Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  As soon as he was charged, Nitti went into hiding and managed to elude federal agents for almost six months until someone decided to shadow his wife, for she, if anyone, would know where he was. Agents followed her as she drove a car with stolen license plates to his latest in a string of hideouts, where he was captured in October 1930 and sent to prison. Guzik was indicted in November 1930, after informers told the Feds that he was trying to sabotage the case against him by exerting the pressure of (as the agent Frank J. Wilson summarized it) “political influence or otherwise.” Fearing that Guzik’s attempts to coerce or threaten witnesses who would testify against him would succeed, Wilson exerted so much effort that the trial took one month from indictment to conviction before Guzik was also on his way to Leavenworth for the next five years.

  Federal agents were emboldened by the success of tracking Nitti down and convicting Guzik, and they did not hesitate to let it be known that those convictions were only the warm-up for Al Capone, their biggest target and the one their sights were set on from the beginning. And in Chicago, it would appear that some of the city’s leading citizens had had their fill of him. They were equally determined to bring down Al Capone, and they were ready to start the process of doing so.

  Chapter 15

  A NEW DAY FOR CHICAGO

  The elite group of private citizens known as the Secret Six were well aware that Capone’s admirers dubbed him the unofficial mayor of Chicago. Even though loath to admit it, they had to agree that if he wanted to run for the office, he would probably be elected, and honestly at that—no ballot box stuffing would be needed. By 1930, he was boasting to any reporter who wanted to write about him of everything he did to boost the city’s economic welfare, particularly of the six to seven thousand citizens on his payroll. He was more discreet about the fact that this number consisted mainly of civil servants, including more than 60 percent of the entire police force. The horrified Secret Six decided that this could not be allowed to continue. In retrospect, they were so fixated on destroying Al Capone that they gave little thought of what would happen to the unfortunate citizens who would be unemployed once he was gone. All they cared about was making Al Capone go away.

  The Secret Six came from the class of wealthy men who had been well educated, were well traveled on the contemporary version of the European grand tour, and were all brought up to believe they should contribute to public philanthropy. Some were first generation, self-created millionaires; others were the descendants of men who had created enormous fortunes. They led sophisticated lives, no doubt most among them representing the Lake Shore Drive socialites whom Al derided for drinking his bootleg liquor in private while denouncing him in public. They had access to political power far beyond Chicago’s city limits that he could never hope to match, and once they set their minds to battling him, they could pose a tremendous threat.

  Of the Six themselves, to this day it remains difficult to identify them precisely, for various names have been floated over the years, thus making the “Six” a possible misnomer. Scholars of the Capone era and of crime in Chicago have disagreed about who were the actual members and who were their sympathizers and financial benefactors. As with many historical investigations of this era and of the people who were important in it, there is so much conflicting evidence and so little reliable documentation that, for the time being, no stronger conclusions can be drawn than informed speculation.

  What can be verified about the Secret Six is that they originally banded together as a committee of equals because their wealth and social position placed them on the same footing. And, as usually happens when such groups form, some members assumed a more commanding role than others in the movement to destroy Al Capone. The names of the most likely members have always been drawn from the best known among Chicago’s glittering elite, starting with Charles G. Dawes.

  If Al Capone was Chicago’s “best known citizen,” Dawes most certainly qualified as its “best.” He was a banker who had served in the McKinley administration as comptroller of the currency and, under President Warren G. Harding, was the first director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. In 1925, he became Calvin Coolidge’s vice president and in that same year was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for what was known as the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations. When he focused his attention on Al Capone, he was serving as President Hoover’s ambassador to Great Britain. He had access to the highest seats of power in government and finance, but his protean intelligence also brought him success in fields far beyond them; he was a self-taught pianist and composer whose 1912 “Melody in A Major” was given words in 1951 to become the popular song titled “It’s All in the Game.” Recorded by countless artists who ranged from Nat King Cole to Donny and Marie Osmond, it made Dawes the only vice-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner with a No. 1 pop hit in both Britain and America.

  Another probable member, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, was Dawes’s peer in every sense. As the owner, editor, and publisher of Chicago’s most powerful and influential newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, he was a prime example of what Time magazine called “one of the last anachronistic citadels of muscular personal journalism.” Scholars and critics have long debated his various influences, but all agree that he evoked mixed emotions and was feared and hated even as he was admired and respected. He was a man “bitterly attacked…and warmly defended,” and everyone “realized his power.” McCormick was a curious dichotomy: a staunchly conservative Republican who derided President Hoover as ineffectual and who was at the same time a social drinker who flouted Prohibition publicly and was an outspoken advocate for its repeal. And even as he ridiculed Hoover, he would come to despise Roosevelt and the New Deal.

  The events McCormick chose to focus on in his tightly controlled newspaper domain seemed arbitrary and capricious to some of his critics. For example, when all Chicago was shocked and enthralled by the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which pushed other reformers into action, McCormick did not concentrate his newspaper’s accounts on Capone’s possible involvement; he only became focused on the gang boss after another outrage, the brutal assassination on June 9, 1930, of Jake Lingle, the reporter who was his chief “gangsterologist.” Furious that one of his own had been targeted, McCormick conveniently forgot to tell the public that Lingle was also a friend of Capone’s and on his payroll, which was how he became the source of inside information for the many gangland “scoops” the Tribune scored.

