Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  The client did all the talking, and his lawyer seldom interrupted to counsel or caution him or to object to his questioners. Capone was asked questions about his income, property purchases, banking and brokerage accounts. The agents wanted him to state his net worth and asked if he had safe-deposit boxes, owned horses, or had stock in dog racing. His answers were either “no” or “I would rather let my lawyer answer that question.” The transcript does not show that Mattingly answered anything that Capone deferred to him. Only after the Treasury agents concluded the interview did he try to strike a bargain by offering to provide an estimate of his client’s income so that payment for a settlement could be arranged. They accepted his offer to have the document in their hands in three weeks, but for whatever the reason it took almost seven months before Mattingly handed it over the following November.

  The transcript of the April interview has been evaluated by many writers and lawyers who all agree that what was recorded is an accurate account of the interview, but only as far as it went because Agent Herrick—and perhaps others—continued to ask probing questions long after the record ended. In the transcribed account, there is a passing reference to some others who were not involved in the questioning but who came and went during Capone’s interview. They ranged from agents actively involved in the case, to curious people who worked in the building, to passersby who simply wanted to see the arch-villain under scrutiny. In later years when some of these spectators wrote their own memoirs or talked to journalists, they claimed to have been present after the transcript ended, so several versions of what followed have come to be accepted as truth.

  The lead investigator, Treasury agent Frank J. Wilson, wrote about it in a highly embellished memoir many years later. Throughout his investigations, Wilson sent written reports to Irey, who kept President Hoover up to date on the events as Wilson reported them. Wilson seemed to have the most recent garish mob hits on his mind when he wrote his memoir, because he insisted that he had been in the room during and after the transcript ended, even though his name was not among those the stenographer recorded. In one of his most dramatic assertions, he wrote that as Capone was leaving, he asked about Wilson’s wife’s health in a tone of voice that could only be described as a not-so-veiled threat. That anecdote has been repeated as often as the one about the “hit” on Wilson’s life and the lives of the other three agents. Depending on who tells that tale, payment was either $25,000 or $50,000.

  Because all subsequent writings about this event take Wilson’s memoir as their source, it is best to take these alleged threats as two more of the legends that surrounded Al Capone during the events leading up to his trial, but it is true that Wilson and his wife did move secretly from one hotel to another and that they were given full-time protection by guards stationed strategically throughout the new one.

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  By the time of the April meeting, one month had elapsed since Al Capone was released from the Philadelphia prison, and he finally got his wish to go to Palm Island. In late April, he boarded a train for Miami, only to arrive and find himself hounded worse than he had been in Chicago. The injunction signed by Judge Ritter that forbade Governor Carlton to “seize, arrest, kidnap, or otherwise abuse a property owner” who had not been convicted of any crime did not stop the Miami police from a continuing pattern of harassment.

  A city ordinance had been passed, saying that vagrancy could be charged against anyone whose income was gained by “unlawful or illegal means or methods” and anyone known or suspected of being “crooks [or] gangsters” would be considered “dangerous to public safety or peace of the city” and could be arrested on sight. And, the ordinance further stated, if any part was found to be unconstitutional, the other parts could still be applied. The police were waiting for Capone every time he stepped off his property, and in May alone he was arrested four separate times on the vagrancy charge. The harassment only ended after his two local lawyers fought aggressively for the second time on his behalf and decided to let the courts work in his favor once again.

  After taking on the governor the first time, the lawyers J. F. Gordon and Vincent C. Giblin accused S. D. McCreary, the director of public safety for the city of Miami, of false arrest, and when the case was heard, they called Capone to appear as a witness on his own behalf. He was sworn in and asked to describe his version of what had happened to him since he returned to Palm Island. In his sworn testimony, he said that during one of the vagrancy arrests, the police did not permit him to call his lawyers before he was thrown into a cell so hot and stifling that he had trouble breathing. Guards were told not to give Capone food or water and, when night came, not to provide blankets either. When he was relieved of his possessions, McCreary threw his money (reputed to be $1,000), his expensive watch, and all his other personal items into a toilet, which he then flushed. All these “facts” were regarded as the truth because Al Capone stated them under oath, but as he had done in the past, he was not reluctant to bend the facts to suit the needs of the moment.

  The case was heard before Warren L. Newcomb, a justice of the peace who conducted a bench trial. Most observers considered him an honorable man, but after the case was heard, there were also those who claimed he was on Capone’s payroll. Early in the proceedings, Newcomb declared that city officials could not continue to harass and arrest a citizen without proper cause, and if they were to do so again, they would have to have a specific warrant issued. Newcomb further cautioned that just because the newspapers had picked up the sobriquet of “Public Enemy #1” for every inflammatory article that appeared in Miami, it did not allow vigilante justice to flourish. Things seemed to be going well for Al Capone.

