by Deirdre Bair
Al Capone’s mere presence created problems of all kinds for the entire prison system, starting with the deluge of mail that arrived every day. There were times when he received more letters than the rest of the penitentiary’s prisoners combined, with people writing to ask for photographs, souvenir autographs, or large sums of money, the last category running the gamut from pleas on behalf of dying relatives to threats against him or his family if he didn’t comply. Reporters, members of Congress, and movie stars deluged the warden’s office to request interviews, all of which were routinely denied. Publishers who heard rumors that Al was writing “a book on advice to evil doers” clamored to buy the rights to publish it. Even J. Edgar Hoover got into the act when he wrote to ask the warden to accommodate “various members of Congress and other persons” who wished to “see Al Capone.” It was Hoover’s polite but firm way of telling the warden to go along with his veiled orders to put the prisoner on exhibit; on Hoover’s whims, Prisoner 40886 became a specimen to be displayed whenever he or someone else important wanted to curry favor or grant one. Capone’s daily life was one humiliation after another for the man who had once held the same sort of ultimate power to humiliate.
Capone’s bitterness toward the press intensified in Atlanta. Reporters who were denied firsthand views of what he did each day got past the warden’s blockade by courting newly released prisoners and persuading them to spill the beans about the most famous prisoner of them all; never mind that the beans they spilled had scant basis in fact. “Ex-convict No. 35503” got the most coverage as he aired his inventions and allegations in a three-part series on the front pages of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
The only verifiable truth in the series was that Prisoner 40886 was intent on living the same flamboyant life he had enjoyed during his earlier incarcerations, first in Philadelphia and then in the Cook County Jail, but what the story omitted was that this did not happen while Al Capone was in Atlanta. Many differing stories were either leaked to reporters or created by them about Capone’s circumstances, such as the one that said he was the true ruler of the Atlanta prison, barking commands from a cell that featured all the comforts of home. When reporters asked the warden to comment, he stuck to the official line, that Al Capone was just one among others and subject to the rules that governed them all, and in his particular case a model prisoner who obeyed every order the moment it was given. This story did not make for good copy and seldom saw print.
Fellow inmates, however, were eager to insist that Capone enjoyed luxuries they could only dream of, starting with special shoes costing the then-grand sum of $25, cobbled by hand by sympathetic inmates in Leavenworth with metal arch supports for his flat feet and shipped by express to Atlanta. Where they got the resources to make such shoes and who paid to ship them were not questions ever addressed. This myth could have originated because of his work assignment in the prison shoe shop; he told the psychiatrist he got along well with his co-workers but did not find the work itself “at all interesting.”
Reporters eagerly repeated inmates’ exaggerated tales of how no one could get near Al Capone because of the phalanx of beefy bodyguards who surrounded him. If such a group existed, they were self-appointed, especially in the beginning, when he was too overwhelmed by the initial isolation, tests, and examinations to be in any condition to organize anything or anyone. There were rumors that he had access to massive amounts of cocaine, which he supposedly imbibed almost as freely in prison as he allegedly did back in Chicago. But here again, this was just another story without factual basis, for no concrete evidence that he used drugs has ever been found and his angry responses when anyone questioned him about it were well documented.
Seven other prisoners shared his eight-man cell, so it must have been crowded in there if the most flagrant group of legends about his daily life were true. The first myth probably originated in testimony from his trial: that he brought his own fine underwear and bed linen when he entered Atlanta, and much more of both than regulations allowed. The next probably came from his time in Eastern Pen, where he did have several albums of family pictures, Oriental rugs, a special mattress and blankets, a typewriter, and the twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He had none of these in Atlanta’s Cell 3-7. When the press wrote about the few comforts he actually did have, the warden had no choice but to take most of them away, starting with the tennis rackets he used during the brief afternoon periods of recreation each convict was allowed. The tales of the tennis rackets gave rise to stories that they had hollow handles where he stashed wads of cash, as much as several thousand dollars at a time. Sometimes hollowed-out broom handles were reputed to serve the same purpose.
