Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  Another story from that time, much told in later years, was mostly true. The infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from his second-floor bedroom in their rural New Jersey home on March 1, 1932. Al, thinking of the care taken to keep Sonny out of the public eye because of Mae’s almost-irrational fear of kidnapping, volunteered to help the New Jersey state police find the Lindbergh baby. He said if he was temporarily released from prison, he could all but guarantee the child’s return within forty-eight hours. The Lindberghs were sufficiently desperate that they were ready to accept whatever help he offered. The New Jersey state police superintendent, H. Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. (father of the future general of the army who bore his name), decided to proceed cautiously.

  Schwarzkopf senior contacted the two federal agents who had been instrumental in putting Capone behind bars, A. P. Madden and Frank Wilson, and they in turn contacted their boss, Elmer Irey, who would have none of it. He told the Lindberghs it was merely Al’s ploy to get out of jail so he could flee to a country where there was no extradition. Irey told them to refuse the offer, and they did.

  After more than five years of investigating the personal life of Al Capone, the government still had so little insight into the man’s character. They knew that in his public life he was the personification of evil, but when it came to families—and especially children—they ignored the evidence that he was the model of rectitude and loving paternal behavior. As proof of his honorable intentions to return to jail, he offered to leave his brother John (Mimi) as his guarantor, and he meant it, for he would never “double cross [his] own brother.”

  Jail officials also had the opportunity to see for themselves how much family meant to Al Capone, for Mae brought Sonny to see his father; it happened only once, but in the warden’s office, where he was able to embrace the boy. It was not the last time he saw his son, for Mae took him to Atlanta several times, and even once to Alcatraz, but after he was transferred to federal prison, there was no physical contact between them until Al’s sentence was over.

  ___

  Meanwhile, the appeals process was proceeding swiftly. On February 27, 1932, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit confirmed his conviction by the lower court. That left only the Supreme Court, and on May 2 the justices upheld the appeals court decision by refusing to hear the case. On the evening of May 4, Al Capone was hustled from his cell on his way to federal prison to start his eleven-year sentence. From newspapers to newsreels, every one of them reported that he was on his way to Leavenworth. Besides his destination, the stories made sure to note and describe the circus atmosphere surrounding his departure.

  Chicago was having the equivalent of a national holiday as crowds formed everywhere for a last glimpse of the dethroned king of crime being herded into exile. Inside the prison gates, the yard was filled with anyone who had the credentials to wangle getting inside. Reporters and photographers tried to jostle past ordinary policemen, federal agents, and U.S. marshals, many of whom either had been or still were on Capone’s payroll but nevertheless had the effrontery to be there and gloat at his send-off. As he passed by, he gave some “the stare” while ignoring others. He was dressed not in prison garb but in his own impeccable clothing; no handcuffs were showing, thus denying onlookers the sight of the broken and humbled man most had hoped to see.

  The noise in the courtyard was deafening. Those surrounding him yelled cheers and jeers in equal part, while inmates in their cells shouted through the bars, wishing him mostly good luck and Godspeed. They would miss the happy distraction that his mere presence among them had provided. Reporters had difficulty getting close enough to hear what Al said in response to all the fuss, but most of their stories said he compared the emotional outpourings to those that another duce (leader), Mussolini, was inspiring as he passed among the people on another continent.

  Once outside the gates, other crowds had gathered all along the route to see Al Capone as he was driven to the station, where he was expected to board a train scheduled to depart shortly before midnight. As night fell, if people managed to see inside the darkened car, they beheld a quiet, subdued, and serious man, with none of the waving and glad-handing that had characterized his preconviction car rides. Capone sat barely moving in the backseat, his face showing no emotion, and seemingly deep in thought.

  He had said good-bye to his family the day before, on May 3, when they were all permitted to come together. Mae was there, in a carefully chosen hat and coat with a deep collar, both selected because she could pull them up or down as needed to shield her face from intrusive cameras. Teresa was angry and bitter but mostly silent as she hugged, kissed, and patted her son; Mafalda, who came with her husband, John Maritote, was also angry, venting her spleen loudly to reporters at the injustice she felt had been done to her brother; Matty and John seemed bewildered, as if they still could not comprehend the downfall of their family’s leader. There were two noticeable absences among those who said farewell, Ralph and Sonny. Ralph was in prison, and Sonny was not there, because Al did not want the press to take pictures of his son watching him go to prison.

  Reporters, who did not have access to the family, resurrected what they wrote when Al went to Eastern Pen: that he had told Mae to tell Sonny he was traveling in Europe on business but would soon be writing lots of letters that would keep them in touch with each other. It was hardly true, because Sonny had visited his father with the rest of the family in the jail and knew where he was going. Mae did not respond to those stories or any other, for the family’s strategy was not to confirm or deny but to let reporters write what they wished.

