Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  Eventually, Dr. Moore stabilized Al Capone, but he had observed his patient long enough to state conclusively that he would never regain full mental cognition: “The evidences of his mental deterioration will persist…he will remain in his present condition indefinitely.” When he left Baltimore at the end of March, Dr. Moore’s ministrations had rejuvenated his mental age to fourteen, but he was still “silly, childish, and mentally deteriorated.” That was the husband Mae would take home to Palm Island.

  Al had been given outpatient status in mid-January, but he had to stay in Baltimore and continue treatment for at least another six weeks. They all lived in the house in the quiet Mount Washington neighborhood that was large enough for Teresa and her other children, most of whom came and went, with the exception of Ralph, who generally stayed. In gratitude to the hospital, Mae donated two weeping cherry trees in Al’s name, and both were planted on the grounds. For the most part, the six weeks passed tranquilly except for Al’s occasional bouts of irritability and the anger he had begun to direct toward family members, as he had earlier done when hospital personnel who were new to him entered his room. Anyone he did not recognize was likely to provoke a violent reaction, so everyone had to tread carefully. The doctor told Mae there would be a steady decline in his ability to reason, so she needed to establish routines to keep him from erupting and acting out and also to screen him from encounters with strangers who might upset him.

  Mae listened carefully to everything Dr. Moore told her and she followed all his directives, but she was still not willing to accept his diagnosis that Al was in an irreversible decline. The doctor tried repeatedly to make her see reason by describing how other mainstream researchers might have pronounced patients “cured” when they were really only slowing or altering the progression of the disease. Sometimes the patient lived for a long time, often to old age, and eventually did die of something else. This, he said, would be the optimum outcome for Al. Dr. Moore made sure Mae knew how rare such outcomes were because he did not want her to become desperate enough to put a charlatan in charge who would promise Al’s complete recovery. In mid-March, he told Mae she could take him home, but he must be put under immediate medical observation as soon as they arrived, and every six months he must be checked for “standpoints…blood and spinal fluid also.”

  The family entourage bundled themselves into a car to drive straight through to Miami, stopping only for gas and food, with Mae stubbornly refusing to accept that Al would not make a full recovery. Dr. Moore continued to worry that her attitude might possibly create two major problems in the future, one of which he concealed from her. He revealed his first concern only to the Capone family’s physician in Miami, Dr. Kenneth Phillips, who took over Al’s care and with whom Moore continued to collaborate. Again being truthful but tactful, Moore told Phillips that, as he saw Mae, she was so desperate for a complete cure that he feared she would disregard both doctors and hire a “relatively unscrupulous physician.” He urged Phillips to help him make sure this did not happen.

  Moore did tell Mae his second reason for concern: he warned that she would have to be constantly on guard to make sure Al had full “social adjustment…to his environment,” because anything he could not comprehend could throw him into a violent tantrum, and being confronted with people he did not know was often the trigger. If, for example, Al were to make “an unprovoked attack upon a stranger,” Moore said he could very well be arrested for disturbing the peace, and there was a justified fear that an unsympathetic judge might commit him to a psychiatric hospital.

  Dr. Moore hoped that Dr. Phillips could persuade the Capone brothers to prevent Mae from making bad medical decisions and help her to keep Al under control. He encouraged them to help her find “a thoroughly experienced and psychiatrically well trained male nurse.” To soothe any anxiety Al might express at having a stranger come into his house, he asked them to introduce the nurse as “a chauffeur or companion.” They did not follow Dr. Moore’s advice, for shortly after he gave it, Al attacked his brother John, and there was severe “physical violence.” After this unprovoked attack upon a family member, they decided they could not risk introducing a stranger to the household.

  Mae and the brothers decided they would have to control Al by themselves, and no one but family was allowed in the house. Both physicians worried about the entire family’s long-term welfare because Al could live a very long time, as much as ten to thirty more years. The doctors thought it would be impossible for “his wife, his son, and his brothers [to] give up their entire interests and time to the maintaining of this patient in the capacity of personal attendants to him. They too are human beings.” The doctors concluded that “it may be confidently anticipated that some of them will be in psychiatric difficulties, to say nothing of the financial difficulties” that were likely to arise if some or all of the brothers had to remain in full-time attendance in case he needed to be restrained.

  Dr. Phillips digested all his colleague’s information and advice and then contributed a piece of his own. His most immediate problem was one he would deal with for the rest of Al’s life: Ralph. Ralph had taken charge of everything—at least in his own mind. Mae had always disliked him, but now she detested him, arrogant bully that he was, and not a very intelligent one at that. Fortunately, Abe Teitelbaum had his measure, and between the lawyer and the wife they managed to bypass Ralph and make most things happen in ways that were best for the patient. Correspondence between the two physicians shows how Dr. Phillips sometimes asked Dr. Moore for advice about how to deal with Ralph and how both doctors sometimes wrote letters or made phone calls in which they dispensed platitudes they hoped would calm him down.

