by Deirdre Bair
Dr. Moore convened the entire family and told them that “Mr. Ralph did not show very much horse sense in telling the patient any such thing,” but there was little he could do to stop Ralph, for he had appointed himself the head of the family and the person in charge of all medical decisions concerning Al. When Al first became his patient, Dr. Moore told Dr. Phillips that “Mr. Ralph and Mr. John [were] both extremely intelligent and cooperative,” but by now he had ample reason to change his mind entirely. Dr. Moore was wise in his subsequent dealings with everyone in the Capone family: he simply cut Ralph out of most loops, telling him only what he wanted him to know. He advised Mae and Dr. Phillips to do the same, and they followed his advice.
But Ralph was seemingly unstoppable when it came to causing controversy. He found ways to question one doctor, then repeat a version of what he had been told (actually, what he wanted to hear) to the other, thus creating a round-robin of distrust and suspicion between the two primary physicians over who said what to whom. It exacerbated the tension between them because Dr. Phillips complained about Dr. Moore’s inability to decide whether to assume full responsibility for Al or to transfer it to him or to another physician. Dr. Phillips insisted that only one of them could be in charge, even as Ralph huffed and puffed about firing them both.
For his part, Dr. Phillips was generally afraid of the men in the Capone family and had said several times that he would be relieved to pass his notorious patient on to another doctor. To explain, he told Dr. Moore he had been the family doctor since 1928, and he described the men’s dynamic as he knew it. Ralph was a “much less pleasant person to deal with than John,” but despite his “occasional rudeness” he and John had “a clear understanding of the gravity of Al’s illness.” Of the two younger brothers, Matthew (Matty) and Albert (whom he called Alfred), he said they were “more or less nonentities who either have nothing to say or are not allowed to say it.”
Dr. Phillips was frustrated by Dr. Moore’s indecision, and he asked a third physician, Dr. George W. Hall, to intercede and persuade Dr. Moore to make up his mind about what he wanted to do. He finally surrendered authority to Dr. Phillips, and he did so in obvious frustration. Based on the condition Al was in, Dr. Moore said it didn’t matter where they made him live; if he wanted to be in Cicero to be in closer touch “with friends and acquaintances,” Ralph’s job was to ensure that “in doing so he did not get into trouble.” For the time being, the question of a permanent move was postponed, and in the spring of 1941 a monthlong fishing trip to Ralph’s Wisconsin lodge was proposed instead.
Al’s mental age at this stage of his treatment was somewhere around ten, and when he was told he could go fishing, he exhibited the joy of a boy being told he was about to get the treat of his dreams. He could not wait to get started, but they did not actually go until midsummer. They drove through to Chicago, stopping only once at the Prairie Avenue house, where they stayed just long enough to rest, recoup, and prepare for the rest of the journey. There was no opportunity for Al to encounter any of his old cohorts, so his mood remained stable and calm. At Ralph’s lodge, he wrote a letter to Dr. Phillips in which his language demonstrated a general, albeit childlike, command of his faculties. He began, “Here is your friend Al Capone, writing you this letter from here,” after which he wished the doctor and his family well in convoluted language with words missing in crucial instances. He said that after he left the lodge, he planned to stay in Chicago until mid-October, and “then I’ll be back there at our home and have something nice for you which I will bring back home for you Dr please send me 2 bottles of them red pills for bowels movement. Send to this address it’s the address I’ll be until I leave.”
Al spent a good healthy month from mid-August to mid-September in the sun, mostly fishing, eating his catch, playing cards at night, and sleeping long and well. Sonny was there for a time, and long afterward Al could not stop talking about the pleasure he had as they fished together. Ralph was still (to put it loosely) in contact with his Outfit associates, but none were invited to the compound, nor did any show up uninvited. While they were probably curious to see what had become of the once feared and respected “Big Guy,” no one dared to go against the ferociously protective Mae, who did not want them there.