  Lingle’s murder was certainly a primary reason for McCormick’s focus on Capone, but an alternate and equally important reason might have been the attempted murder of Philip Meagher, a construction supervisor who refused to accede to mob demands. Harrison Barnard, the contractor who employed him and who declared himself a member of the Secret Six, claimed credit for galvanizing them and various other citizen groups into taking action after he spent an entire lunchtime conversation persuading Colonel McCormick that something had to be done about the Outfit’s incursion into every aspect of business in Chicago.

  Another committee member name, cited and disputed in equal measure, was Burt A. Massee, who was reportedly the one spurring the others into concentrated action. He had been a member of the coroner’s jury that investigated Lingle’s murder, and that led him to recommend the formation of the first independent crime lab in the United States, the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, which opened on the Northwestern University campus in 1930. Massee was responsible for bringing in Calvin Goddard, M.D., also a possible Secret Six member, who became the lab’s first director. Goddard was an expert on ballistics whose research furthered the creation of one of the most important tools in crime fighting: the comparison microscope that could determine whether bullets were fired from particular weapons. That technology initially put only a mild sort of fear into some gangsters because most did not realize its importance in solving crimes until it became a routine tool that resulted in many gangland convictions.

  This small group of reformers chose its members carefu
lly for what they could contribute to bringing down Al Capone, and two other names are usually cited as completing the membership. Like the first four, the last two were selected for their particular skills. Robert Isham Randolph was an engineer widely praised for his organizational abilities; he is believed by some factions to have been the executive director of the Secret Six, the one who planned daily strategies and put them into effect. Last but certainly not least, they needed someone who could manipulate public opinion through publicity and public relations, and for that they chose Henry Barrett Chamberlin, who was as skilled in manipulating the media and public opinion as Capone. He was trained as a lawyer but spent most of his career as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor and was also instrumental in promoting the founding in 1919 of the Chicago Crime Commission (CCC), which had been largely ineffectual for most of the following decade.

  Chamberlin knew the value of molding public sentiment. Long before he set his sights on Capone, he was one of the first to recognize that a reinvigorated CCC could make a powerful public statement, even though he also knew that its ability to effect change would be minimal. Chamberlin viewed organized crime as a business (albeit an illegal one) and, as such, one that had to be fought with business methods. He was the committee member who had the legal background and public relations skills to do it, and he did not hesitate to use them on Capone.

  These were all wealthy men, but they knew it was not going to be cheap to bring down Al Capone. They would need to enlist others to donate large infusions of cash to support their endeavors. Samuel Insull was a magnate in public utilities who gave readily whenever he was asked, thereby gaining the reputation of a not-so-secret bankroller. He would be instrumental in Al’s conviction, but shortly afterward he was hauled into court for his own very public trial on charges of embezzlement, violation of federal bankruptcy acts, and mail fraud. Not surprisingly, the jury acquitted this pillar of Chicago society of every charge against him. Julius Rosenwald, who began his career running a department store in Springfield and went on to hold a high-level position in which he was largely responsible for taking Sears, Roebuck to national prominence, was Insull’s equal in providing money. Rosenwald was more discreet in all his dealings, and even though he had been investigated for illegalities in 1915, the charges against him were also dismissed.

  As these men trained their sights on Capone, he continued his machinations and peregrinations, seemingly oblivious to their increasing determination to bring him to justice. In March 1929, Colonel McCormick went to Washington to meet with President Hoover, primarily to discuss the rampant crime in Chicago. The two men agreed that most of it stemmed from Prohibition and that the law was ineffectual and should be abolished, but they also agreed that the criminals who had amassed great wealth from flouting the law had to be punished. Hoover assigned Andrew Mellon, then the secretary of the Treasury, to head a task force that concentrated on illegal income and nonpayment of taxes.

  Mellon was a curious choice because he was an avowed enemy of the Volstead Act and made no secret of his social drinking. Described by his son, Paul, the great philanthropist, as a man with an “ice water smile,” Andrew Mellon was also the co-owner of the Old Overholt rye distillery, one of the chief employers in western Pennsylvania’s exceedingly poor Westmoreland County, and was thus just another criminal flouting the law of the land. Mellon named a man with a reputation as icy as his own, Elmer Irey of the Internal Revenue Service, to be in charge of bringing down Al Capone.

  In Chicago, the Secret Six selected their own man to end Al Capone’s “dictatorship in politics.” Frank Loesch was a seventy-six-year-old corporate lawyer in 1928 who postponed his retirement when the Six persuaded him to take on the dubious honor of serving as president of the Chicago Crime Commission. After the city’s chief of police was quoted as saying that “sixty percent of my police [force] is in the bootleg business,” civic leaders had awakened at last to the fact that Capone’s de facto rule was causing so much damage to the city’s reputation and economy and, by extension, damage to their personal fortunes.

