Scarface and the Untouchable

by Max Allan Collins

  IREY AND T-MEN: Irey and Slocum, Tax Dodgers, pp. 25–65. T-Men (1974), directed by Anthony Mann (New York: Sony Wonder, 2005), DVD. Rappleye and Becker, All-American Mafioso, pp. 118–121.

  Prologue

  ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE: CT, February 14–15, 1929 (February 15, “brains”). CHE, February 15–16, 1929 (February 15, “Nobody shot me”). Cook County Coroner’s Office, Statement of Effects and Estate, February 14, 1929; Frank Gusenburg [sic] Autopsy Report, February 14, 1929; Statement of Mrs. Josephine Morin, February 14, 1929; Statement of Mrs. Max Landesman, February 14, 1929; Statement of Mr. Clair McAllister, February 14, 1929; Patrolmen Connelley and Devane, memo to Commanding Officer, 36th District, Re: “Murder of Peter Gusenberg, Frank Gusenberg, Albert Weinshenk [sic], John May, James Clark, Adam Heyer, J. Snyder, Alias Hayes,” February 15, 1929; Statement of Sam Schneider, February 17, 1929; 36th District Police Report, March 28, 1929; Acting Deputy Commissioner of Detectives, memo to Commissioner of Police, February 1929 [?], all MM. Autopsy Reports for Frank Gusenberg, Peter Gusenberg, Albert Kachallek (Alias James Clark), John May, Reinhardt Schwimmer, and Albert Weinshank, February 1929, Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, Chicago, IL. Sullivan, Rattling the Cup, pp. 192–194. Calvin Goddard, “The Valentine Day Massacre: A Study in Ammunition-Tracing,” The American Journal of Police Science 1 (January–February 1930), pp. 60, 73, 75. Pasley, Al Capone, pp. 118–119, 254. Burns, One-Way Ride, pp. 256–265. Charles DeLacy, “The Inside on Chicago’s Notorious St. Valentine Massacre,” pt. 1, True Detective, March 1931, pp. 53–55, 96–97. Kobler, Capone, pp. 250–253. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 209, 212–214. Helmer and Bilek, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, pp. 3–11, 99–100, 161, 232–233. Kyle and Doyle, American Gun, pp. 157, 175–176. Lt. Mike Kline, personal interview with ABS, October 2, 2013. William Gannaway, phone interview with ABS, November 24, 2015. James P. Sledge, personal interview with ABS, April 19, 2016.

  The original St. Valentine’s Day Massacre guns remain with the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department in St. Joseph, Michigan, which seized them as evidence in 1929. Lt. Mike Kline, the keeper of these historic weapons, showed them to ABS in October 2013, and his vivid description of the crime was invaluable in writing this account. Lt. Kline’s theory, based on the position of shell casings visible in photographs and his personal knowledge of the ins and outs of these weapons, is that the killers waited to use the second Thompson, equipped with the stick, until they first spent the one with the drum. Coroner Herbert N. Bundesen’s report on the autopsies of the massacre victims (see Bergreen, Capone, p. 316) confirms the gunmen fired into the prostrate bodies of the men as they lay on the floor.

  ABS gained vital insights into the Thompson submachine gun from a firing demonstration arranged by the Norfolk field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Chesapeake Police Department firing range on September 18, 2015.

  In 2012, the dropped revolver was on display, with its original evidence envelope and alongside the bricks from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre wall, at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Eig (Get Capone, pp. 199, 250–253) largely bases his theory of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on a statement the dying Gusenberg allegedly made to police: “Cops did it.” From this, and other spurious information, Eig goes on to claim that the men wearing police uniforms really were cops. But he offers no source for Gusenberg’s supposed statement, vaguely citing it (on p. 428) as “contained in some accounts of Tom Loftus’s statement to police, February 14, 1929.”

  The police reports, articles, and books cited above agree Gusenberg said nothing about the men who killed him except how they were dressed. A few present differing versions of Gusenberg’s last words to police, but none match Eig’s account. Burns (One-Way Ride, pp. 265–266) offers a similar version, in which Gusenberg claims that “coppers done it.” Eig appears to have based his account on Helmer and Bilek (St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, p. 7), but they offer no source. See also Binder, Al Capone’s Beer Wars, pp. 195–196.