  The prosecution called several witnesses to ask about their knowledge of Capone, which was really a way of inquiring into his character and personality. The city commissioner, John C. Knight, proved Judge Newcomb’s point about inflammatory journalism when he said he had based his view of Capone as “a menace to the community” on those very same newspaper accounts. Newcomb then asked Knight if that meant he believed that “mob rule” functioned in Miami. Knight said no, and when the judge asked if he believed in allowing the law to take due course, Knight said yes. Newcomb ended his questioning by saying that if Knight did indeed believe in the rule of law, then he must also believe “that Capone should [not] be arrested and placed in jail incommunicado at any time without a specific charge against him.” If Knight replied, the Miami Herald did not record his statement. Justice Newcomb then ruled that the order to arrest Capone on sight should be discharged and that anyone who attempted to arrest him without cause would have to answer to the court.

  However, the ruling applied only to law enforcement in the city of Miami, so the state of Florida remained on the warpath. Several days later, the gates before the house on Palm Island were sealed and padlocked because, according to the state, the mere presence of the house made it a public nuisance. Judge Paul D. Barns ruled against the state because the only possible “cause of annoyance” was that the property owner was inside his own home. Even then, the harassment did not end; S. D. McCreary struck again several hours later, this time charging that Capone had perjured himself in his statements about what had happened to him in jail because everything he said was a lie.

  When the hearing was held, Capone took the stand again, hedging, feinting, and obfuscating: to some questions, he wanted to “correct” his testimony; to others, his memory was either “to the best” or “not to the best” of his knowledge; and in one instance, he could not “swear to it.” The ploy to qualify—if not actually to retract—his earlier testimony worked; in his second questioning, he had not actually lied and therefore had not perjured himself. The judge ruled that the case had to be dismissed. With the legal entanglements settled, it appeared that Capone would get the Miami vacation he wanted, but it was not to be for as long as he wished.

  By now, reporters were growing tired of having to invent yet another way to write about this kind of nuisance ha
zing; such stories are only fresh and new up to a point, after which they become routine and boring and don’t sell newspapers. No one paid much attention to McCreary, other city and state officials retreated in embarrassment to lick their wounds, and the public rallied around Al Capone. The press needed dirt, and they found it in Jake Lingle’s murder on June 9, 1930, in Chicago. Lingle was on his way to the races shortly after noon, when he was gunned down in a tunnel leading to the train track. The gunman shot him in the midst of the midday crowd before walking sedately away, uncaught.

  Lingle’s murder set off a firestorm of speculation about Al Capone’s financial circumstances after Lingle’s records showed there was no way he could have lived so extravagantly on the salary of a newspaper reporter. There was a very short moment after the revelations about his opulent lifestyle when other papers turned spotlights onto their own staffs and a “newspaper war” was briefly under way. Even though there had been many gangland slayings that year (up to a hundred by some counts), it took “the cowardly murder” of Lingle, the eleventh slaying in ten days, to galvanize the publishers of the Chicago papers into signing a resolution in which they pledged to concentrate their resources on cleaning up the city. The manifesto gave a straightforward list of names of all the high-level gangsters who were slain over the years, from Big Jim Colosimo to the victims of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but it was only when Lingle’s murder was added that their ire was apparent, for his was “the name…of a man whose business was to expose the work of killers.” Such a murder could not be allowed to happen, but even so the agreement to cooperate did not last long, because all the papers vied to see which one would scoop all the others.

  Reporters from cities other than Chicago smelled a good story and homed in on the ensuing squabbles. Things heated up when two St. Louis papers started looking into the activities of those who worked in Chicago. Harry T. Brundidge, who was then with the St. Louis Star, wrote a two-part series, July 18 and 19, 1930, in which he named all the reporters who were on the take, employed either by gangs or by politicians. One of his most inflammatory contentions was to quote a reporter who told him, “Only the dumb wits in the newspaper game in Chicago are without a racket.” Brundidge named all those who were connected in some way, including two he called the “unofficial mayor” and the “unofficial police chief.” Colonel McCormick, in a grim and vindictive mood, reprinted Brundidge’s entire series in the Tribune.

  Brundidge decided to capitalize on his newfound notoriety by getting a story from “the Big Guy” himself, so he went to Miami in early July and staked out the Palm Island house. He wrote that it was night, and Capone was out for the evening and returned after 10:00 p.m. When Capone saw his unexpected visitor, he chuckled over the “merry hell” he had raised in Chicago and invited him into the house. Brundidge claimed that he spent the next four hours with Capone, most of the time talking, walking on the grounds, and then being given a tour of the house. His ostensible reason for being there was to gain information about the Lingle murder, but in reality he was there because no other reporter had created the opportunity to interview Capone since before he went to prison in Philadelphia, and Brundidge wanted to scoop them all.

  Brundidge was nobody’s fool, and he knew from the start that everything he wrote would be subject to interpretation, pro and con. He took care to address this by inserting into the story an exchange he claimed to have had with Capone, in which he said all quotations would be Capone’s exact words. He then wrote that Capone allegedly responded, “If you do, I’ll deny it.” Thus, both the reporter and his subject managed to cover themselves.