On the way home to Palm Island at the end of September, both Dr. Moore and Dr. Phillips commanded them to make a medical detour to Baltimore. Dr. Phillips had been treating Mae privately in Miami for a serious recurrence of syphilis, and Moore agreed with him that she should be admitted to the hospital in Baltimore for a complete checkup because the risk of leaks to the press was too great in Miami. She refused to be treated in either city; she was in one of her Candide moments, when it was the best of all possible worlds and nothing could be wrong with her life. It left Dr. Moore no choice but to write to Ralph and give him firm instructions to make the detour: “Recheck examinations are essential on Mrs. Capone and on Albert [and] as with Al, it will not be necessary for Albert to go into the hospital.” Mae stubbornly refused to be hospitalized, so Moore agreed to a compromise: “Mrs. Capone should plan on remaining in bed at the hotel with a nurse and attendants for forty eight hours. This should take the place of a hospital admission since I know that she is opposed to that.”
All this time, Mae remained unwilling to accept that Al was never going to be entirely well, holding her hands over her ears and walking away when the doctors tried to talk to her. In the past, both Dr. Moore and Dr. Phillips had resorted to getting information about one family member by asking some of the others to tell what they knew. Usually they asked Mae, but for a time after she refused to stop in Baltimore, they had to ask Ralph and John to report. Ralph told them that Mae was urging Al “to regard himself as a perfectly normal person and to resume his position of ascendancy in the family.” Dr. Moore acknowledged this was only hearsay, but he did know that all the while Al was in Alcatraz and Terminal Island, Mae “felt nothing was wrong with him that release from prison would not cure.” He was astonished when she told him, insistently, that she had kept the truth of Al’s condition from Sonny until after he returned to Miami from Notre Dame.
“If he reads the daily press, he can hardly fail to be aware of it,” Dr. Moore wrote, and Dr. Phillips told him he was right: Sonny had known since Al’s first crisis in Alcatraz, when he had accompanied his mother on one of her trips. The doctors never mentioned if he was actually able to see his father, only that he went with Mae and they spent most of their time waiting to make their visit by going from one movie to another. Dr. Phillips thought it unnecessary to follow Dr. Moore’s request that he persuade Mae to accept that Al was never going to get well and then broach a full and open discussion with Sonny. Neither happened, especially the full and open discussion, for that was not how Italian-American families conveyed information among themselves. Everything had to be cloaked in veiled and oblique exchanges, and with rare exceptions that was how they all discussed Al.
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When Al was originally discharged from prison, Dr. Moore and Dr. Phillips had agreed to dispense a certain amount of factual information through a single press release, one that would contain general information while still honoring their professional responsibility to shield the patient’s medical history from public scrutiny. They thought the announcement of Al’s peripatetic travels from Terminal Island to Lewisburg, Baltimore, and then home to Miami would be enough to quell the flood of outrageous stories that were filling the void of official medical news. They were naive to think that after several weeks “the world-wide flurry of publicity” would end and all parties could resume their private lives, but they were medical men who had no idea of the staying power of the press.
They were not left alone, particularly Dr. Moore, who was hounded day and night after Al was released, until he made it clear that Dr. Phillips had taken charge of the case and he was no longer the spokesperson. After the first year or so, reporters bothered the two doctors less, even though the stories continued in a st
eady stream. American and foreign reporters still camped outside the gates at Palm Island in search of a sudden spontaneous interview; they would continue to hang around there until mid-1946. Generally speaking, the family disregarded them.
The FBI continued to linger near Palm Island as well. Knowing that Ralph was supporting Al, and rightly surmising where the money was coming from, they questioned Mae from time to time to see if she might let something slip. She was always careful with what she said, and they learned nothing from her. Her nerves were strained by being constantly on the alert over what Al might do or say; she lost weight and had trouble eating and sleeping. Al was the center of life for everyone, and everything else was on permanent hold; sadly, there was no way to change it.
