Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  It is an honor to be published by Nan A. Talese, whose vision led her to take a chance on a most unorthodox subject for a so-called literary biographer. Daniel Meyer has been an extraordinary hands-on editor. Ingrid Sterner painstakingly copy edited the manuscript. Pei Koay designed the text and Michael Windsor created its jacket. Victoria Chow has shepherded the book through its public reception and Lauren Weber has supervised its marketing. I am grateful for the care and attention they all gave to it.

  I am the most fortunate of women to have a close and loving family. I would need to write a separate book to describe all that my children have done to make this one happen. Vonn Scott Bair and Katherine (Katney) Bair have put up with my shenanigans all their lives; my granddaughter, Isabel Courtelis, makes my feminist heart glow through her adventures at the University of Oregon; her father, Niko Courtelis, provides everything from advice on design issues to postage stamps bearing Al Capone’s likeness. My “Swedish son,” Bjorn Lindahl; his wife, Nina Kjølaas; their son, Sebastian Kjølaas; and his wife, Siri, provided hospitality in Oslo and an introduction to Al Capone’s legend in the Scandinavian countries. My sister, Linda Rankin, is there for all things medical, and my brother, Vincent J. Bartolotta, Jr., takes care of the legal, while my sister-in-law, Judith, takes care of everything else.

  This book is dedicated to one of the great editors of our time and a publishing legend, John R. Ferrone, whom I met when I was writing about Anaïs Nin, whose editor he had been. In the years until his death on April 10, 2016, we forged a deep friendship through daily telephone conversations in which I poured out my trials and tribulations while he listened carefully before offering perceptive opinions and solutions. He was always right, the best editor I never had, and, best of all, he always listened.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  “all families are closed narratives”: This eloquent sentence is Rosemary Sullivan’s, in Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 561.

  “You who only know him”: Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1929.

  CHAPTER 1: THE EARLY YEARS

  Gabriele Capone was twenty-nine: To trace the genealogy of the Gabriele Capone family (and almost every other Italian family who came to the United States before or even after Ellis Island) is no easy task. Nothing is consistent, from the spelling of their names to the accuracy of ships’ passenger lists and, later, official U.S. government census records. Earlier biographers of AC have struggled to arrive at consensus but often cannot find it. To read the notes of—to give but three of the most recent examples—Kobler, Schoenberg, and Bergreen is to be aware of the diligence they applied to the task and the difficulty and sheer frustration in each attempt to arrive at the truth. My own attempts were compounded by the lack of documentation in Italy: Naples and its environs suffered massive destruction during World War II, and many civic and religious records and archives were either destroyed or dispersed to places that I and the researchers who assisted me were unable to find. Richard Corey Hart, the great-grandson of Vincenzo Capone, traveled to the family village in 2014 and learned that he was several months too late because the ninety-six-year-old parish priest had just died and everything that could be known about the villagers was in his head. Betty Boyd Caroli, whose dissertation was on immigration and return among Italian-Americans, advised me that often the families have the information but are unwilling to share it for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with issues of secrecy and privacy. As for archival records, Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale in La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 79, quote the mayor of Racalmuto, Sicily, who when asked about them in 1972 replied, “What archives? They fled here without regrets and most of them clandestinely. What records?…They were dying of hunger.” He could have added that most immigrants were also illiterate and could neither read nor write. I have also relied on family history and legends, most of which have come from the current generation of AC’s descendants, whose information is based mostly on tales told to them by their parents and grandparents. I am able, therefore, to present only this brief account of what I believe (at least for now) to be accurate.

  With him were his wife: Here again, there is disagreement about how the Capone family came to America. Some sources have them sailing separately and state that Gabriele arrived before Ellis Island was opened, for there is no record of his arrival between 1885 and 1895; other sources have Teresa and the two children arriving on the ship Werra on June 18, 1895, not as some sources have stated in 1893 or 1894. However, Gabriele’s descendants believe that he arrived with his family and the confusion was probably caused because they traveled in separate classes on the same ship: Gabriele might have been in steerage, where record keeping was often haphazard, while Teresa and the children were in second class, where as a pregnant woman she would have been more comfortable and where better records were kept. Apparently, this was not uncommon among families who paid their own passage, and it sometimes resulted in the omission of some of their names.

