by Deirdre Bair
One of the reasons the gangs eventually overcame their hesitation to launch their taunts and assaults might have been related to Capone’s unconscious behavior toward Johnston and how the warden reacted to it. Roy Gardner, one of the inmates who was on the Rock from 1934 to 1936, wrote a perceptive study of daily life there that he called Hellcatraz. He was an intuitive, if distanced, observer of Capone, particularly of his encounters with Johnston. Gardner wrote that every day was filled with “the hopeless despair on the Rock [that] is reflected in the faces and actions of almost all the inmates.” He had few real moments of levity to include in his memoir except for those that involved Capone and Johnston, whose interaction Gardner called “one of the funniest things [he] ever saw.”
As he observed Capone from the sidelines, Gardner watched him develop what he called “a condescending attitude” toward the warden, who was so amazed by the prisoner’s speech that he went into “a slow burn.” The warden must have been extremely flustered, for whenever he spoke to Capone, his naturally “soft and pleasant” voice “sounded like a cackle from a parched throat.” Other prisoners interpreted these exchanges as Capone’s getting away with “vanity and arrogance,” and he soon became “the most hated man on Alcatraz.” By 1936, his enemies began seriously to give “much time and thought on planning a ‘no rap’ way to kill him.”
Meanwhile, Capone was trying to behave as a model prisoner, and if his attitude toward the warden seemed condescending to others, his official communications with authorities were humble and groveling. He got no special privileges at Alcatraz and like every other prisoner had $10 per month in prison scrip to spend as he wished. In addition to the articles of clothing and bedding authorized by the regulations, he was granted permission to keep in his cell family pictures, a world almanac, and the following books: several sets of music instructions and finger control, an instructive course for playing the banjo, a few sheets of paper for writing music, and two books: The Blessed Friend of Youth and Seeing Italy.
In the summer of 1935, his request to be transferred from the shoe shop to the library was approved, and he was assigned to process the borrowing cards of other inmates. In this work, he became a devoted library patron whose reading ranged widely. Permitted to have three books in his cell at a time, he checked out titles such as Common Errors in English Corrected, FDR’s Looking Forward, and a popular book of self-improvement, Life Begins at Forty, which was approximately what his age would be when he was released. He also had travel books about Italy and Brazil and how to sail alone around the world. Most of all, he checked out books about how to enjoy listening to music and how to play it, practical flower gardening, and how to build an American home. He was happily preparing for the quiet life of a family man and property owner once he was released.
If Al Capone’s years in prison were ranked for contentment, those he worked in the library would have been highest. When his supervisor wrote Al’s “Confidential Work Report,” he described his work as “good (not ‘excellent’)” and his character as “friendly, pleasant, energetic, [and] faithful (neither ‘trustworthy’ nor ‘quarrelsome’ or ‘skeptical’).” He was also “talkative” and “boastful,” with the latter word encircled with the handwritten qualification “somewhat.” The evaluator was “pleasantly surprised” by Prisoner 85’s positive attitude toward his work, and he had only one objection to his conduct: “too great readiness upon his part to offer unasked advice, or to make suggestions as to when or how things should be done.” In conclusion, the supervisor said he would “very much dislike to lose him from the library force.”
Despite such positive appraisal, Prisoner 85 (for they had no names in Alcatraz and were known only by dehumanizing numbers) was rotated to a stint in the laundry room. It was hard, hot, and mindless work, a setting ripe for provocations and outbursts of all kinds. On one occasion, he was the passive victim of a physical assault that had to be broken up by guards, who nevertheless assigned as much responsibility for the fracas to him as to the provocateurs.
He spent eight days in solitary confinement in “the Hole,” a darkened cell of complete sensory deprivation in which night and day were indistinguishable. He never knew what time it was until silent guards shoved trays through slots in the door, with the daily ration of all the water he could drink and four slices of white bread. Twice a week, he got small portions of whatever was served in the dining hall, minus dessert or beverages. There was no mattress or bedding, so he spent his days and nights on the bare concrete floor. He had applied for parole before this incident, but now it was unlikely to be considered.