  Ralph still refused to listen to reason and found ways to interfere. After his release from the penitentiary in Washington State, Ralph had set up several businesses in Wisconsin’s far north, among them a roadside joint in Mercer called Billy’s Hotel and Bar. He was also involved with the Waukesha Water Company in ways that are still unclear, and he was seen making trips to Chicago, where he was in frequent contact with fellow members of the Outfit. He created a major crisis when he told Al, without consulting Mae or the doctors, that he would take him first to Chicago for a long stay and then on to Mercer. It had the unfortunate effect of making Al wildly excited and convinced that he would soon be returning to Chicago to take command of the Outfit. Although it was beyond the realm of possibility, anytime anyone changed the subject or tried to distract him, it triggered one of his worst outbursts.

  Dr. Moore decided on an intervention and asked Ralph to stop in Baltimore on his way back from Mercer, where he usually was when not at Palm Island. Ralph refused to understand that allowing Al to return to Chicago would be the worst possible decision, so to mollify him and pacify Al, Dr. Moore was trying to find a compromise to satisfy them both. His first suggestion was for Ralph to find some way for Al to occupy himself with the “minor details” of Waukesha Water: “for example an attempt at keeping a set of books.” If that did not satisfy Al, he suggested that the family purchase one of the adjoining vacant plots of land abutting Palm Island and “let the patient run it as his personal garden, either flower or veg.” The easily distractible Ralph lost interest in both suggestions, and because the family income consisted of whatever the new leaders in the Outfit doled out as Ralph’s share and Mae’s for her upkeep, purchasing new property was not an option. Mae’s only option along these lines was to find a spot on the Palm Island property where Al could plant a garden. The best they managed was going for walks on the property, where she taught him the names of the luscious plantings, which he enjoyed reciting as he cleaned off dead leaves or pulled the occasional weed.

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  A year elapsed, and by March 1941 Al was calmer and his periods of lucidity were greater, which made him more determined than ever to go to Chicago. Mae had come around to thinking it might be good for him to live most of the year in Cicero, where he could have the kind of male (that is, Outfit) companions
hip he did not get at Palm Island. She had gradually been able to introduce outsiders into Al’s daily environment, and he was at relative ease with most of them. Every day she had a trustworthy jack-of-all-trades on the property named Brown and called Brownie, who served as general family retainer and companion to Al. Rose, an equally trustworthy maid, came each day for a few years, but when she either quit or retired, Mae was left to do the housework herself.

  Two reasons led her to this decision: the first was that the entire Capone family was living on the weekly $600 the Outfit sent Ralph, which had to support Mae, Teresa, and any other family members who needed help. It meant that Mae could not afford a maid or cleaning woman. The second reason was far more important: she could not trust anyone other than family and close friends not to talk to reporters, who camped out at the end of the driveway and, when no news was leaked, invented their own. Family members knew they had to keep Al as secluded as possible because he had frequent periods when “he said things he should not have. He talked to dead people and told them why they had to die. Sometimes he gave away Outfit business. We couldn’t take a chance that any of this would get out.”

  Mae and the family did all they could to shelter Al from situations where he might be subjected to unpleasant encounters. Occasionally, they took him to a movie, which he enjoyed enormously, or to a restaurant with sympathetic management where they knew they would have a secluded table. They kept him busy with gardening, swimming in his magnificent pool, and fishing off the end of the dock. Totally untrue were the stories of how he sat beside the pool in his nightclothes and cast his fishing rod into it because he thought it was the bay. There were false stories of how he was so weak he could not get out of bed and how all physical activity was forbidden, and false stories that he had resumed holding large parties where he regaled guests with tales of his past exploits and assurances that he was now back in command of his illegal empire. He looked much the same as before he entered prison. His physical appearance gave the illusion of good health and total recovery; within several months of being at home, he regained the fifty pounds he had lost at Alcatraz.

  But during the day, besides the few trusted retainers, family members attended to their own activities, and except for Mae, Al was often alone. Sonny had left Notre Dame after his first year and enrolled in the University of Miami to study business administration and to help Mae care for Al. Here again, another untrue rumor dogged Sonny for the rest of his life. He did not leave because of harassment when it got out that Albert Francis was really Albert Francis Capone; Sonny had enrolled at Notre Dame under his full name and was always known during his time there as Al Capone’s son. He transferred because he was needed to help out at home and also because he was seriously dating his high school sweetheart, Diana Ruth Casey, whom he married on his parents’ twenty-third wedding anniversary, December 30, 1941, in the family church, St. Patrick’s.

  Al attended the ceremony, pausing on the church steps for photographs, responding to the good wishes shouted by onlookers, and looking fit and smiling for the cameras as if he had never spent the unpleasant ten-year interlude in courtrooms and prisons. But shortly after those photographs were taken, he was led into a small private room away from the main celebration, and soon after that he was taken back to Palm Island. No one wanted to risk an outburst, and thankfully there was none because the wedding coincided with one of his good periods. He enjoyed his brief participation in the festivities because he liked the vivacious redheaded Boogie (pronounced “Boo-ghee,” with a soft g). He was always happy when she was in the house. Al called her by the nickname, but to Sonny and Mae she was always “Casey.”

