During Prohibition, Al Capone became the biggest bootlegger in American history, and ruled the Chicago Mob for six years. But there's more to this legendary gangster than you might think. Let's open the vault and explore the tragic life of Al Capone.
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00:00During Prohibition, Al Capone became the biggest bootlegger in American history, and ruled
00:05the Chicago mob for six years.
00:07But there's more to this legendary gangster than you might think.
00:10Let's open the vault and explore the tragic life of Al Capone.
00:14In 1930, the city of Chicago named Al Capone his public enemy number one.
00:18Most knew Capone by a completely different nickname, Scarface.
00:22The gangster sported three prominent scars on the side of his neck and left cheek, and
00:26they gave him a pretty intimidating look.
00:28Whenever he was asked about them, the crime lord would say that he was injured in World
00:32War I.
00:33"...hand-to-hand with the Kaiser himself...that is how you got your scars...right Al."
00:42The truth, however, was very different.
00:45As a young man, Capone worked as a bouncer for Frankie Yale.
00:48One fateful evening, the 18-year-old Al spotted a girl named Lena across the bar.
00:52But when he tried asking her out, she turned him down...twice.
00:56As she was leaving, Capone tried out one last line, giving her a foul-mouthed compliment
01:01on her figure.
01:02Lena didn't take it as a compliment, and neither did her brother, Frank Galluccio.
01:06Infuriated, Galluccio pulled out a knife and went to work on Capone's face, slashing him
01:11to ribbons and forcing Capone to get 80 stitches.
01:14Frankie Yale intervened before things could get any more violent, and it would eventually
01:18turn out that Capone could be a surprisingly forgiving guy...when he wanted to be.
01:23I want him dead!
01:24I want his family dead!
01:26I want his house burnt to the ground!"
01:28After experiencing his knife work firsthand, Capone later hired Galluccio to work as his
01:33bodyguard.
01:34As one of nine children, Al Capone had quite a few brothers, but James Vincenzo Capone
01:39chose a very different career from his most famous relative.
01:43After leaving New York at a young age, James made his way out west, arriving in Nebraska
01:47in 1919.
01:49Inspired by Hollywood cowboy William S. Hart, the older Capone brother started wearing spurs,
01:5410-gallon hats, and ivory-handled revolvers.
01:57He even changed his name, calling himself Richard Two-Gun Hart.
02:00Before long, Hart was a legend across the state.
02:03A deadly accurate marksman, he became a prohibition enforcement agent, going undercover to bust
02:08up stills, track down murderers, fistfight bootleggers, and even rescue an entire family
02:13from a flash flood.
02:15In true romance novel fashion, he even wound up getting married to a woman he pulled from
02:19the water just a few months later.
02:21Eventually, Hart would be tasked with catching moonshiners on reservations, and once served
02:26as President Calvin Coolidge's bodyguard.
02:29Unfortunately, things eventually got pretty rough for Hart.
02:32He was fired after killing a fugitive and suffered from failing eyesight.
02:35Desperate and out of money, he eventually asked for some cash from his brother Ralph,
02:40who was very much involved in Al's family business.
02:43Hart and Scarface himself reunited in 1939, after the crime boss was freed from Alcatraz.
02:48Then, in 1951, the government subpoenaed Hart to testify against Ralph, and the prohibition
02:53agent was finally forced to admit he was a Capone.
02:56Hart passed away at the age of 60 in 1952, just five years after his infamous brother.
03:02Of all of Al Capone's many crimes, the most infamous by far is his murderous magnum opus,
03:07the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
03:09As the name implies, it went down on February 14th, 1929, but the trouble behind the slaughter
03:15had been brewing for years.
03:16Chicago was divided between two gangs.
03:19George Buggs Moran ran the Irish Mob on the North Side, and there was bad blood with Capone's
03:24gang that involved more than a few machine guns.
03:26Eventually, Capone decided to end it all by sending Buggs a love letter made out of lead.
03:31On February 14th, seven members of Moran's North Side gang showed up at a garage on North
03:35Clark Street to buy some whiskey from a bootlegger.
03:38Once they stepped inside the garage, four or five men showed up on the scene, some dressed
03:42as police officers.
03:44Probably thinking this was a raid, Moran's men didn't fight back when these cops ordered
03:48them up against a wall.
03:50Seconds later, their bodies were riddled with bullets.
03:53Armed with shotguns and tommy guns, Capone's men unloaded 70 rounds, which has got to be
03:57the world's worst Valentine's present.
03:59Moran himself was late for the appointment and took off when he saw the cops at the garage,
04:03a decision that saved his life, but that was the end of the North Side gang.
04:07He was never arrested for the crime, and no one could prove Capone was behind the murders.
04:12He'd been in Florida at the time, soaking up some sun.
04:15Even though he was the most famous crook in America, Al Capone was incredibly difficult
04:20to catch.
04:21The mobster was skilled at distancing himself from anything illegal, and it was almost impossible
04:25to prove he was earning money from his criminal enterprises.
04:28Capone spent millions on bribes to buy friends in high places, and since most ordinary folks
04:33were too scared to testify against him, Capone lived beyond the law.
04:37You got nothing, nothing, and if you were a man, you would have done it now."
04:41But not every cop in Chicago was corrupt.
04:44Take Prohibition Officer Elliot Ness, for example.
04:46One of the few clean men in a dirty city, Ness headed up a crew of agents known as the
04:51Untouchables, so nicknamed because they refused to accept bribes.
04:55While their impact has been exaggerated in pop culture, the Untouchables were definitely
05:00a pain in Capone's side, as they made a habit of busting up his illegal breweries.
