Al Capone: The rise and fall of the world's most notorious gangster

Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born on 17 January 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, to Gabriele and Teresa Capone, two working-class immigrants from Naples who raised their family in a crowded apartment building near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

During his childhood, Capone witnessed street violence and ethnic conflict between rival communities.

As a teenager, he joined neighbourhood gangs such as the South Brooklyn Rippers and later the Five Points Gang, which was an influential group that controlled territory in Lower Manhattan.

Reportedly, he also maintained connections to brothels and gambling dens at which he built close relationships with corrupt police officials.

Interestingly, the Five Points Gang also included other future crime bosses, such as Lucky Luciano.

After striking a female teacher during a classroom fight, Capone left school permanently at age fourteen.

He soon began working in jobs connected to the criminal underworld, for example, as a bartender and as a bouncer at the Harvard Inn in Coney Island, which was a club run by gangster Frankie Yale.

During a dispute with a customer, Capone insulted a woman and was slashed across the cheek by her brother, leaving a scar that earned him the nickname “Scarface.”

He later refused to discuss the incident publicly and told reporters that his injuries came from wartime service or industrial accidents. 

In 1919, Capone accepted an invitation from Johnny Torrio, who was a senior member of the Five Points Gang and who had relocated to Chicago and built a large crime network.

Torrio, who had recently taken control of most local brothels and many bootlegging operations from his mentor Big Jim Colosimo, required dependable support to manage the growing business.

Capone travelled west and quickly established himself as Torrio’s trusted enforcer.

He handled extortion demands and settled disputes as he supervised shipments of illegal alcohol. 

After an assassination attempt in January 1925, Torrio sustained serious injuries and chose to retire from organised crime.

Before leaving for Italy, he handed full control of the Chicago Outfit to Capone, who at just 26 years old inherited a large criminal business of distilleries, gambling houses, speakeasies, and a networked of bribed city officials.

Under Capone’s command, the Outfit expanded its reach across Chicago and into surrounding suburbs, maintaining its grip on the city’s underworld through targeted killings and political manipulation.

At its peak in 1927, Capone's organisation generated an estimated $1 million per week, according to federal estimates, and the organisation operated out of the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, which became known as the "Capone Castle." 

For public appearances, Capone presented himself as a businessman and generous public figure.

He donated to Catholic charities and funded food programmes for the poor, and he maintained a wardrobe of expensive suits that reinforced his reputation for success.

However, at the same time, he operated out of heavily guarded hotels and surrounded himself with heavily armed guard.

Reporters followed his movements and published interviews that portrayed him as charismatic and generous, yet local authorities knew that he maintained power through extortion and violence. 

By the mid-1920s, Capone’s control over the liquor trade had already brought him both very high profits and violent enemies.

Rival gangs, including George “Bugs” Moran’s North Side crew, launched attacks on Capone’s operations and hijacked his liquor shipments, then organised assassinations against his men.

In response, Capone planned revenge attacks that escalated into a full-scale gang war fought across city streets with pistols and heavier weapons such as shotguns and Thompson submachine guns.

His smuggling convoys relied on modified trucks and backroad routes to avoid police detection. 

By 1927, federal investigators estimated that Capone’s operations had been generating roughly $100 million per year from alcohol and gambling, together with protection rackets that reached into many city neighbourhoods.

On 14 February 1929, a carefully planned ambush resulted in the murder of seven members of Moran’s gang in a North Side garage.

Disguised as police officers, Capone’s gunmen lined up the victims against a wall and executed them with Thompson submachine guns in what became known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Among the dead was Frank Gusenberg, who was a well-known enforcer for Moran.

The brutality of the killings shocked the public and dominated national headlines, and e ven though Al Capone remained in Florida during the attack and no evidence directly linked him to the event, many observers at the time believed that he was responsible. 

Over the following months, Capone continued to expand his operations and bribe officials, and he often used intimidation of witnesses to maintain control.

He travelled openly and attended prize fights and public events, then posed for photographers, and this behaviour helped him shield his criminal activities behind layers of legal deniability.

Until the late 1920s, Capone had avoided prosecution by relying on corrupt officials and intimidation to protect himself from local law enforcement.

However, after the massacre drew nationwide condemnation, federal agencies gave much closer attention to Chicago’s criminal networks and shifted their efforts toward targeting key crime figures.

President Herbert Hoover, responding to political pressure, instructed federal prosecutors to prioritise Capone’s arrest. 

To avoid the difficulties that came with proof of murder or extortion charges, the U.S. Treasury Department launched a detailed investigation into Capone’s financial records.

Led by IRS agent Frank Wilson, specialist accountants collected evidence that suggested that Capone had spent very large sums on real estate, vehicles, jewellery, and hotels, but had never filed a tax return.

Without the benefit of modern tools, Wilson’s team relied on manual calculations and careful comparison of ledgers.

At the same time, Eliot Ness and his team of Untouchables, who raided breweries and seized records and collected testimony from associates, used federal Prohibition laws to weaken the structure of Capone’s empire.

Their nickname came frome their refusal to accept bribes, which was rare in that era of law enforcement. 

In June 1931, after an earlier set of charges in 1930, prosecutors filed a full set of charges against Capone that included 22 counts of federal income tax evasion.

He eventually pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors produced ledgers and testimony from insiders that confirmed he had handled large amounts of undeclared income.

The judge, who had previously replaced the jury at the start of the trial to prevent bribery, later rejected a proposed plea bargain and allowed the case to proceed.

On 17 October 1931, a jury found him guilty on five counts. The judge sentenced him to 11 years in prison and imposed a $50,000 fine, which became one of the first major victories in the federal campaign against organised crime.

Initially held at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, Capone used bribes and influence to live comfortably, receiving favours from guards and maintaining contact with associates.

However, after reports of his special treatment had reached federal authorities, he was transferred in August 1934 to Alcatraz, a new maximum-security prison located on an isolated island in San Francisco Bay.

Unlike Atlanta, Alcatraz offered no special treatment. Capone lived under strict discipline and performed labour in the prison laundry, and he lost access to outside communications. 

Over time, Capone’s health deteriorated due to untreated syphilis, which advanced into neurosyphilis and caused serious mental decline.

By 1938, prison doctors reported that his mental capacity had dropped to roughly that of a twelve-year-old.

Medical staff at Alcatraz recommended release, and the following year he was granted early release and spent his final years under care at his estate on Palm Island, Florida, where he suffered from periods of dementia and rarely appeared in public.

His personal physician, who was Dr. Kenneth Phillips, monitored his decline and confirmed the extent of his mental deterioration. 

On 25 January 1947, Capone died from cardiac arrest after a stroke. He was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery near Chicago, alongside other members of his family.

The funeral was a quiet affair, with attendance restricted and closely monitored by police.

The cemetery also became the final burial place of other Chicago Outfit figures, who included Dion O’Banion and Sam Giancana.