When his rotation in the shoe shop ended and he was put to work swabbing floors, prisoners who wanted to goad him called him “the Wop with the mop.” They knew Al would invariably become enraged enough to lash out and then receive punishment for bad behavior. Many volunteers were eager to take his brooms and mops apart, but they found nothing despite insisting that he hung on to the cash and stashed it in other handy places for bribing guards and persuading other convicts to do his bidding. Where or how he could have done this in a cell crowded with seven other men was never considered.
Capone’s biggest troubles began when he sassed guards and was obstreperous during his work assignments. He was quiet enough when he worked in the shoe shop, but when he was rotated to other details, he was often physically abusive if he didn’t like them. He declared that Al Capone washed windows for no one, and when the guard told him to get busy, he threw his bucket of water at him and demanded to see the warden so he could tell him in person. In his report, the guard noted the prisoner’s “insolence” and the “confusion” he caused. No one attributed his behavior to mental deterioration, so no new or different medical treatment was prescribed. All that prison officials could see was that Al Capone was creating a major problem just by behaving as his outsized self rather than as Prisoner 40886. To them, he was acting as if he were still running the Outfit and unbound by the rules of the institution. As he strutted, swore, preened, and proclaimed, none of his grandiose delusions were attributed to his disease.
Al Capone spent two years in the Atlanta penitentiary, and stories of his time there vary widely. He was everything from the de facto warden who ran the prison just as he had run the Outfit to a shambling hulk with lopsided gait (a true sign of the disease) who shuffled along, muttering to himself in his own delusional world. In truth, his unruly behavior lessened not too long after his arrival because disease incapacitated him just enough to keep this side of his nature in check. During his two years in Atlanta, he was a generally good prisoner who followed orders and went along just to get along. He received no special favors, as the warden attested in his official reply to the questions asked during the government’s investigation.
Capone had the same privileges as other convicts when it came to writing and receiving letters, and he was allowed the same number of visitors, who for him were usually Mae and his mother. Mae had returned to Florida permanently, and Sonny was once again enrolled in St. Patrick’s Catholic School, which he attended until he graduated. His health was dramatically improved, and he was a good student and a generally cheerful and happy boy. For Mae, commuting to Atlanta was difficult but doable, for several of her siblings had relocated to the Miami area and she was able to depend on their help as well as enjoy their companionship. Teresa spent much time at Palm Island, particularly in the harsh winter months, and Al’s brothers dropped in whenever they wanted and stayed for as long as they liked—much to Mae’s annoyance, but for her husband’s sake and peace within the Capone family she put up with it. When Teresa took the train with Mae for her first visit to Al, she took along a massive platter of one of her homemade Italian specialties. Prison rules forbade gifts of food, so she had to leave it at the check-in desk and pick it up and take it home on her way out.
Al Capone received the same monthly commissary scrip of $10 as every
other prisoner, and he did indeed pass most of it along to other prisoners. It was rumored that when one or another inmate needed money for family members on the outside, Al could be counted on to tell Mae to ask Ralph to take care of it; here again, no one in the family can (or will) attest that this ever happened. It is unlikely that Ralph intervened directly because he was still in the McNeil Island penitentiary. Thus, Mae, who never took any direct part in Al’s business dealings before he went to prison, had to serve as his go-between for anything relating to the family’s finances. When Mae knew business subjects would come up during her visit, Mafalda usually went with her. It was often said of Mafalda that, had she not been a woman, she had such business smarts that she could have run the Outfit as well as Al. Mae didn’t like her, but until Ralph was released from prison and resumed his role as head of the family, she had no other choice but to rely on Mafalda.