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By 1945, there was a large enough supply of penicillin for Al to be among the first nonmilitary people to receive it. The drug did little to slow the disease because his condition was too advanced for it to have a positive effect. The FBI had its sources in the Dade County Medical Society, and the memos local agents sent to Washington often contained the latest medical information about Al Capone. In the one noting the penicillin treatment, it describes the decline in his ability to speak clearly, his increasing gibberish (which the agent interpreted as “a slight Italian accent”), and his difficulty controlling bodily tremors or walking a straight line. “He has become quite obese,” the memo read, and “he is of course shielded from the outside world by Mae.”
Al himself might also have been controlling the image he presented to the outside world. His granddaughters think there were times when he deliberately exaggerated his condition whenever he knew he was being observed. Those who were with him in the house knew another man in the last three years of his life, one entirely different from what the public observed. News stories described how he played cards using his own set of unusual rules, often erupting if not allowed to win; in the privacy of family life, he taught Diana’s brother, Jim, to play cards in the conventional way, carefully instructing him how to count those still in play and suggesting mental tricks to use for keeping the count in mind. The papers related incidents of irrational outbursts connected with gambling bets; at home, Cole did not place real bets, and she joshed with him about horse races and boxing matches as he made his usual skewed observations about various outcomes of winners and losers. While stories were told of how he lay in bed most of the day muttering to himself, barely able to walk, his greatest delight was to walk his older two granddaughters around the garden, pointing out the names of flowers, butterflies, and birds. The stories of Al in pajamas fishing in his swimming pool originated around this time, but Al never did any such thing, and the pool was never stocked with fish for the catching.
A few visitors to Palm Island made disparaging remarks about Al’s mental state, but the validity of such observations is subject to interpretation. Jake Guzik allegedly proclaimed Al “nutty as a fruitcake.” Perhaps Guzik made the comment as a way to throw off the FBI, for one of Al’s brothers’ descendants who was old enough to have clear memories of life in the house said, “I would not put it past any of them to give out misinformation just for the hell of it.”
Descendants of Al and his brothers who remember him recall the merriment that went on around the table at family dinners. He loved having everyone there, as he did at holidays. Christmas was especially festive, with the lights, decorations, and large tree. As presents were chaotically unwrapped, Al sat in the middle of it all, beaming at everyone and thoroughly enjoying the good cheer. In recent years, a story has surfaced of how he dressed up in a Santa suit, but “that never, ever happened,” said the granddaughter who was always present for Christmas. “Papa was never dressed like that in his life.”
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Shortly after the start of the penicillin injections in the summer of 1945, there was a second trip to Ralph’s lodge. This one was pleasant in its way, although quite different from the first in 1941 now that the decline in his physical health was becoming more noticeable. His mental age had deteriorated to that of a seven-year-old, even though he still had occasional periods when his doctors said he seemed more like ten. He had to be supervised like a small child, for there were times when he did not know how to stay out of harm’s way and other times when he had to be instructed about what to do (“eat your peas,” “wash your ears”). He still enjoyed fishing, but someone always had to be in the little boat with him. Mostly, he was sweet-tempered, particularly when children were around. There is a family photograph that shows him pushing the one-year-old son of one of his brothers in a baby buggy, and the expression on his face shows his clear delight. The family had managed to spirit Al to Wisconsin quietly without the press getting wind of it, and information about it stayed private until one year later, when a rash of stories appeared that raised genuine concerns about more government scrutiny of the family’s affairs.
There were many telephone calls between Miami and Chicago, all made by Ralph but nevertheless originating in Al’s house. The FBI agents followed Ralph’s movements as closely as they studied Al’s, which brought the Wisconsin trip into focus as they monitored the subsequent activity in the Palm Island house. Ralph often received so-called vacationers from Chicago who just happened to be swarthy men in dark suits that hid possible underarm bulges. In late June 1946, a reporter jokingly asked a Palm Island groundskeeper if Al was in the house. The man joked right back, saying he was not there because he was “up north doing business.” This incident, paired with the press’s knowledge of the government’s increased interest in Ralph’s activities, led to an explosion of stories that Al really was back in charge of the Outfit and that was why he had gone to Wisconsin in 1945. Reporters had their own sources in medical offices and government agencies, so a great deal of rumor, invention, and speculation was printed as hard-and-fast fact. Al himself added fuel to the fires of these rumors, for he was overheard on his few public outings in Miami boasting that he was in charge and once again directing everything that happened in Chicago. Whether he was doing this deliberately or whether his mental impairment had progressed to such a delusional point, it did not matter; no one checked the facts because anything about him still made good copy.