  Al Capone’s destination was changed at the last minute; because of Ralph, the Guzik brothers, and Frank Nitti, authorities decided not to place him among the other high-level Outfit officials cozily ensconced in Kansas. Even though Ralph had recently been transferred from Leavenworth to the McNeil Island facility in the state of Washington, the Guziks and Nitti were still running Leavenworth as if it were their own personal fiefdom. They lived in comfortable cells, wore their own clothing, had special meals, and spent time lolling in the garden during clement weather; they even drove the prison superintendent’s car just for sport. The possibility of their companionship was one of the main reasons Al was so determined to be a model prisoner before he even got there; with boon companions in such pleasant circumstances, it would be easy to get along just by going along.

  Thus, it was a terrible shock after his tearful good-byes to his family when he turned on the radio news in his cell and learned of the change before officials arrived to notify him. He would not be going to Kansas to join his best pals. There was too much opportunity for criminal mischief in Kansas, so Alphonse Capone would be taking a far different route, to Atlanta and the federal penitentiary with the worst reputation for harsh discipline in the entire prison system.

  The Capone family learned of the change of location in the same way Al did, over the radio on May 3. When night came on the fourth, they were gathered at the train station to bid him another emotional farewell. The brothers stayed in the background, but it was the women the cameras wanted to film. They tried to hide from the flashing lightbulbs of print photographers and the shoving and cursing of newsreel cameramen who pushed forward for close-ups. Capone arrived in handcuffs, now chained to a terrified twenty-six-year-old small-time car thief whom he had instructed to walk close beside him so that the handcuffs were not visible. Most of the other dozen or so prisoners who were also going to Atlanta walked past the cameras with hats on and heads down, but he lumbered past with his head held high as he looked straight ahead, a mammoth compared with the tiny figure who walked beside him. None of the Capone women were permitted to get near enough to touch or embrace him, but once he was on board the train and out of sight, the cameras focused fixedly on them. Teresa, crying and screaming, lashed out as she ran toward them brandishing her fist in their faces. Mafalda was carrying a small child, probably her brother Matty’s, and she,
too, waved her fist as she shouted in their direction. Another unidentified woman, probably Matty’s wife, stood close to Mae, who was in the background in her typical pose, hat pulled down and collar raised to hide her face. There was nothing left for any of them to do but go home and try to figure out how to live through the next decade.

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  Al Capone traveled to Atlanta on a hard wooden bench in a closed car that became hot and fetid as it rumbled slowly through the South. He was handcuffed most of the way but released occasionally for a card game with one of the escort marshals. He entered the Atlanta penitentiary on May 5, 1932, and was diagnosed with neurosyphilis during the three weeks of routine quarantine for medical examinations that were given to all incoming prisoners. Records show the first clinical indication of the disease was when his eyes responded abnormally to light, a classic example of an Argyll Robertson pupil: the one in his right eye was slightly larger than his left, and it reacted “faintly and incompletely to light.” Otherwise, with the exception of slightly elevated blood pressure, his health seemed stable and his behavior well within the range of normal, so no treatment or medication for the disease was prescribed at this point.

  A Wasserman (the former test used to identify syphilis) was routinely given to all incoming prisoners, but Capone’s results were not yet known when he was taken several days later for his mandatory interview with the assistant warden. It began calmly enough as he answered personal questions about his family, education, and background, but then the warden tried to elicit information about the various vices the Outfit controlled. Capone became furious when his interviewer included prostitution along with bootlegging and gambling. He launched into a diatribe that was both grandiose and irrational, growing increasingly agitated as he insisted that he had too much respect for women to have engaged in anything related to brothels, either as an owner or as a patron.

  His anger veered into megalomania as he paced the room, slamming one fist into another and pounding the table. He claimed that he was the chief benefactor of the entire city of Chicago, and if not for his beneficence men would be out of work, crime would run rampant, and families would starve. Were it not for him, he thundered, anarchy would rule the land. Al Capone was a big man when he entered prison, just under six feet tall and well over 250 pounds of well-tempered muscle beneath many layers of fat, and if he had actually attacked the warden, he could have been dangerous. As he ranted on, guards were summoned to escort him back to the quarantine cell. It was a space that made him feel safe, so he calmed down and followed orders.

  He was pleasant and lucid when taken for the neuropsychiatric examination given to incoming inmates. This time, he was better behaved throughout. He began by giving his family history, which the examining physician noted was “negative as to insanity, tuberculosis, cancer, suicide, syphilis, and consanguinity.” He claimed that he himself “contracted gonorrhea at the age of 24” and was treated for it and cured by an unnamed physician. He told the psychiatrist, Dr. C. R. F. Beall, that his first positive “blood Wasserman” for syphilis was in 1931, when he had been given “several intramuscular, anti-luetic injections.” It must have been a private examination, for there is no record that it took place at the Cook County Jail, where he was at the time. When asked if he ever used drugs, he denied it emphatically, admitting only to “the use of beer and wine.” He was still lying about the difference in his and Mae’s ages, telling the doctor that he “ran away and married at the age of seventeen his boyhood sweetheart,” whose age he gave as sixteen. For his work history, he created a sanitized version, saying he quit school at age fourteen to help support his family, and worked as a pin boy in a bowling alley. He gave no starting date for his next job—in the production department of United Paper Box Company—but said he left at age twenty-two to become manager of a dance hall in New York. Six months later, he said, he resigned to accept a similar position in Chicago, where he became “engaged in various business enterprises, including real estate, newspapers, hotels, garages, and security.” The examining physician wrote that “he states that he has accumulated considerable money.” When the doctor asked if he had ever been arrested, Capone said his arrests were “too numerous to mention, using as a criterion the fact that he was arrested eight different times in twenty-four hours at Miami, Florida.”