  Loesch had been one of the original organizers of the CCC in 1919 and had been a committee member since 1922. Until he took charge in 1928, the commission was best known for compiling excellent records of what the crooks had been up to and creating highly readable reports about their colorful activities—and nothing more. After Big Bill Thompson’s slate was defeated in 1928, Loesch placed a newspaper ad proclaiming that “Chicago has shown it means to clean house” and that “every self-respecting citizen” would soon be proud of his or her city because “a new day for Chicago has dawned.” However, when it actually came to curbing crime, the CCC had neither power nor authority to stop the relentless murdering of gangsters by other gangsters, the epidemic bribery of public servants, or any of the many different kinds of extortion.

  When Loesch accepted the call to mend the commission’s ineffectual ways, most of his contemporaries thought he was one of three things: “a crazy man, a crank reformer, or a publicity seeker.” Actually, he was none of the above, but a Bible-teaching elder of the Presbyterian Church who believed in “Samaritanism,” the idea that a good Christian had the obligation to help everyone, from the lowest individual to the wealthiest and most influential. Like George E. Q. Johnson and Mabel Willebrandt, Loesch was incorruptible and fearless and accepted the premise that going after criminals by trying to end crime would not work. Other, more sophisticated and creative ways had to be found to stop them.

  Loesch found a willing colleague in the new state’s attorney, John Swanson, who was elected in the landslide that swept Big Bill Thompson’s men out of office. Swanson was determined to rid all of Cook County of crime, and not just the city of Chicago, thus giving the criminal element nowhere to move operations when the city’s heat became too hot. One of his first acts was to name Frank Loesch as his first assistant state’s attorney, a position Loesch held in conjunction with his appointment to the CCC. Loesch’s directive was to investigate the connections between criminal acts and their influence on political decisions; to ensure that he could successfully continue on this course in his new appointments, he brought most of his staff with him to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

  Swanson’s strategy was the one Loesch, Willebrandt, and the other early investigators had put forth, that the best way to cripple the influence of organized crime was to cut off its sources of income. In his remarks to the newspapers, he made what had become the fairly usual speech by political crusaders, saying that he would shut down speakeasies, gambling dens, and brothels so that “the ‘rackets’ which have pestered and pillaged legitimate business shall be stopped and ended.” With Loesch, the CCC, and the Secret Six fully poised to give Swanson the cooperation he needed, the apparatus intent on bringing down Al Capone was securely in place.

  But in the face of this well-organized, well-financed effort to unseat him, Capone appeared oblivious, leading many contemporaries and subsequent biographers to wonder how a smart and savvy fellow like Al Capone failed to realize that his fight with these crusading reformers would be an entirely different kind of battle from those he had fought in the past. When even Frankie Rio was perceptive enough to warn him that any new suits would have to be tailored from striped prison material, why couldn’t he see for himself that these opponents were formidable, and why didn’t he react accordingly? Did he think he was invincible because of the CCC’s hapless conclusion after its 1929 investigation into his liquor, vice, and gambling activities that because they had “no other record of conviction,” all they could do was dismiss him as “notorious in these activities”? In 1930, when he was well aware of the foes allied against him, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune who wrote about the dire situation he faced seemed puzzled by his lackadaisical attitude, describing Capone as “intelligent and affable…happy-go-lucky [and] harmless as a Saint Bernard puppy dog.” How could Al Capone have been so cavalier?

  Many reasons have been offered for the passive approa
ch his high-powered and exceedingly well-paid lawyers took to gear up for criminal proceedings. The most likely one was that because he had been totally untouched by all the criminal charges that had been leveled against him over the years, he believed he could make these new ones go away before a trial, one way or another. If payoffs and bribes didn’t work, people could always be taken for euphemistic one-way rides; assassinations and murders were last resorts, but threats of them were certainly enough to put the fear in just about everyone. Capone probably thought these newest do-gooders might eventually tire of their pursuit and go away as well.

  As a former bookkeeper who knew how to manipulate numbers, he should have been wary, but he had no respect for government bureaucrats and considered them little more than paper pushers who could always be bought off. Even though the federal government estimated his share of illegal profits from 1925 to 1929 to be in the neighborhood of $6 million (at the very least), and the New York Times agreed that he was indeed a multimillionaire, how could he possibly be charged with tax evasion if he never showed any income? And so, in the beginning, as the case against him started to build, he scoffed. He thought public opinion was on his side even after the CCC released a list of “Public Enemies” in April 1930 with Al Capone leading as No. 1.

  Loesch released two separate numerical lists with twenty-eight different names on each. He called them all Chicago’s “most prominent and well-known and notorious gangsters,” and Al Capone led as “Public Enemy Number One.” In a perverse way, being at the top of such a highly publicized list gave Capone and his cohorts something to brag about. He thought it was nothing to take seriously when even the respected New York Times ridiculed Loesch as a bombastic blowhard and publicity seeker. Capone considered himself untouchable after that newspaper rightly acknowledged that the “Capones and Morans” were not operating within the law but also that there was little proof to tie them directly to illegal operations: “They dwell in a twilight zone where the courts cannot function but where the police department may [only] harry them and keep them moving.”