An estimated $100 million in personal worth and career profits were attributable to Alphonse Gabriel Capone (Al Capone), whose full name was Alphonse Capone. After his death at age 47 in 1947, he was the oldest person in the United States. As “Scarface,” Al Capone is a well-known figure in the annals of American organized crime.
It took him until the age of 33 years to be imprisoned in Alcatraz after his reign of terror over Chicago’s organized crime lasted from 1925 to 1931. Many Hollywood films have taken their cues from the life of Al Capone. An Al Capone movie was released in 1959, showing his entire life narrative.
Al Capone’s Biography
New York City native Alphonse Gabriel “Al” Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1899. Italian immigrants Teresa (a seamstress) and Gabriele (a barber) raised their son. As an infant, Ermina was tragically taken away from her family; she was just one year old when she succumbed to her illness in the arms of her mother. Savio and Raffaele (also known as Frank and Ralph) were drawn into Al’s criminal underworld through mutual connections. At the age of 14, Al Capone was dismissed from Catholic school after punching a teacher in the face. In addition to working at a bowling alley and a confectionery store, Al also took up semi-professional baseball for two seasons.
Al Capone’s Net Worth
An American mobster by the name of Al Capone was estimated to have a fortune of $100 million when he died. Capone was a member of the Five Points Gang and worked as a bouncer for organized crime establishments. He later became the boss of the Chicago Outfit, an organized crime organization.
Al achieved prominence during the Prohibition era and had a seven-year reign as crime boss until he was imprisoned in 1932 for tax evasion. Capone was responsible for enlarging bootlegging while retaining close ties with city authorities, such as Mayor William Hale Thompson.
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Al Capone’s Career
Before joining the Brooklyn Rippers, Capone was a member of the Junior Forty Thieves and Bowery Boys gangs in New York City, mentored by criminal Johnny Torrio. After that, he joined the Five Points Gang in Lower Manhattan, where he was employed to handle the door at the Harvard Inn bar and dance hall by Torrio. Al Capone was nicknamed “Scarface” after Frank Galluccio sliced the left side of his face with a knife after Capone accidentally insulted Galluccio’s sister.
As a syphilis-infected bouncer in a Chicago brothel in 1919, Al Capone was invited by Torrio to relocate to the city. Since Big Jim Colosimo was slain in May 1920, Al was taken over by Torrio, who made him his right-hand man and appointed him the head of his empire. Capone was a suspect in the murder of Colosimo, but it was never established that he was involved.
Prohibition-era bootleggers from Canada helped Al smuggle liquor into the United States, but when Capone was asked if he knew the “King of the Bootleggers,” Rocco Perri, he joked, “Why, I don’t even know which street Canada is on.” As a result of Torrio’s assassination in early 1925, Al was given control of the crime syndicate. When bars refused to sell whiskey to Capone, they were frequently blown up. Following an assassination attempt by the North Side Gang in 1926, Joe Aiello, a bootlegger, and criminal attempted to kill Al numerous times in the following year.
In 1929, “The New York Times” alleged that Al was involved in the deaths of Assistant State Attorney William H. McSwiggin, his former mentor Frankie Yale, and lead investigator Ben Newmark. Although Capone was in Florida at the time of the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, it is widely believed that he ordered the attack, which was intended to assassinate Bugs Moran, the leader of the North Side gang. Moran wasn’t one of the seven victims of the massacre, although he was wounded.
Al was asked to testify before a grand jury in Chicago on federal Prohibition offenses a few days later, but he claimed that he was too sick to go. During his testimony in March 1929, the FBI detained him and charged him with contempt of court for failing to show up for his original trial date. By creating a soup kitchen and donating to humanitarian groups following his involvement in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone attempted to repair his reputation following the tragedy.
Aiello was still preparing for Al’s murder in 1930, so he had two men shoot him as he left an apartment building in Chicago, Illinois. As a result of President Herbert Hoover’s directive to focus federal agencies on Al Capone and his associates, publisher Walter A. Strong of the “Chicago Daily News” requested federal help in curbing the city’s criminal activity.
Al Capone’s Personal Life
On December 30, 1918, Al married Mary Josephine Coughlin (better known as Mae), and they were together until his death. Johnny Torrio, Capone’s mentor, was designated godfather to Albert Francis “Sonny” Capone when he was born on December 4, 1918. An infection in Sonny’s left mastoid caused him to lose much of his hearing in that ear when he was a toddler.
Except for a 1965 shoplifting arrest, he chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps into a life of crime and instead worked as a used car salesperson, apprentice printer, and tire distributor. The year was 1966, and Albert Francis Brown became Sonny’s legal name. Mae Capone is said to have warned her son, Sonny, “not to do what your father did. ‘He broke my heart’
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Al Capone’s Death
Al Capone was freed from prison on November 16th, 1939, due to his deteriorating health. However, even though John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore had been referred to treat his paresis, they declined to do so due to his notoriety, but Union Memorial Hospital agreed to do so. A few weeks after his hospitalization was over, Al set out for Palm Island, Florida. For the first time since World War II, Capone was given the drug penicillin, which slowed the course of his paralysis.
Psychiatrists and Al’s primary care physician both determined in 1946 that he had “the mentality of a 12-year-old child.” He had a stroke on January 21, 1947, and after regaining consciousness, Capone got sick, eventually developing bronchopneumonia and going into cardiac arrest on January 22, 1947. When Al’s heart stopped beating on January 25th, he was rushed to Palm Island Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago after a private funeral. In 1950, the remains of Al, his father, and his brother Salvatore were relocated to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
Al Capone’s Real Estate
As recently as 1929, Miami Beach mob boss Al Capone paid $40,000 for a 6,077-square-foot house in Palm Island. A 30,000-square-foot property and a 30,000-square-foot house were sold by his widow in 1952. It sold for $10.75 million in September of 2021, when it had seven bedrooms and five bathrooms.