Life in Alcatraz was so grim and inhumane that there was scant chance he could stay out of trouble. There were prison strikes that he refused to join, leading to taunts of cowardice. Other prisoners tried to extort him for huge sums of money in payments he was supposed to authorize to their contacts on the outside. One informer wrote to Ralph, who by 1936 had been released from McNeil Island but as a convicted felon was barred from visiting his brother. The informer told Ralph of how Al’s enemies planted a knife under his dining hall seat because he refused to go along with a $5,000 extortion attempt. Another told Ralph that Al would be killed because he refused would-be escapers the $15,000 they needed to buy guns to break out and a speedboat to whisk them away. He lost weight by eating very little after his coffee was poisoned with lye, and from then on he only tasted the interior sections of the food portions that were dumped onto his tin tray. By 1936, he had lost more than fifty pounds and weighed just under two hundred. He had also lost most of his hair and had sores on his face, declared later to be signs of advancing syphilis.
Although most incidents of violence were not in official prison records, inmates who served time with Al Capone and who told their stories or wrote memoirs after their release gave many different versions of the attacks and assaults. Everything they claimed as true appeared in some form or another in newspapers, magazines, and subsequent biographies. The one account of an assault that can be verified in its entirety came in the form of a report from the prison’s chief medical officer to Warden Johnston.
Just after breakfast on June 23, 1936, as Capone was working at his next rotation in the clothing room, James Lucas (No. 224), an inmate in search of the glory that would come from “taking out Scarface,” seized a pair of scissors and stabbed him repeatedly in the back and chest. That much was true, but all other accounts of this event were wishful exaggeration, such as the one about how Capone was strong enough after the stabbing to break his banjo in shards while using it to beat Lucas repeatedly. There was no way he could have taken his banjo to work, nor was there any truth in the tale of how he roared in uncontrolled rage as he used it to hammer Lucas into submission.
The medical examiner’s report was accurate: Factual and succinct, it described how Capone was brought to the hospital in a state of semi-shock after first being medicated to stabilize him for the transport. There was a small puncture wound in his left posterior chest that was deep and bleeding heavily but did not penetrate the chest cavity, a puncture wound on his left thumb, and several superficial wounds on each hand, inflicted as he raised them in self-defense. Further examination revealed a possibly contaminated scissor blade that had broken off and was deeply embedded in his left thumb and that required local anesthetic to remove. The wounds were not life threatening, but the removal of the scissor blade was so difficult and possibly infectious that he had to spend three days in the hospital to see how he responded to the massive units of tetanus antitoxin the doctors prescribed.
When the family learned of the stabbing, Ralph sent another in the series of letters he had been writing to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Sanford Bates (whom he addressed as “the Honorable”). They were models of perfect English that covered all the legal bases, and because Ralph was barely literate in speaking, let alone writing, they were obviously prepared for his signature by the lawyers. They were written at the beginning of Al’s imprisonment by the
lawyer Ahern and later by the wily Abraham Teitelbaum, the Chicago lawyer who served Al for the rest of his life. The letter sent two days after the stabbing confirmed what Ralph had said in an earlier phone call, that he, his mother, and his brother’s wife would “gladly assume all responsibility for [Al’s] safety and responsibility” if he could be transferred to another prison.
Anticipating the excuses for why this request might not be honored, Ralph’s letter said that if the transfer were granted, he would “personally assume full responsibility and guilt for any bribes of officials or guards, also other prisoners, seeking any special privileges, favors, etc., and in fact anything of any nature whatsoever in violation of your prison rules.” To reinforce his point, he repeated that he would assume “full responsibility and the guilt thereof.” He concluded with the family’s concern that his brother’s life was in constant danger and his health impaired by his “extreme nervous condition [and] mental worries…being at all times fearful of criminal attack.” This request, like those in the many other letters the lawyers sent, was denied.
