Al Capone is perhaps the most nortorious mobster ever. Many movies and books have been created in his honor. Al Capone was born on January 17, 1899. He and his family lived in a rough niegborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Al held down a variety of honest jobs from clerk in a candy store to being a cutter in a book bindery. Al joined the South Brooklyn Rippers, a junior gang with members as young as eleven. He also joined the Forty Theives Juniors, this was a elite branch of the Five Points adult gang. Al was ushered in to the Forty Thieves juniors by Frankie Yale. It was also Yale who would welcome Al into the adult gang and give Al a job, working behind the bar of the Havard Inn. In 1918 Capone fell in love with an Irish girl. Mary was her baptized name but she would be called Mae all her life. She was almost two years older than Capone. They married and on December 4, 1918 Mae gave birth to Albert Francis Capone.
One day Capone stopped in a saloon for a drink while on his collection rounds. In walked a stranger who was in Dinny Meehan's White Hand Gang. The stranger decided to pick on Al because of Al's Italian decent. Al proceeded to beat the stranger so badly that he was left for dead. The stranger ended up in the hospital clinging for life. When the leader of the White Hand Gang found out what happened, he set out to get Al. Because Capone now had a family, Yale called Johnny Torio and set up a peacful solution to Al's problem. Al was sent to Chicago in late 1919 to work for Torrio.
The timing was perfect for Capone to be in Chicago. Capone learned under Torrio and would impress greatly in the following years. Eventually Capone became Torrio's right hand man. The two men built a vast bootleging business thanks to Prohibition. Capone took over the operation when a failed attempt on Torrio's life scared him out. With Capone in charge came much prosperity. He expanded the bootleging operation and generated more money than ever before. Capone also had his share of enemies along the way. He fought and beat such gangs as the Genna brothers,
Hymie Weiss,
Bugs Moran. The hit on Bugs Moran's crew is perhaps the most famous in mob history.
The Saint Valentines Day Massacre erasing Capone's last real threat, Bugs Moran. Capone's demise came in the form of the I.R.S. They gathered enough evidendce of tax evasion to put him in prison for ten years in federal prison and one year in county jail. He would be transferred to Alcatraz where he became ill with syphillis. He was realeased because of his health and on January 25, 1947 at 7:25 Al Capone died from cardiac arrest with his family at his side.