The media frenzy grew when James M. Ragen, who took over the horse-racing wire services after Moe Annenberg went to jail, was gunned down in Chicago in June 1946. He survived the injuries long enough to accuse Al of being back in charge of the Outfit and of having him killed in order to take over his business. The frenzy that erupted in Miami was so intense that Dr. Phillips, “in the face of recent publicity given Mr. Al Capone, and on behalf of the family,” released a formal statement of denial to all the national and local press services shortly after the initial stories appeared. He did so after he received a telegram signed by the three major news agencies, AP, UP, and INS, “urgently recommending” that he hold a press conference. In a veiled threat of what would happen if he did not, the telegram said it would “save you many possible headaches such stories futurely suggest.” Dr. Phillips gave in and spoke to the press, truthfully telling the assemblage that Al was in his Miami home and had been since he went “north” during the summer of 1945; since then, “he has not been taking any active part in business whatsoever.”
Dr. Phillips then got himself in serious trouble with the local medical society throughout the last half of 1946, when he continued to provide occasional medical details of the situation in the Palm Island house: “Capone’s physical and nervous condition remains essentially the same as when last officially reported. He is still nervous and irritable and is advised against assuming any responsibility or engaging in any work or business activity.” In an effort to make the reporters go away—which he should have known would only make them forge relentlessly onward—he also described Mae: “Mrs. Capone has not been well. The physical and nervous strain placed upon her in assuming the responsibility of his case is tremendous. A plea is, therefore, requested that she not be annoyed or molested.” The con
cluding sentences of such statements only guaranteed that she would continue to be stalked and hassled: “I shall cooperate in an effort to obtain any pertinent news desired in order to avoid her being subjected to further strain.”
In January 1947, the wrath of the Dade County Medical Society came crashing down on him, with board members demanding an explanation of why he had violated doctor-patient confidentiality. He traced the situation back to his response to the three American news agencies, which he mistakenly thought had agreed to honor his request that all further announcements of Al Capone’s health would come through the medical society and not from Dr. Phillips himself. He insisted that all the hysteria that domestic newspapers and radio were dispensing did not come from him but rather was repeated from international news agencies who were not required to follow American rules. In his defense, he wrote, “The balance of the rather colorful stories was constructed from records already within their possession plus information obtained directly from the family.” Among themselves, the family thought Ralph was probably responsible, for he often boasted that he knew how to handle reporters.
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Once the 1946 summer media frenzy died down, the long and lazy days established a pattern that hewed to the earliest predictions of Al’s doctors: nothing much would change, and he would continue to live for many years to come.
During the last months of 1946, his outbursts and tantrums had lessened. He rarely lashed out at anyone who had the misfortune to do something innocent that displeased him. Strangers still agitated him, so callers to the house were strictly controlled. Except for trips to the drugstore or Sonny’s house, his days were quiet ones under Mae’s devoted attention and the care of whoever else was at home. Daily life revolved around his fluctuating moods, but as long as he was happy, the household was content. In his last year, Al spent many days wearing pajamas and wandering the grounds, often sitting in a chair where he could see the pool and have delusional conversations with people long dead whom he might have killed or had killed. It was another reason to keep strangers away from him. For entertainment, the family supported his childlike pursuits, taking him to an occasional dinner in a quiet restaurant (which he usually thought was one of the snazzy nightclubs he had frequented in Chicago) or to a movie, but only if it was a harmless fluff comedy and several hefty men went along to keep him calm. He had developed a passion for Dentyne gum and licorice Sen-Sen breath fresheners, and it was a great treat when one of the brothers took him to a drugstore where he was allowed to buy them himself.