The Capone family lived in a similar state of anxiety and fear as their beloved Al. In Alcatraz, visits were limited to one per month from the loosely defined “members of your family” and lasted from 1:30 to 3:10 p.m. In an undated letter, Al wrote directly to Johnston to ask for special consideration so that he could at least see Mae and his mother on two consecutive days. Al asked that if the warden refused this request, would he grant Mae and Teresa the privilege they had enjoyed in Atlanta, of three visits on three consecutive days? In return for such a tremendous favor, he promised not to see them for the three months that followed. He explained that the trip was long and expensive and he would forgo the pleasure the visits brought him in order to spare them from having to travel so far for only a little over an hour with him.
His letter was a model of humility, yet filled with the verbosity that characterized all his correspondence and marked by the simplicity of language that came from his sixth-grade education. Repeatedly, he wrote how “we will more than appreciate it, sure hope you will consider this condition, for the sake of my family, as it sure mean’s [sic] plenty to able [sic] to see them for a few hour’s [sic] a month, thanking you in advance, and sure hope and pray that you will consider this favorably.”
His lawyers made the same request in succinct perfect English, in a letter addressed to Attorney General Cummings and asking for the same visiting privileges as the Capone family had had in Atlanta. Interestingly, the letter was signed not by Mae but by Teresa (here signing her name as Theresa). As she had always done, Mae stayed quietly in the background and let others do the legal petitioning. When all their appeals failed, no matter how difficult it was to make the journey, Mae never missed a visit, even though she had to make her own appeals to apply for each one and then to wait for long and capricious periods of time to receive what should have been routine permission. Sometimes she had to wait as long as three months for it to be granted, but she never missed any visit she was allowed.
Mae took trains across the country, always in private compartments, usually accompanied by Teresa and/or one of Al’s brothers and occasionally by Mafalda. Sonny was happily in school at St. Pat’s, and Mae’s siblings living in the area of Palm Island were available to help look after him as needed. When Sonny was fourteen, he met Ruth Diana Casey (who later reversed the order of her given names to Diana Ruth), his classmate and the woman he would marry. He, Mae, and her sisters and brother became friendly with the large Irish Catholic Casey family, so Sonny had the companionship and support of a network of caring people whenever his mother was away.
Because the journey was so arduous, the Capone contingent usually booked a suite in a quiet San Francisco hotel where they could count on their privacy being respected. They always tried to arrive a few days before and to stay on for a few more after the visit, mostly to recuperate before making the exhausting journey back. Tension before the visit was high, and time was needed afterward to decompress. In later years, Sonny told his daughters about how, when he accompanied his mother on such visits, he and Mae filled these hours at the movies, which had the added benefit of letting them lose themselves in anonymous, dark rooms and Hollywood make-believe. Mae was adept at eluding press coverage, even though she always traveled under her own name, so reporters and photographers only occasionally learned she was there.
Because visits were so frustratingly short, Al and Mae stayed in touch through letters. He was allowed to write two per week and to receive seven (and she wrote every day), but only after prison officials approved the prisoner’s list of correspondents. On Mother’s Day, they were allowed to mail a third letter for the week, and at Christmas four cards; on Christmas, Easter, Father’s Day, and their birthdays, they were allowed to receive unlimited greeting cards. Letters Capone wrote had to be presented in unsealed envelopes, and those he received were opened and read by censors. Mae saved all the letters they exchanged until the last years of her life, when she made a bonfire and burned them, along with family photographs and every other document that related to her life with Al Capone. She told her granddaughters that she did not want to leave anything behind that might result in salacious public scrutiny.
Anything No. 85 wrote that appeared to be related to the conduct of illegal activity in or out of the prison was deleted before being released or sent. Al was careful to couch any instructions to Ralph that he sent through Mae in the vaguest language he could manage, but he still occasionally crossed the line. When his beloved Frank Rio died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-nine, felled by a coronary occlusion and not by a mob hit, Al asked Mae to instruct Ralph to see that his widow and two children received monthly stipends from the Outfit. He praised Mae for going to Chicago to comfort the widow even as he expressed his doubts about the cause of death: “Ask Ralph how sure he is that it was heart trouble as Honey, you know Frank was at all times real healthy and strong and really I can’t understand it and for Ralph to find out and let me know.”