  REACTION TO MASSACRE: CHE, February 15, 1929 (“Chicago gangsters graduated”). CT, February 15, 1929; February 19, 1929. James O’Donnell Bennett, “Chicago Gangland: Golden Flood Makes Czars, Befouls City,” CT, April 7, 1929 (“Only one gang”). Sullivan, Rattling the Cup, pp. 193–194. Pasley, Al Capone, pp. 124, 255. Burns, One-Way Ride, p. 30. DeLacy, “Inside on Chicago’s,” pt. 1, p. 53. Trohan, Political Animals, p. 25 (“I’ve got more”). Kobler, Capone, p. 253. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 219–220. Bergreen, Capone, pp. 315–316. Helmer and Bilek, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, pp. 9–10 (10, “the circle of”), 95–98, 108–110, 133–134.

  CAPONE DESCRIPTION: William G. Shepherd, “$119.25 Poison Money,” Collier’s, October 16, 1926, p. 27 (“The business pays”). Alva Johnston, “Gangs Á La Mode,” The New Yorker, August 25, 1928, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1928/08/25/gangs-a-la-mode (accessed March 10, 2017). Pasley, Al Capone, pp. 9, 60 (“the most-shot-at”). W. R. Burnett, “The Czar of Chicago,” The Saturday Review of Literature, October 18, 1930, p. 240 (“Capone is no”). Burns, One-Way Ride, pp. 33 (“Everybody calls me”), 310–312 (312, “Once in the”). Mary Borden, “Chicago Revisited,” Harper’s, April 1931, pp. 541–542 (“No one is”). Alva Johnston, “Capone, King of Crime,” Vanity Fair, May 1931, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1931/05/al-capone-chicago-new-york-prohibition (accessed June 22, 2017). Katharine Fullerton Gerould, “Jessica and Al Capone,” Harper’s, June 1931, pp. 93–97 (93, “one of the”). IRS-2. Ross, Trial of Al Capone, pp. 64–65. Anonymous, “The Capone I Knew,” True Detective, June 1947, pp. 45–47. Irey and Slocum, Tax Dodgers, p. 37. Allsop, Bootleggers, p. 285. Kobler, Capone, pp. 12–13, 285. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 21, 177. Bergreen, Capone, pp. 49–50. Helmer, Al Capone and His American Boys, p. 182 (“had no regard”). Bair, Al Capone, pp. 61 (“go buy some”), 67–68, 77, 182, 208.

  NESS DESCRIPTION: Ness MS., p. 22, in ENPS, Roll 1, Folder 2. Elisabeth Ness, “My Husband, Eliot Ness,” TV Guide, March 11–17, 1961, p. 6. Peter Jedick, “Eliot Ness,” Cleveland, April 1976, p. 52, RM. Abbie Jones, “The Real Eliot Ness,” Tucson Citizen, July 17, 1987. Steven Nickel, “The Real Eliot Ness,” American History Illustrated, October 1987, p. 44. Scott Martell, “ ‘Untouchable’ Memories,” News-Press, December 7, 1994, PWH (“I have never,” “extremely modest,” “who could get”). Lew Wilkinson, interviewed in “Eliot Ness: Untouchable” (1997), Biography, directed by Michael Husain (New York: New Video, 2001), VHS. Heimel, Eliot Ness, p. 100 (“immediately strikes one”).

  CAPONE AND NESS’S FATHERS: Fraley, “Real Eliot Ness,” p. 28 (“who never cheated”). Bair, Al Capone, pp. 5–7, 33.

  Chapter One

  CAPONE AS IMMIGRANT: CEA, October 13, 1926. Allsop, Bootleggers, p. 283 (“I’m no foreigner”). Bergreen, Capone, pp. 20–23. Bair, Al Capone, p. 10.

  BROOKLYN: Riis, How the Other Half Lives, pp. 1–69, 137–165, 199–209. Julian Ralph, “The City of Brooklyn,” in Ellen, Murphy, and Weld, A Treasury of Brooklyn, p. 53. Weld, Brooklyn Is America, pp. 138–143. Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn, pp. 6–7, 16, 40–49, 66–69, 80. Hanson, Monk Eastman, pp. 17–25.

