 members of a rival gang known as the bugs mob were
machine gunned down by Al Capones members that were dressed as police officers
to surprise them. All of this was happening and Al Capone was in his home in
Miami running the gang from a far away land so he couldn’t really be physically
linked to any of the crimes but still be able to run his organization.
Once I saw so many things to do with
the Capone mob I decided to look more into and some of the people who were
involved with it and I found a list of his friends and the things they did for
him. Pretty much he had had 7 or so lieutenants that would do his most secret
and undercover jobs, and they have criminal records that are extremely long
that range from petty stealing to murders. And most of his men like Claude
Maddox who in 1931 was public enemy number 3 which means he was doing so much
crime that all of the united states needed to watch for him. So the more I
looked on http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id193.htm
the more i wondered how many of these people were killed and how they were
going to get replaced and I saw whenever any of the 7 lieutenant’s died then
the next most notorious members would be nominated and picked by Al Capone
himself and he would be moved up to the highest level underneath obviously Al
Capone himself. So as well as Al Capone and his mob was
able to get to the top
of the world it wouldn’t last forever and was only at its peak for 7 years.
When I think of empires I think of civilizations that last for hundreds and
that compared to just the 7 years Al Capone had made me think of how other
criminal empires lasted to see if maybe this was a long time to be on top. I
didn’t find to many things on different eras but on https://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/the-10-most-successful-gangsters-of-all-time/
Al Capone was ranked as the 6th most successful gangster of all time
and topping the list is Columbian gangster Pablo Escobar. It was also said that
Al Capone made about 1.3 billion dollars during his lifetime which is pretty
crazy to think about since the majority of it came in those 7 years where
prohibition was a thing and he was only able to grow so much in that short
amount of time. From there I noticed one common thing from the list of
notorious gangsters and that thing was they all started off poor and started at
an extremely young age usually before they are teens or early teens. This is
just one of so many signs that just show us how susceptible people are to
influential people and really unable to think about the decisions they make and
pretty much are brain washed these kids into becoming ruthless monsters. I
think because a lot of these people started out poor most of them like Al
Capone were considered modern day robin hoods because of how much they would
give back to the community by opening shelters and sending kids to college and
just helping families that were struggling financially.
In the 1930s Al Capone had pretty much the
entire government under his payroll and was able to do what he wanted there in
Chicago. But
like I said before his
rein wouldn’t last forever because after that valentines massacre the president
at the time Herbert Hoover noticed and personally pushed to get Capone arrested
So the government had a 2 step plan on getting their hands on him and the first
was shutting down his businesses so they could slow him down and the second was
collecting tax documents on all his massive incomes that he wasn’t paying the
income tax on and when he was convicted on October 17, 1931 of 5 counts of tax
evasion he was completely shocked. He thought he was able to pay off the jury
and get away for these petty crimes but he was wrong and the judge used the
maximum sentence of 11 years and that would be the end of the Capone era. When
in jail according to https://www.thoughtco.com/al-capone-1779788
he was receiving special treatment in
federal prison in Atlanta and the government heard about this and to make an
example out of him they sent him to a maximum prison and island called Alcatraz
near san Francisco and he was one of their first inmates. Some other famous
inmates that were at Alcatraz include George “machine gun” Kelly, And Alvin
Karpis who was the very first Public Enemy number 1 in history. When Capone got
there in 1934 people would want to challenge him because he was the biggest
name there and such a notorious figure. But along with that Capone had been
carrying a curable STD called syphilis and at this time it had started to mess
with his mind and quickly deteriorated his health while being incarcerated. Over the next few years
he became more and more disoriented, had slurred speech, and a shuffle walk
because of the disease. So after a 4 year stay in Alcatraz Capone was
transferred to a hospital in Los Angeles where after a few months
was released on parole. At this point the disease is
incurable and Capones wife Mae took him to many doctors but all of them said he
was set to die very soon because of how fast the disease was spreading and
advancing in his head. Al Capone spent the next 7 years of his life with
deteriorating health in a mansion he had in Miami until he finally died In 1947
of cardiac arrest. One of the things I wondered while looking up his death is
if at Alcatraz there were conspiracies of experiments they would do on inmates
and because Al didn’t really have those problems until he got there it makes you
think if maybe that is why his brain was that of a 12 year old boy when he was
released but was pretty fine going into it. So I guess you can say Al Capone
was not only one of the biggest gangsters in history he also gave back and had
a very high peak that came crashing down as fast as it rose.