The letter, which made it through the censors unedited, set off a flurry of exchanges between Johnston and the national director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Sanford Bates. Besides asking that Ralph see to Mrs. Rio’s needs, the letter asked Mae to send a lavish, attention-grabbing floral tribute to the funeral. Newspapers of course gave it headline coverage, thus alarming Bates, who insisted that Johnston explain what was going on and justify how he was running Alcatraz. Johnston rushed to convince Bates that he was firmly in control and that Al was not running the prison. The warden explained that even if Ralph did make all the arrangements for money and flowers, the request from Al was not necessarily mob business: “If the money…represents charity, it is one thing, but if the deceased was one of a gang or mob, it may be looked at differently.” Johnston recommended that if Bates remained unconvinced of his control, he launch an investigation that would, Johnston knew, clear him of any wrongdoing. His letter must have satisfied Bates, for there is no record that he did anything at all.
Al’s exchanges with Mae represented a lifeline to the outside world, one that buttressed his resolution to steer clear of prison politics and keep to the straight and narrow of good behavior. He always knew what a remarkable woman he had married, but being alone and having to maintain silence for such long stretches of time, the naturally gregarious Al began to think about her worth in ways that he might not have previously done.
Al’s continuing discomfort with solitude is evident in his letters to Mae, where he expressed his love for everyone, from Ralph’s current wife, Valma, to Mafalda’s infant daughter, Dolores. He yearned to be among them all. His pre-prison life had consisted of long periods of time spent in his hotel headquarters, away from his family but always surrounded by a contingent of his men. When he was on the run, they were there with him, too. If he went for long stretches of time without seeing Mae, he still had female companionship whenever he wanted. In prison, he was deprived of all these encounters, and the shee
r aloneness made him cling to Mae in an almost childlike fashion. His letters were poignant expressions of love and devotion, and when he was not calling her “Sweet” several times in almost every sentence, he referred to her as “Mom” and himself as “Dad.” Sonny was their “beloved son,” the fine young man of whom he was so proud that only the cliché of a father busting his buttons can describe Al’s emotion. Sonny was eighteen years old and about to begin his freshman year at Notre Dame, something unimaginable for the man who started out as a small-time Brooklyn hood, and especially unreal for the broken gangster who had once been on top of the world.
They were both still so young—Al was thirty-eight and Mae forty—but the events of their lives before he went to prison had contrived to make their relationship seem one of people far older and greatly removed from the youthful days of passionate love. From Alcatraz, Al repeatedly told Mae, “I love and adore you more now than ever and my love is increasing more and more each day…when your dear dad gets lucky and comes home again into your wonderful arms it will be a new daddy, and yours alone, so please believe me dear, as I sure will prove it to you later.” Without referring to the mysterious Jeanette DeMarco by name, he tried to dispel her shadow by concluding, “Dear, I love you alone and have forgotten all about the other party.”
The tone and content of Al’s letters to Mae changed around 1936, when the syphilis began its insidious inroad toward his brain and he turned toward religion. Whether a sincere conversion or a desperate prayer for a cure, Al embraced the lifeline offered by Mae’s unwavering love for him and devotion to their marriage, and because she was a devout practitioner of the Catholic faith, he began to follow it himself. His letters told her of his frequent participation in the sacraments of Mass, confession, and Communion. He was fond of the priest who ministered to the prisoners every week, Father Joseph Mahoney Clark, S.J. If they discussed anything pertaining to Al’s life in crime, the priest maintained the silence of his calling and never told, nor did he write anything in the extensive archives he compiled. The priest did share a love of music with Al, who had become proficient on the mandolin (he called it the mandola). He used his library privileges to study all sorts of literature on the history of the instrument and how to play it, and he also composed his own songs for it. Mae was graced with one written especially for her on Mother’s Day, as was Teresa with another, but for Father Clark he wrote out the words and music and signed a copy that the priest was allowed to take with him as a souvenir and gift from Al. The priest provided comfort and serenity around 1938, when the syphilis became rampant.