05:04Needless to say, that made them plenty of enemies.
05:07The mob tapped Ness' phone, repeatedly stole his car, and filled one of his informants
05:11full of lead, but the Untouchables soldiered on, building an indictment against the crime
05:16lord with a staggering 5,000 counts of bootlegging.
05:19However, despite Ness' hard work, the Untouchables weren't the ones who brought Capone down.
05:25Instead of hitting Scarface with bootlegging charges, the federal government decided to
05:29focus on the mob boss' income taxes.
05:31After all, the feds figured tax evasion would play better with a jury, since Prohibition
05:36had fallen out of favor, and indicting a guy for providing people with booze wouldn't exactly
05:40turn the public against him.
05:41The FBI, the IRS, and the Treasury Department spent a lot of man-hours linking Capone to
05:46his illegal establishments, and luckily, they discovered he'd once endorsed a check related
05:51to his gambling business.
05:53That, coupled with the testimony of a few brave souls, was enough to build a case, and
05:57in 1931, Capone was put on trial.
06:00Of course, he tried bribing the jury, but when the judge swapped out juries at the last
06:04minute, Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion, earning the 32-year-old
06:09crime lord 11 years behind bars.
06:12Life in the slammer was pretty easy for Al Capone.
06:15At first, the gangster was initially shipped to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, where
06:19Big Al basically had his run of the joint.
06:22He had his own radio, he had a carpeted prison cell, and he kept a whole lot of cash lying
06:26around so he could bribe the guards for favors.
06:29The warden was at his beck and call, and he was allowed visitors every single day.
06:33But all that changed in 1934, when Scarface was sent to Alcatraz.
06:38Things on the Rock were a bit different for Capone.
06:40Alcatraz was a long way from Chicago, housed some of the most notorious criminals in American
06:45history, and boasted a warden who did not play games.
06:49Instead of lounging in luxury, Capone spent his days working in the laundry or mopping
06:53up the showers.
06:54The mob boss also found out, perhaps surprisingly, that he was pretty low in the Alcatraz pecking
06:59order.
07:00When Capone refused to take part in a prison-wide protest, for example, two separate inmates
07:05attacked him on two separate occasions.
07:08Another time, Capone made the mistake of trying to cut in line at the prison barbershop.
07:12This didn't sit well with bank robber James Tex Lucas, who would later teach Capone about
07:16prison etiquette by slicing up the gangster with half a pair of scissors.
07:20Along with the standard recreation options you'd expect from federal prison, the one
07:24special comfort that Warden James A. Johnston did allow Capone during his time in Alcatraz
07:28was permission to start his own band.
07:31The little group was called the Rock Islanders.
07:33Capone himself played banjo, and believe it or not, he wrote plenty of love songs for
07:37the band.
07:38The most famous was called Madonna Mia, and most believe it's about his wife May.
07:42Apparently, he missed her quite a bit while he was behind bars.
07:45The original sheet music sold for $65,000 in 2009, and a new version of the song was
07:50released the same year.
07:52Give it a listen, and you'll find some heartwarming lyrics in there, like,
07:55"'You're the bloom on the roses, you're the charm that reposes in the heart of a song.'"
08:00That's shockingly sappy for the man whose most famous Valentine's Day involved the massacre
08:04of his enemies, but it just goes to show that even notorious murderers can have a romantic
08:08side.
08:09There's no indication of whether Capone's band was any good, but even if it wasn't,
08:13it was probably worth the racket to keep Capone away from the baseball field.
08:17The guy had a killer swing.
08:25While Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison, he only served about seven, and
08:29the reason for his early release meant that he definitely couldn't enjoy it.
08:34Capone was suffering from a devastating case of syphilis that had made its way to his brain.
08:39After being treated in Baltimore, Capone spent his final years with his wife at his Florida
08:43home, surviving on an underworld stipend of just $600 a week, a far cry from the millions
08:49he once spent.
08:50Even worse, Capone spent most of his time talking with people who weren't really there.
08:54Finally, the infamous Al Capone, sick, tired, and confused, died in January 1947 at the
09:00age of 48.
09:02Capone both experienced and caused a lot of tragedy in his life, but one of his most cringe-inducing
09:06effects was felt long after his death.
09:09April 21, 1986, was supposed to be a big comeback for Geraldo Rivera.
09:14The TV personality had recently been fired from ABC News, and was hoping to hop back
09:18into the limelight with a little help from Scarface.
09:21It turned out that underground tunnels had been discovered beneath Capone's old hangout,
09:25the Lexington Hotel, and Rivera was going to excavate the ruins and see what treasures
09:29had been hidden beneath the streets by the 20th century's most notorious gangster.
09:33Titled The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, this two-hour special aired live on national
09:38television and featured talking-head historians and old-timey footage interspersed with scenes
09:43of Rivera firing a Tommy gun.
09:45Hoping to build suspense, Rivera had IRS officials and crime scene investigators on scene, just
09:50in case he discovered some of Capone's cash or a stack of dead bodies.
09:55Unfortunately for both the host and his viewers, Rivera stepped inside these long-hidden passageways
10:00after cracking open the wall with dynamite and discovered… a whole lot of nothing.
10:05Other than dirt and a couple of bottles, the place was completely empty.
10:09It was a major embarrassment, but hey, despite the disappointing ending, The Mystery of Al
10:13Capone's Vaults was watched in 30 million homes across America, beating out major TV
10:18shows, and definitely gave Rivera's career a boost.
10:21Then again, having your most brutally anticlimactic fail broadcast to 30 million people is the
10:27kind of thing most of us would have nightmares about.