  The story was printed in several parts in Brundidge’s paper, the St. Louis Star, and also in the Chicago Tribune. As he had threatened, Capone said every remark attributed to him was a lie, a fabrication created by Brundidge that had no basis in reality. Whether true or not, the story carried the version of reality Capone wanted to portray, his oft-repeated insistence that he had made enough money and now wanted only to retire and enjoy life with his family. He must have taken Brundidge on a tour, for the reporter wrote accurately about the expensive and elaborate furnishings in the house and the well-tended grounds. What Brundidge described screamed of money, as did Capone’s response to his question about the expensive diamond belt buckle that he had given as a gift to Jake Lingle.

  All the fuss over newspaper articles stirred up the Missouri state’s attorney, who called for an investigation into whether or not they were true. Newspaper articles are not sworn testimony, but nevertheless a grand jury was convened in the fall, and a host of reporters, editors, and publishers (including Colonel McCormick) were called to testify whether or not Brundidge had forged the interview. Brundidge was called, and of course he defended himself. Eventually, the grand jury decided that none of those who testified could give concrete evidence and nothing Brundidge said could be substantiated. They ruled that everything connected with the story was therefore speculation or invention.

  Capone felt he had no option but to return to Chicago at the end of July for a few days to take care of the business that had been piling up since he arrived in Miami and to see what could be done to quiet the press coverage of the Lingle murder, which was as lurid as that of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Even though he had the same alibi for both, that he was nowhere near the city when either one happened, reporters came a-calling once again. And once again, his gregariousness did not serve him well; it served only to enhance the government’s fixation on his illegal businesses, criminal activities, and tax evasion and to increase the determination to see him in jail.

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  The mess in Chicago aside, the summer of 1930 offered many pleasures. Once they were assembled at Palm Island, the Capones were in a frenzy of joy as Al took delight in everything connected with the household. After more than a year away from his family, he could not get enough of them. This was the period in which he forged his deepest bond with his son, who was eleven going on twelve. Al lavished love and attention on the boy, taking him fishing, spending long afternoons swimming in the pool, and lazing around afterward, just the two of them talking. In the evenings, both in robes and slippers, they played board games and listened to music while Mae sat and smiled upon them. The Capones hosted another of their lavish parties for Sonny, when his teachers at St. Patrick’s school asked if other students could come to swim in the pool. Once again, Mae was careful with the invitations she sent to the fifty (or more) parents, telling them they had to sign it and their children had to bring it with them if they wanted to be admitted to the house. All the stops were pulled out as every sort of food children liked to eat was set up and served on tables next to the pool. Everything written about the occasion relates what an unqualified success it was, further evidence that Sonny Capone was well liked by his classmates despite what his father did for a living.

  Sonny was old enough to know why Al was being harassed by various authorities. Perhaps another boy would have resented the scrutiny and opprobrium having such a father brought to his life, but if this were true, Sonny never said so to any of his friends or his cousins. The descendants of Al’s brothers who are old enough to have known Sonny agree that the love and affection between him and his father was something quite beautiful and often quite touching. Sonny’s daughters insist that all their father ever got from his father was unqualified love and affection, and he in turn gave the same to his four daughters.

  Al threw himself into party giving, and Mae proved herself his equal partner. If they were to entertain large crowds, there were things she needed for Palm Island, and there were also things Teresa wanted for the house on Prairie Avenue. Al and Mae both behaved as if they did not have a care in the world and there were no investigations into their finances. Both dwellings received serious makeovers, and money flowed out. Trucks wended their way to Palm Island, loaded with new furniture, sets of china, silver flatware, and other articles of table decor. The house on Prairie Avenue received everything from buf
fets and beds to ornamental ceramic elephants.

  Al and Mae gave so many elaborate parties during the summer of 1930 that several new myths about how he threw money to the winds came into being. During a cocktail party in which the house overflowed with guests, a Miami society matron looking for someplace to sit claimed that she sat on what she thought was a closed trunk but which turned out to be a repository of rifles, machine guns, and other weapons, all covered by a heavy cloth. If such a weapons cache existed, neither Mae nor Al would have permitted it to be stashed just outside their living room, especially in the midst of a lavish party attended by sympathetic members of the press and public officials, who denigrated Al in public but enjoyed his hospitality in private.

  The lawyer Vincent Giblin was the source of another myth, eagerly picked up by all the newspapers and accepted as fact thereafter. He claimed that Al reneged on a $50,000 fee for legal representation, so he went to the house, where he boldly grabbed Al by his necktie (or his shirt collar, or his jacket lapels, as the various accounts had it). Giblin claimed that he forced Al to go up to his bedroom and open the trunk at the foot of the bed, where he allegedly stashed wads of cash. Al did keep large amounts of cash in the house but not in the bedroom trunk, where Mae kept extra bed linens. In reality, Al paid Giblin $10,000, which was far more than he was entitled to according to pay standards of the time, and then only after he agreed to represent all members of the Capone family afterward, free of charge, and in perpetuity.