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Things settled into a routine for Capone in Atlanta, and he would probably have served his entire sentence there without major untoward incidents were it not for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attorney general, Homer S. Cummings. On August 1, 1933, Cummings submitted a proposal to the Justice Department, saying he dreamed of a “special prison” for the most notorious prisoners in the country, a place so remote that they would not be able to communicate with family, friends, or business associates, where they would be isolated as if “on an island, or in Alaska.” The Justice Department liked Cummings’s idea so much that one week later, it offered him the perfect site: Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The army had controlled the island since 1850 but was eager to get rid of it. Because it had once been the site of a military prison, there was already a disciplinary jailhouse that could house prisoners easily and soon.
On August 1, 1934, the Federal Bureau of Prisons took control of Alcatraz Island, thus seizing from Atlanta the distinction of being the most punitive home to the most dangerous outlaws in the country. James A. Johnston was appointed warden, and on August 18 the first contingent of prisoners left Atlanta to begin the arduous train journey across the country. No one was better suited to be among them than Chicago’s former Public Enemy No. 1, Alphonse Capone, and he was on the train. The worst was about to come.
Chapter 22
THE MOST INTRIGUING OF ALL CRIMINALS
When Attorney General Cummings declared that Alcatraz would become the prison whose name sent shivers down the spines of hardened criminals, he could not have chosen a more visible example to punish than Alphonse Capone. Almost immediately, his choice was questioned, particularly by the press who had accepted that Capone was trying to be well behaved in Atlanta. Prison officials in Washington and Atlanta had to work hard to find enough excuses to justify why a prisoner who tried to obey the rules was being sent to live among incorrigible criminals. Thinking they had come up with a reason to justify the transfer, Atlanta officials deployed a flimsy excuse that unwittingly reflected badly on them and made it appear that they could not control their inmates.
Based on the outlandish news stories about the luxuries that allegedly filled Capone’s cell, they scurried to declare him “too big a problem…to handle” and said he had to go because he “comported himself as the king of crime.” Through the press, the public demanded proof of all the allegations of Capone’s supposedly flamboyant lifestyle and excessive influence on other prisoners. It led the FBI to launch an investigation in 1932 that did not end until 1937, when he had been gone from Georgia for three long years. The agent who wrote the final report sheepishly concluded that no evidence could be found to support a single one of the assertions.
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Prohibition was over, the Great Depression had reached its nadir, and all over the land out-of-work people gathered along railroad tracks to see the “Al Capone Special” as it passed by. The train was easy to recognize, three sealed cars carrying fifty-three prisoners who left Atlanta on August 18, 1934, bound for San Francisco. Reports were wired to Washington when the train reached its destination on August 24 that the “fifty-three crates of furniture from Atlanta” were successfully delivered to their destination. Steel bars and wire mesh covered the windows, and guards with guns sat at the end of each carriage in specially constructed cages positioned where they could fire upon any disruptive prisoner who tried to walk toward them. By the end of the six-day journey, it was indeed a fragrant train in those pre-air-conditioning days of summer, so it was probably a blessing that no welcoming committee was permitted to board in San Francisco. The cars remained sealed as they were loaded onto barges and pushed by tugs to Alcatraz Island. Only then were officials allowed to see the incoming prisoners as they detrained, among them No. 85, Alphonse Capone.
Warden James A. Johnston was there to greet him, and according to the highly skewed and self-serving memoir he wrote about his tenure on the Rock, he claimed to have recognized Al Capone immediately. Johnston had undergone a change of character when he took charge of Alcatraz. Previously one of the most sensitive and reform-minded wardens in all the state systems, once he was on the Rock he morphed into one of the most brutal enforcers in the entire history of law enforcement in the United States. The language of his memoir was as stern and unyielding as was his person, and in it he accepted the tales of Capone’s egregious behavior in Atlanta as gospel truth. He used them to boast about how he had no fear of a convict like Capone usurping his authority in Alcatraz.
Johnston wrote of how Capone supposedly swaggered off the train and strutted over to him, wearing a big wide smile and making sly comments out of the corner of his mouth as he sauntered by other prisoners. Johnston said his demeanor was meant to show everyone that he intended to take over and run the place, just as he had in Atlanta. If true, it must have been a very brief swagger, because all the incoming prisoners knew that harsh guards were there to enforce the rule of total silence. Also, any prisoner who broke out of the lineup would have been physically beaten back into place, and none dared risk such a furious assault.