  Gabriele was unlike his countrymen: He did have distant cousins, the Fischetti family, who might have come before Ellis Island was opened in 1892 because no record of their arrival has yet been found. Three of the Fischetti sons, Rocco, Charles, and Joseph, later followed AC to Chicago and became trusted employees in the Outfit. They, too, settled first in Brooklyn.

  A rumor surrounding his arrival: Each immigrant was assessed an entrance fee that varied from fifty cents in 1875 to $2 to $4 later. In 2015, $4 would be approximately $85.

  “We can’t get along”: Mangione and Morreale, La Storia, 138.

  Alphonse was followed by: AC’s descendants think there were miscarriages between Teresa’s pregnancies and perhaps even other children who died at birth, particularly two boys who might have been the first Erminio and Amedoe. The surviving son’s name was probably meant to be Amadeo and misspelled on his birth certificate. He used the incorrect spelling until he was an adult and changed it to Matthew. It was not uncommon for Italian families to use the name of a child who died for the next one who lived.

  and the daughters Erminia: There is some uncertainty about this child’s name and dates of birth and death: John Kobler calls her Rose and gives 1910; John Binder cites New York City death records that give her name as Erminia and dates of 1901.

  “seven or eight hundred thousand”: John Quinn to Jacob Epstein, October 21, 1920, NYPL, quoted by Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 157.

  They were even more crowded: Their names were given on the Twelfth Census of the United States, Kings County, Borough of Brooklyn, as Michael Martino and Andrea Callabrese.

  With the exception of shopping: Monsignor William J. Gorman, who conducted the graveside ceremonies at AC’s burial, said of Teresa Capone, “So far as I know, she never missed mass a day of her life or missed communion of a Sunday.” Attested to by some of her great-grandchildren, and as quoted by George Murray in The Legacy of Al Capone: Portraits and Annals of Chicago’s Public Enemies (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975), 13.

  “I’m no Italian”: Mangione and Morreale, La Storia, 258.

  “existence presented a challenge”: Schoenberg, Mr. Capone (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), 22.

  Nothing in that version of the story: William Balsamo knew the daughter of the woman in question, whose name was Maria Adamo. He interviewed her daughter, Mary Savarese, when she was in her nineties. With him were Vanni Capelli and Laurence Bergreen, who chose to write a different story in his biography, Capone: The Man and the Era (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). I am grateful to Balsamo for telling of how this meeting took place and for providing a copy of the taped interview.

  This last version seems least likely: Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian-Americans (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), 13.

  He wou
ld have dressed as a cowboy: Vincenzo Capone (a.k.a. Richard Hart), testimony given at Ralph Capone’s income tax evasion trial in 1950, Sept. 21, 1951, National Archives at Chicago, p. 1 (of 8), v. 4 and v. 5.

  He was well-known on the streets: Jacob Riis deplored the situation in which immigrants lived, writing, “The Italian has nevertheless the instinct of cleanliness but it is drowned by the nastiness of the tenements.” See How the Other Half Lives (New York: Seven Treasures Publications, 2009), chaps. 5 and 6.

  “something of a nonentity”: Daniel Fuchs, “Where Al Capone Grew Up,” New Republic, Sept. 9, 1931, 95–97.