  GABRIELE CAPONE / AL’S BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE: C. R. F. Beall, Neuro-Psychiatric Examination of Alphonse Capone, May 18, 1932, in Box 0202, “[Capone, Alphonse] Capone-Atlanta #1 [40886-A] [Folder 3 of 4]” Folder, BOP-AP. Joseph Mulvaney, “A Brooklyn Childhood,” in Ellen, Murphy, and Weld, A Treasury of Brooklyn, pp. 99–104. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 17–19. Bergreen, Capone, pp. 28–30, 32. Capone, Uncle Al Capone, pp. 17–25. McArthur, Two Gun Hart, pp. 17, 19. Bair, Al Capone, pp. 5–36. Lombroso, Criminal Man, pp. 1–41, 114–131.

  NITTO IN BROOKLYN: Eghigian, After Capone, pp. 3–16.

  VINCENZO CAPONE / JAMES HART: McArthur, Two Gun Hart, pp. 7–24. Bair, Al Capone, p. 14.

  BOYS OF NAVY STREET: Daniel Fuchs, “Where Al Capone Grew Up,” The New Republic, September 9, 1931, pp. 96–97. Bergreen, Capone, p. 35. Balsamo and Balsa
mo, Young Al Capone, pp. 1–9 (7, “We are the”). Bair, Al Capone, pp. 10–11.

  TORRIO IN NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN: Allsop, Bootleggers, pp. 48–49. McPhaul, Johnny Torrio, pp. 38–48. Kobler, Capone, pp. 25–26. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 23–24, 27–28. Keefe, Man Who Got Away, pp. 73–75.

  FRANKIE YALE: Meyer Berger, “Mom, Murder Ain’t Polite,” in Ellen, Murphy, and Weld, A Treasury of Brooklyn, p. 339. Kobler, Capone, pp. 35–36. Kobler, Ardent Spirits, pp. 249–250. Peterson, The Mob, pp. 149–152. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 28–29. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 162–163.

  CAPONE’S EARLY GANG ACTIVITIES / HITTING TEACHER: Fuchs, “Where Al Capone,” pp. 95–97 (97, “as a training”). Kobler, Capone, p. 26. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 21–23. Bergreen, Capone, pp. 35–40. Iorizzo, Al Capone, p. 27. Bair, Al Capone, pp. 10–11, 14–19.

  HARVARD INN: Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 28–32.

  CAPONE’S SCARRING AND SYPHILIS: Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 33–34 (33, “You got a”). Bergreen, Capone, pp. 44–46, 49. Balsamo and Balsamo, Young Al Capone, pp. 109–124.

  MAE COURTSHIP AND MARRAIGE: Fuchs, “Where Al Capone,” p. 97 (“something of a”). Bair, Al Capone, pp. 22–31 (29, “colored”), 72, 134.

  SONNY’S BIRTH AND SYPHILIS: Bair, Al Capone, pp. 30–31, 35.

  CHICAGO HISTORY: Keefe, Man Who Got Away, pp. 25–43.

  TORRIO AND COLOSIMO: McPhaul, Johnny Torrio, pp. 85–86. Keefe, Guns and Roses, p. 107. Bilek, First Vice Lord, pp. 25–83, 98–100, 128–132, 151–158, 189–261. Lombardo, Black Hand, pp. 110–113.

  PROHIBITION: Baltimore American, January 17, 1920 (“Heaven rejoices”). NYT, January 17, 1920. Pasley, Al Capone, pp. 92, 222. Kobler, Capone, p. 69. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, p. 77. Behr, Prohibition, pp. 82–83. Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, pp. 68–80, 98–102, 109–110, 124–131. Okrent, Last Call, pp. 1–4, 7–114.

  TORRIO AND PROHIBITION: Landesco, “Organized Crime,” pp. 912–913. McPhaul, Johnny Torrio, pp. 121, 141–147, 156–160. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 60–62. Bilek, First Vice Lord, pp. 218–219.

  COLOSIMO DIVORCE AND MURDER: Kobler, Capone, pp. 64–65, 70–76. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 62–65. Lindberg, Return to the Scene, pp. 369, 373. Bilek, First Vice Lord, pp. 17–24, 221–251, 264.