  Mae’s sister Muriel and her husband, Louis Clark, had relocated to Miami, and they were also living in the house to give Mae the help she desperately needed. Of her four sisters, Muriel was the one closest to Mae, and Al liked her as well, so he was always happy for her company. Through Sonny’s wife’s family, Gertrude F. Cole came into the Capone household and became a good friend, trusted confidante, and unofficial nurse to Al.

  Cole (as she was called) had originally been hired to care for Diana’s grandmother, and after her death she stayed on to care for her mother, Ruth Casey, who was a severe alcoholic. Cole liked Sonny, but she still worried about her dear Boogie marrying into such a notorious family. After they married and she saw how happy they were, she became close to the extended Capones, just as she had been to the Caseys. Cole was a large, physically imposing, and headstrong woman, and Al had great fun with her. She claimed to be psychic and used her gift to pick winning racehorses, which Al marveled at despite continuing his losing ways. By now, though, his losses were imaginary: Cole helped him choose horses through racing forms because he could not go to the track, and she pretended to place bets but did not actually do so.

  He was losing more than made-up bets on horses, as could be seen in the note he wrote to Cole that has come to be called “Al’s Grocery List.” He began by calling himself “Your dear old pal, Al,” but his once distinct and flowing handwriting had degenerated into an illegible scrawl, and in run-on sentences he asked Cole to bring him “three decks of pennucle [sic] cards” and a bottle of Bayer aspirin. Mae took care of all the household needs, so he must have been in one of his delusional periods for he also asked Cole to “get some Borax or Lux or any kind of soap you can get the more the better.” His remarks about how he would pay her were equally convoluted, and he ended by wishing her a “real good happy new year.” It was only October.

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  Sonny and Casey were often at Palm Island in the early years of their marriage, coming to dine with Mae and Al as many as three or four times each week. In quick succession, Casey gave birth to four daughters: Veronica and Diane Patricia (who called themselves “the older kids”) and Barbara and Theresa (whom the older two called “the little kids”). Each one would become a lifelong source of great joy to their grandparents, who in turn are well and lovingly remembered by their granddaughters.

  The Palm Island house had a long porch, a shaded veranda where Mae liked to serve meals and Al liked to sit and relax. It was large enough for grandchildren to run around the seated adults and play. The two older girls spent the most time with the grandparents, particularly after Casey gave birth to the two younger daughters. She much appreciated how Mae helped by keeping Veronica and Diane for several days at a time so she could concentrate on the two littlest ones.

  They especially liked their sleepovers with “Mama Mae,” as they called their grandmother. Grandfather Al was “Papa,” which in their pronunciation sounded much like “paw paw” (accent on the second syllable). Of him, they remember a loving, happy presence. Al and Mae were the ideal grandparents in the early years of the granddaughters’ lives, and in their adult years their childhood memories were reinforced by their grandmother’s stories: “Mama Mae loved him dearly, and she painted every picture of him with a very loving brush.” This was what they knew of their grandparents, and this is what they treasured.

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  These domestic details were a source of much comment for the FBI. The bureau never stopped watching the house and filing reports about everything, especially family activities, for the rest of Al’s life. All the FBI’s spying memos were written as if they were imparting news of world-shaking importance, and the most pompous were usually about the family. In one, the agent who watched the house wrote of the “extremely close bond” between the parents, their son and his wife, and their daughters: “It is known that one of the paramount interests in Al’s present life is the welfare of Albert’s two children, for whom he is constantly purchasing gifts. This feeling, of course, is equally shared by Mae.” The memo went on to say that Boogie was expecting another child and Mae sometimes gave her small gifts of money to supplement Sonny’s income. Also, that Al left the house each day, sometimes to “attend to the shopping,” but mostly to be driven by Mae to Sonny’s home “for frequent visits.”

  While this kind of surveillance wa
s innocuous enough, the government was still actively pursuing Al for payment of back taxes. In 1941, Abe Teitelbaum wrote to Dr. Phillips asking him to verify that his client’s mental condition prevented him from attending a court session in Chicago “in aid of execution of a law money judgment.” Perhaps because he had been burned when he swore all those years ago that Al was ill with the flu and unable to travel, Dr. Phillips deflected the decision to Dr. Moore, saying he was the official supervising and attending physician. Dr. Moore wrote the letter, and Teitelbaum did not have to take Al into the courtroom. As before, there were no assets to attach, and the back taxes remained unpaid.

  An exchange followed between the two doctors in which Dr. Moore offered to transfer responsibility to Dr. Phillips and stay on in a consulting capacity. Both parties agreed in principle to this arrangement, but it took some time before it was put into effect. Dr. Moore wanted to examine Al, but he also agreed with Dr. Phillips that their patient was not in good enough mental health to travel to Baltimore, so arrangements were made for the family to pay Moore $500 plus expenses to come to Miami for one examination.

  From the day Al was released from prison to the day he died, Ralph created numerous crises in his brother’s life, usually by bringing up trips to Chicago or Mercer. Al kept insisting that he wanted to return to Chicago and live in Cicero, and Ralph kept pestering the doctors to let him go. Mae was so content with the way Al had adjusted to life in Miami that she now wanted him to stay there. However, Ralph was in full bully mode and was so insistent on moving Al that he was upsetting her and the entire rest of the family.