  Don Balsamo: William Balsamo and John Balsamo, Young Al Capone (New York: MJF Books, 2001), 93. The authors are the grandsons of Batista Balsamo. The authors based the information in their book on many firsthand accounts of people who knew AC and the Capone family when they lived in Brooklyn, accounts that include both truth and possible revisionism: there is a basic veracity to these tales, but there is also a caveat about accepting them in their entirety, for many of the people who shared their memories did so long after the events actually occurred. Throughout the book, the authors tell a story that is replete with dialogue purportedly said by AC, much of which has found its way into so many different accounts of his life and work that it is now taken for the truth. However, the authors themselves wrote in the introduction that “the dialogue in this book is written with the hopeful intention of providing a plausible discourse to the events as defined by the historical record” (emphasis mine).

  Al observed the don’s minions: Ibid., chap. 2.

  Ralph Capone left Ralphie: She gave up the child to Teresa, and Ralphie moved with the rest of the family when they relocated to Chicago. Teresa had charge of him, but Mae Capone raised him along with her son, Albert (Sonny).

  Soon he was part of a loose affiliation: Torrio had begun what later became his permanent move to Chicago as early as 1909, when AC was ten. He made periodic returns to Brooklyn, but by the second decade of the twentieth century he was no longer active in the borough’s crime scene.

  “dominated his swollen-muscled thugs”: Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, 24. Schoenberg is too harsh on Torrio, who was actually quite a good-looking man, when he completes this sentence with the following phrase: “all seated in a puny, flaccid body, with chipmunk cheeks, a little potbelly, and dainty soft hands and feet.”

  “probably the nearest thing”: Herbert Asbury, Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 320. (Originally published by Knopf, 1928.)

  “an organizational genius”: Virgil W. Peterson, The Mob: 200 Years of Organized Crime in New York (Ottawa, Ill.: Green Hill, 1983), 156.

  “for the development of modern corporate crime”: Bergreen, Capone, 37.

  “What Torrio, with his brilliant, analytical mind”: Ibid., 38.

  Al learned about women: RC’s file in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, under the heading “Notorious Offenders.”

  CHAPTER 2: MAE

  Mary Josephine Coughlin: After they moved to Chicago, MC began to lighten her hair to blond, a color she kept for the rest of her life.

  But why would a young woman: Personal information in this chapter about the relationship of their grandparents comes from the descendants of AC and his siblings.

  allegedly Frank Gallucio: William Balsamo, interview, May 22, 2015, calls him Charles Gallucio. When previous biographies were under way, Gallucio insisted that his sister, whose real name was Teresa, be given the pseudonym Lena.

  The scars were real, but how Al got them: William J. Helmer, in a personal communication, July 16, 2013, said he regrets using Balsamo’s “second- or thirdhand account of Capone’s scarring at Yale’s place…even if he did talk to an aging Gallucio. One or the other or both embellished it…Evidently he and Capone did tangle at Yale’s dive, but that’s all I trust anymore.” Bergamo, in telephone conversations, July 2015, stands by the story as he wrote it.

  Al and Mae were so attracted to each other: Diane Capone has written this in her forthcoming memoir, Tales My Grandmother Told Me.

  Albert Francis Capone: There were multiple errors on the birth certificate: AC was not residing in the Coughlin house but was living in his parents’ home; his name is wrongly given as Albert rather than Alphonse; both his age and MC’s are incorrect.

  she was adamantly against: Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, in Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), 204, write, “Today [1963] a more significant symbol of rising social status [for an Italian man] is marriage with a girl of Italian descent, who has gone to a good Catholic school, and who seems to young Italians to represent the older American society much as Protestantism did a generation ago.”

  He was supposed to have taken: Mike Aiello, as quoted by Bergreen, Capone, 57. AC’s granddaughters find it difficult to accept this period of their grandfather’s life. Diane Capone, telephone conversation, Sept. 22, 2015, said her grandmother told many stories of her early married life but this was never one of them. John Binder, who has studied AC’s life extensively, agrees with Diane Capone that AC was never in Baltimore.

  CHAPTER 3: THE NEED TO MAKE A LIVING

  he collapsed and died: Death Certificate no. 21742, New York City Department of Health, Records Bureau. It read Gabriel Caponi. He was buried first in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York; later reinterred at Mount Olivet, Chicago.