  CAPONE’S MOVE TO CHICAGO AND GABRIEL’S DEATH: Kobler, Capone, pp. 36, 102–103. McPhaul, Johnny Torrio, pp. 121, 460. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, pp. 35–36, 53, 67–68. Bergreen, Capone, pp. 36, 57–58. Bair, Al Capone, pp. 33, 37–38. Binder, Al Capone’s Beer Wars, p. 121.

  Biographer Bergreen (Capone, pp. 56–57) claims Capone worked as a bookkeeper in Baltimore between living in Brooklyn and moving to Chicago, apparently based on a single interview with the son of Capone’s supposed employer. No other evidence supports Bergreen’s claim. Capone didn’t reference this job when giving his employment history upon arriving at prison in 1932, and his granddaughter, Diane, disputes the Baltimore story because Mae never mentioned it. (Mario Gomes, “Al Capone Myths,” My Al Capone Museum, http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id213.htm (accessed June 23, 2017). Bair, Al Capone, p. 340.)

  Biographer Bair largely accepts the bookkeeper story, even though Diane Capone (one of her major sources) disagrees. She also has Al Capone returning from Baltimore for his father’s funeral in 1919, even though all the other biographies date Gabriel’s death to November 1920 (as do both of his tombstones) and the U.S. Census still lists him as alive earlier that year. (Bair, Al Capone, pp. 31–37, 340. 1920 U.S. Census Record for Gabriel Capone.)

  Both Bergreen and Bair use the story to similar effect, claiming Capone attempted to go straight in Baltimore and only chose the rackets after his father’s death. This is consistent with the view of Capone as a victim of circumstance, held by his descendants and apologists. As Bair (Al Capone, pp. 327–328) puts it, “The family believes that he might have become the lifelong businessman he always claimed to be had it not been for his father’s death and the need for him to become the main breadwinner for his extended family. If he was indeed working as a bookkeeper in his only honest job, and if his father had lived, they think there is every possibility that he might have risen through the ranks of accounting and financial affairs to the top of the legitimate corporate world.” But the best evidence indicates that Capone had already chosen to join Torrio’s operation in 1919, before Gabriel died. The decision to enter Chicago’s rackets was his, and his father’s death had nothing to do with it.

  Chapter Two

  NESS INTRODUCTION: The Story of Eliot Ness: A Brief Biography (campaign pamphlet, 1947), p. 5, NLEM (“the thrifty and”). Ness and Fraley, The Untouchables, pp. 6, 87. Heimel, Eliot Ness, p. 20 (“What I now”).

  PEDER/PETER NESS: “Peter Ness,” Album of Genealogy and Biography, pp. 207–208, SSGHS. Christian H. Jevne, “A Norwegian Immigrant in Chicago in the 1860’s,” in Pierce and Norris, As Others See Chicago, p. 178 (“There are better”). Ness and Fraley, The Untouchables, pp. 86–87. Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 14. Bjarne Jørmeland, “Gangsterjeger Fra Ålvundfjord,” Tidens Krav, June 25, 2011, pp. 25–26, RM. “The Ness Family,” Where the Trails Cross, vol. 44, no. 4 (Summer 2014), p. 83.

  Ness and Fraley (The Untouchables, pp. 86–87) claim that Peder Ness arrived in America on the day President James Garfield was shot, but Jørmeland (p. 26) documents his arrival two months prior.

  KENSINGTON, PULLMAN, AND ROSELAND: Richard T. Ely, “Pullman: A Social Study,” Harper’s Magazine, February 1885, pp. 455–465 (464, “the company care”). “Modern Methods in Bread Baking,” The Calumet Weekly Index, April 30, 1910, in Where the Trails Cross, vol. 19, no. 3 (Spring 1989), p. 98 (“little more than”). Theophilus Schmid, “Business History of Roseland” (unpublished manuscript), May 1, 1931, pp. 1–3, 5, in Box 4, Folder 31, CRCC. Simon Dekker, History of Roseland and Vicinity (unpublished manuscript), p. 178, in Box 5, “11 Bakeries, pp. 177–186” Folder, CRCC. CT, March 28, 1948 (“Bumtown”). Buder, Pullman, pp. 41–44 (44, “elevated and refined,” “strictly business proposition”), 53 (“busy season”), 63–64, 66–69, 83–84, 88–89, 119–123 (120, “Leave the well-paved”; 122, “raise hell”). Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 2 (“discontent and desire,” “evil influences”). Pacyga, Chicago, pp. 121–125. Papke, The Pullman Case, pp. 11–14.

