Al Copone Biography

Alphonse "SCARFACE" Capone

Born in New York City, in 1899, by parents Gabriel and Teresa Capone, Alphonse Capone was blessed with a historical blend of ruthless gangster in his blood. Al Capone's parents immigrated to the United States in 1893, from Naples, Italy. Al Capone came from a huge family. He was the fourth oldest of nine children. At birth, Capone's parents never would have believed that their son, Alphonse Capone, would grow up to be a murderous thug without remorse.

As a child, Al Capone was very wise when it came to living on the streets of New York. He had a clever and somewhat ingenious mind when it came to street smarts. If the act of plotting a crime was in question, Al Capone was as sharp as they come. As far as school goes, Capone was a near illiterate. He came from a poverty stricken neighborhood in Brooklyn, so education was not a top priority. When Capone reached the age of eleven, he became a member of a juvenile gang on his street called "The Bim Booms". While this was taking place, around the year 1900, about eleven percent of all the foreign born population in the United States were Italian. Being a part of the firstborn U.S. generation, Capone was forced to either deal with a miserable low wage job with a hopeless future or make an improvement for himself by committing first petty and then serious crime. Al Capone's philosophy was to the effect that laws only applied to people who had enough money to abide by them.

While in the Bim Booms Gang, Capone was taught how to defend himself by way of a knife, and if needed, by way of a revolver. By the time Capone reached sixth grade he had already become a street brawler. Capone never responded well to authority and for this very reason his schooling would soon come to an end. While attending school, Capone was responsible for beating a female teacher by knocking her to the ground. The principal of the school rushed in and chastised the young Capone and for this very reason he would never return to school again.

After giving up on school, Al Capone took up odd jobs such as working as a pin setter at a bowling alley, and working behind the counter at a candy store. Capone was definitely a night owl. He was a pool shark winning every eightball tournament held in Brooklyn. He also became an expert knife fighter. Although the Bim Booms Gang was the first gang Capone ever entered, The Five Pointers quickly picked him up. The Five Pointers was the most powerful gang in New York City. The gang was headed by Johnny Torrio, and was made up of over 1,500 thugs who specialized in burglary, extortion, robbery, assault, and murder. While working as a strong enforcer under Torrio, Capone learned all the lethal tricks that would propel him from rags to riches in no time at all. Capone was very grateful to Torrio and is quoted as saying: "I looked on Johnny as my adviser and father and the party that made it possible for me to get my start."

In 1925, Capone became boss when Torrio, seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, surrendered control and retiring to Brooklyn. Capone had built a fearsome reputation in the ruthless gang rivalries of the period, struggling to acquire and retain "racketeering rights" to several areas of Chicago. That reputation grew as rival gangs were eliminated or mollified, and the suburb of Cicero became a fiefdom of the Capone mob. Torrio first set Capone out to do all of his dirty work. "Capone was sent to beat up loan shark victims behind on their payments, then a pimp, beating up girls who were holding out on their nightly take." Torrio finally a job as a bouncer at the Harvard Inn. By this time Capone was recognized by his gang as being a vicious fighter with both fists and knives. He also became an excellent marksman with both a revolver and automatic weapons.

Perhaps the St. Valentine's Day Massacre on February 14, 1929,might be regarded as the culminating violence of the Chicago gang era, As seven members or associates of the "Bugs" Moran mob were machine- gunned against a garage wall by rivals posing as police men. The massacre was generally ascribed to the Capone mob, although Al Capone himself was in Florida at that time. The investigative jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the 1920's and the early 1930's was more limited than it is now, and the gang warfare and depredations of the period were not within the FBI's investigative authority. The Bureau's investigation of Al Capone arose from his reluctance to appear before a Federal Grand Jury on March 12, 1929, in response to a subpoena. On March 11, his lawyers formally filed for postponement of his appearance, submitting a physician's affidavit dated March 5, which attested that Capone, in Miami, had been suffering from bronchial pneumonia, had been confined to bed from January 13 to February 23, and that it would be dangerous to Capone's health to travel to Chicago. His appearance date before the grand