  From the very beginning: Correspondence between Drs. Kenneth Phillips and Joseph Moore concerning AC’s and MC’s medical history. I am grateful to Bobby Livingston of RR Auction for calling it to my attention and to the Marc and Mary Perkins Collection for permission to use it.

  “spoiled brat family princess”: Almost every descendant of AC and his brothers used this expression or a version thereof when speaking of the young Mafalda.

  her symptoms erupted: I refer here to the medical correspondence between the two physicians who cared for AC after his release from Alcatraz. Further information will be given where appropriate in later chapters.

  Torrio’s frequent trips to Chicago: The relationship between Torrio and the Colosimos is unclear. Bergreen, Capone, 81, says Torrio was neither Victoria’s nor Jim’s cousin and that the relationship was “spiritual rather than physical.” Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, 48, says Torrio was Victoria’s cousin. John Kobler, in Capone (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1992), 52, says Colosimo was Torrio’s uncle. The oldest of the current generation of AC’s descendants say they have always believed that Torrio was Victoria’s cousin, and she insisted that Jim bring him to Chicago. Italian scholars and journalists in Italy who attempted on my behalf to find records in Calabria pertaining to both men were unsuccessful. As happens with so much else of Italian-American genealogical history, my researchers and I reached a dead end.

  “the premier madam”: John Binder, personal communication, Sept. 2015, said the 1910 census of the brothels in the Levee district lists fewer than a hundred and that the count usually given of two hundred is highly inaccurate.

  a much younger man: For the most informative account of the Moresco-Colosimo activities, see Gus Russo, The Outfit (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), 16–19.

  Lovett was a sharpshooter: William Balsamo believes that “the most important murder AC took part in” was that of Wild Bill Lovett’s brother-in-law, Peg Leg Lonergan, on Christmas Eve, 1925. Balsamo believes AC was “a hired killer employed by Frankie Yale.” He adds that, “at that time, Italian gangsters were no match for the Irish” (Balsamo, telephone conversation, May 21, 2015). John Binder, in his forthcoming The Beer Wars: How the Capone Gang Came to Rule Chicago’s Underworld, echoes Balsamo’s belief.

  But the domestic benefits: His surviving eldest granddaughter says it is not clear if he went alone on his first trip to Chicago and returned to Brooklyn later for MC or if he took her with him the first time. From my interviews and conversations, I have chosen to write the version here.

  “I though
t I needed more”: William J. Helmer, “The Wisdom of Al Capone,” TS, gift of the author.

  “Capone would go”: Russo, Outfit, 25.

  CHAPTER 4: AL COMES TO CHICAGO

  “maneuver of the fates”: Richard T. Enright, Capone’s Chicago (Rapid City, S.D.: USM, 2000), 35. (Original publication: 1931).

  He was also alleged: In 2015, the house’s owner claimed that he found three secret tunnels and was sure he would find bullet holes upon further excavation. Upon investigation, nothing of the sort was found. Tim Schroeder, “Learning Leadership at Capone’s Hideaway,” Kelowna (B.C.) Daily Courier, Aug. 16, 2015.

  It was sold shortly after Teresa died: The house was sold twice, once in 1953 and again in 1963. After four or five years of trying to sell the house for $445,000, the owner reduced the price in 2014 to $225,000.

  Al moved them into a quiet middle-class neighborhood: In a private communication, John Binder described the locations of the four southern Italian neighborhoods in the 1920s in Chicago: Twenty-Sixth Street (near South Side); Taylor Street (near West Side and associated with the Rockford family of Capones); Grand Avenue (near Northwest Side); and Division Street (near North Side).

  There are even stories: The first to start these stories was Fred D. Pasley, in his Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-Made Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City, 1930), and they have been accepted and enlarged upon ever since. My interpretation considers them but with skepticism. Information also comes from interviews and conversations with AC’s descendants and the descendants of some of his associates.