  The one theme that recurred throughout his psychological examination was his bitterness about his trial and conviction. He was bitter toward the officials who “double crossed” him or did “not live up to the agreement” they made. He blamed them for leading him to self-incriminate by pleading guilty, which he would not otherwise have done. Capone was both plaintive and puzzled as he told his version of how he had been railroaded. The doctor wrote that “he does not know wherein he has violated this [federal income tax] law, as no income was proved in his case.” Capone told how he had gone willingly to tax officials to offer to pay whatever they said he owed and how they responded only with silence. He summarized the events that followed in a clear and cogent manner, exhibiting “no mannerisms, no evidences of hallucinations or delusions…his insight is good.”

  His other recurring bitterness was toward the press, whom he accused of treating him unjustly, “in that numerous crimes, of which he had no knowledge and in which he was in no way implicated, were laid at his door, merely to increase the circulation of the papers and to add interest to the story.” He claimed that this was done in such a way that “caused him to be looked upon as a much more lawless individual than he actually is.” Although he freely admitted that he violated Prohibition and gambling laws, he tried to justify his actions with a convoluted explanation for having done so. When Dr. Beall pressed him for details, he became only slightly testy when he said he either could not provide the information or would not because it had to be kept confidential. Dr. Beall concluded that “his judgment, as evidenced by his behavior during the interview, is shown to be good.”

  As to his medical condition, that was far more worrisome. Dr. Beall noted that his routine admission exam showed “routine blood Wasserman negative; Kahn -2 plus,” not yet alarming, but something to watch, especially considering his pupils. A “psychometric examination” showed his mental age to be “15.1 years, with an I.Q. of 95 by Binet test.” He was diagnosed with latent syphilis and “Constitutional Psychopathy, criminalism, without psychosis.”

  Several days later, his Wasserman test results came back, confirming that he had “central nervous system syphilis,” thus providing the doctors with a valid explanation for his occasional uncontrollable temper and misbehavior. The Atlanta prison doctors began to treat him but with outmoded bismuth therapy, which had been known to be ineffective since shortly after it was first used in 1916 and by the mid-1920s was widely acknowledged as useless. Thus, to give it to Capone in 1932 did nothing to slow the disease’s advance. After he was transferred to Alcatraz and upon his release, the doctors who cared for him were aghast when they read his medical records, condemning his early treatment in Atlanta as “entirely inadequate.”

  On the outside, before he went to prison, in his public life, Capone had always been gregarious, sociable, and the center of attention among people who catered to him. In his private life at home, he was used to big family gatherings with as many men as could crowd around a table loaded with good food and drink, where everyone talked at once and there was much joshing, teasing, and laughter as the women ferried huge platters back and forth from the kitchen. There was none of this when he entered Atlanta, where prisoners had to conduct their daily lives in strict silence except for brief, specified times.

  His disease made him befuddled at times, and his first three weeks of medical isolation followed by the long daily silences compounded his confusion. He was not used to being alone, so he was eager to join the rest of the prison population just to be surrounded by other people. But his judgment was declining enough that he was not aware he could become a highly visible target, and so he made no effort to preserve some distance for
himself. He was either naive or impaired enough to think that all he had to do was follow the rules and not get into trouble. He knew that good conduct was often the route to early release, and even before he was incarcerated he resolved that he would practice good behavior so he could get out early. For every forty days of good behavior, ten would be deducted from a prisoner’s sentence, and as a former bookkeeper he knew how to count and keep careful track.

  However, from the beginning his good intentions were constantly thwarted. Al Capone, the Big Guy, was also the big fish and a target for verbal taunts and physical attacks from other inmates. With his naturally razor-quick temper intensified by his disease, he often could not control himself. Yet when he really wanted something, he still had the ability to present himself calmly enough to ask for a privilege or request a courtesy. His first request came when he sent a prison-approved memo to the “leader of orchestra” asking for the opportunity to play bass in the prison band. If granted, he promised to do his best to learn how to play the instrument so he could be “of use” to the band and thanked the unnamed leader in advance for considering his application.

  Another request concerned the five photographs Mae had sent of herself and Sonny. Because prisoners were only allowed one, Al wrote to the deputy warden to ask for the special permission he needed to keep all five. If the warden refused, he asked to be able to destroy them himself in the warden’s presence as he was unwilling to take the risk that they might get lost in the mail or, even worse, “go astray as some New’s Paper [sic] may get them.” The warden confiscated four, and Al kept only one.