  NESS BAKERIES: “Peter Ness,” Album of Genealogy and Biography, p. 208, SSGHS. Adelman, Touring Pullman, pp. 14, 38. “Modern Methods in Bread Baking,” p. 98. Chicago City Directory 1892, p. 1103. Lakeside Business Directory 1892, p. 1661.

  Chicago’s streets were renumbered in 1909; prior to that time, the address of the first Ness bakery was 2398 Kensington Avenue. (Plan of Re-Numbering, p. 83.) We use post-1909 addresses throughout to avoid confusion.

  EMMA KING NESS, AND EFFIE, NORA, AND CHARLES NESS: 1900 U.S. Census Record for Peter Ness; 1910 U.S. Census Record for Eliot Ness. “Peter Ness,” Album of Genealogy and Biography, pp. 207–208, SSGHS. Ness and Fraley, The Untouchables, p. 23. Jørmeland, p. 26. Tucker, Eliot Ness and the Untouchables, p. 13. “The Ness Family,” p. 83. The Album of Genealogy and Biography gives the year for Peter’s immigration as 1880, and the year of his marriage to Emma as 1885.

  BAKERY FIRE: CT, January 15, 1893 (“The origin of”).

  PULLMAN STRIKE: “Peter Ness,” Album of Genealogy and Biography, pp. 207–208 (207, “reputation for integrity”), SSGHS. Ness and Fraley, The Untouchables, p. 23. Buder, Pullman, pp. 148–158, 178–185, 200–210. Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 38. Pacyga, Chicago, pp. 143–147. Papke, The Pullman Case, pp. 10, 21–23 (22, “the paternalism of Pullman”), 25–37, 84.

  An investigation into Eliot Ness’s background conducted in 1933 by the Bureau of Investigation (later known as the FBI) also documented Peter Ness’s standing in the neighborhood. George E. Q. Johnson, who lived in Roseland in the early 1900s and went on to prosecute Capone, said he had known the Ness family “for approximately twenty-five years [since 1908] and that [Peter Ness] was well respected in the community.
” A childhood friend of Eliot’s, R. E. Jones, told the BI investigator that Eliot “comes from a very good family,” and that Peter “has an excellent reputation in the community.” (W. S. Murphy, Report on Eliot Ness, November 15, 1933, pp. 5–6, FBI-ENA. See Also “Eliot Ness Is Appointed Chief Dry Investigator,” Calumet Index, April 29, 1932, in ENPS, Roll 1, Scrapbook 1, p. 46.)

  ELIOT NESS BIRTH: 1900 U.S. Census Record for Peter Ness. Chicago City Directory 1900, p. 1394. “Peter Ness,” Album of Genealogy and Biography, p. 208, SSGHS. Paul Havens, “Personalities in Law Enforcement: Eliot Ness,” True Detective, November 1939, p. 61 (“at least a”). “About Eliot Ness,” CN, September 22, 1947, in “Ness, Eliot” (microfiche), CPC. Jedick, “Eliot Ness,” p. 50. “The Ness Family” and “The King Family,” Where the Trails Cross, vol. 44, no. 4 (Summer 2014), pp. 83–85.

  NESS/CAPONE NEIGHBORHOODS: Robert E. Park, “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,” in The City, ed. Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, pp. 40–41. Landesco, “Organized Crime,” p. 1057 (“The good citizen”). Shaw and Myers, “The Juvenile Delinquent,” pp. 650–661. Theophilus Schmid, “Business History of Roseland,” May 1, 1931, pp. 3–7, 9, in Box 4, Folder 31, CRCC. Reckless, Vice in Chicago, pp. 281–285. Ronald G. Patterson, “The Historical Geography of 300 Block West on 110th Place, Roseland Community, Chicago, Illinois” (unpublished manuscript), Chicago Teachers College, March 1964, p. 8, in Box 5, Folder 36, CRCC. Robert Raffin and Roland Raffin, “Kensington and Pullman Histories,” SSGHS. Buder, Pullman, pp. 122 (“pretty homes and”), 222–223. Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 38. “The Parise Family,” Where the Trails Cross, vol. 19, no. 3 (Spring 1989), p. 96.