Another story followed Al Capone to Alcatraz, this one told by his Atlanta cell mate Morris “Red” Rudensky, an unreliable source who cheerfully contributed highly inventive accounts of Capone’s daily doings to any reporter who needed a good story. Rudensky claimed that Capone resisted the transfer, striking angrily and spewing profanities at guards, who had to restrain him in order to get him out of his cell. The calm, resigned letters Al wrote to Mae belie this ugly tale; in them, he expressed his realization that he was powerless to fight the transfer, and his only concern once it happened was for the discomfort she would have to endure on her arduous cross-country train trips each month for the single hour-and-a-half visit she would be allowed. Johnston, who took sadistic pleasure in ignoring his own regulations, made it even harder for her: it took many months and many petitions before he granted the frantically worried Mae permission to make her first visit.
Al Capone had every reason to behave himself on the Rock. Unlike other prisoners, whose sentences ranged from a minimum of twenty-five years to far longer, his ten years were already shortened by the two he had served in Atlanta. He was well aware of “the Good Time Law” in the federal penal code, wherein nonlife sentences could be lessened if the “record of conduct shows that he has faithfully observed all the rules and has not been subjected to punishment.” A prisoner whose term was ten years or more could have his sentence shortened by ten days a month for good behavior. In Capone’s case, time served in Atlanta and added to good behavior in Alcatraz would have amounted to twelve hundred days, which could have reduced his time to a little over six years and eight months. He would still have a year left to serve in the Cook County Jail, but that was also subject to the Good Time Law, so his entire sentence could have come to something around seven years. He told Mae that he did not intend “to make any moves of any kind, outside of obeying perfect health and respecting them [prison rules], and doing my work.” He told her to tell the rest of the family there was nothing for any of them to worry about.
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He was able to practice good behavior in Atlanta because he had a supporting group of inmates who had benefited from his generosity. They knew they had a good thing and did not want him harmed, but this was not the case at Alcatraz. One of his fellow prisoners put it best: “Al Capone looms on the horizon of public interest as the most intriguing of all criminals, and to his intimates, he is quite as mysterious and baffling as he is to the public at large.” To the prisoners at Alcatraz, his attempts to practice good behavior made it seem that he had been stripped of the authority that derived from being the most feared mob boss in America and had become instead a shambling old man who bowed and scraped to the lowliest guard and who behaved with abject humility toward those in charge. It did not take long before the other inmates, emboldened by his obsequious behavior, singled him out for verbal taunts, teases, and physical attacks, most of them more serious than anything he suffered in Atlanta.
Al weighed around 250 pounds when he entered Alcatraz, and his reputation for mob violence had gone before him. Other prisoners thought his trial had been a trumped-up showpiece substituted for his real crimes, the uncounted ruthless and relentless killings he either committed or ordered. “Clicks” formed quickly in Alcatraz, and there were rumors that most of them were targeting him, to strike eventually in such a way as to enforce their own supremacy in the small confined world of the prison. But in the beginning, they did not dare do anything to arouse him because of his imposing size and his reputation for vicious retaliation. For the first few months of his captivity at Alcatraz, he was mostly left alone because the other prisoners were all afraid of him.
Capone was sincerely trying to be obedient in everything he did. Put to work in the shoe shop, where he built on his work experience in Atlanta, he performed diligently as a “stitcher” during his assignment there. He took his exercise for the daily hour he was allotted by walking in the yard or playing tennis, for which he had developed quite a passion. There were soon stories in the press that whenever he walked onto the courts and saw players he wanted to oppose, those players’ partners had to leave and let Capone take over. More likely, they left on their own accord whenever they saw him coming, for there were no records in his prison file relating to any altercations on the courts.