Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  Al was very fond of Roberto’s wife: Sources include Bergreen, Capone, 172; O’Brien and Baumann, “Recalling Life as Wife of a Capone Gangster”; John O’Brien, “2 Memorial Services Will Be Held for Capone Confidante, Rio Burke,” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 9, 1994. Rio Burke, ninety-one, died on November 1, 1994, from burns suffered in a fire in her apartment. She divorced Dominic Roberto in 1927 but remained on good terms with him while he was in Leavenworth prison, sentenced for perjury. Released in 1933, he went to Italy. She had no contact with him after that. Her second marriage was to a Hollywood florist, Jack Burke, whom she also divorced. Two months before her death, she told the reporter O’Brien, “I have had Al Capone up to my ears. I’m tired of Al Capone. I have given over 100 interviews [about him]. No more.” I have read many (if not most) of them and find her remarkably consistent in her many retellings.

  Tony Lombardo: Tony Lombardo was a power in the Taylor Street neighborhood where Raphael Capone had one of his stores. That branch of the Capone family remained close to Lombardo’s widow after he was assassinated on September 7, 1928. Descendants of both families settled in or near Rockford, where they remain close to this day.

  When the Lansing patriarch worked for the Outfit: The embers of this family who contributed reminiscences remain in and around the Lansing area today and wish to retain their privacy. Bergreen, Capone, 176, says the family patriarch left Chicago after a “deadly altercation.” His family members dispute this assertion. My own efforts to verify either contention were unsuccessful.

  Indeed, on the Fourth of July: “Capone Enjoyed Fireworks at Round Lake Hideaway,” Lansing State Journal, June 9, 1987.

  “I paid McSwiggin plenty”: Sources include “Al Caponi [sic] to Give Up Today, He Announces,” Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1926; “Capone ‘Mum’ on McSwiggin Case,” Chicago Daily News, July 28, 1926; “Caponi [sic] Taken Before Grand Jury,” Chicago Evening Post, July 28, 1926; “Caponi [sic] Gives Up but Gets Jail Instead of Bail,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1926.

  “supreme on the west”: Pasley, Al Capone, 144. Binder, in The Beer Wars, provides an accurate and realistic description of the territory controlled by the Outfit.

  CHAPTER 9: THE GLORY YEARS

  “czar-like power”: John Stege, “Stege Exposes Chicago’s Killers,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, Jan. 16, 1927.

  “I’m the boss”: Helmer, “Wisdom of Al Capone.”

  “This definition may seem”: William J. Helmer, Al Capone and His American Boys: Memoirs of a Mobster’s Wife (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 71.

  Capone was turning the Outfit: Nicholas and Chen, “Al Capone,” Exhibit 2, “Capone’s Criminal Organization.” Original source is Guy Murchie Jr., “Capone’s Decade of Death: Prohibition to Blame for Al’s Rise,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 9, 1936, D1; also available from the FBI under FOIA, “Capone, Alphonse: Sub. A—News Articles,” pt. 2.

  “His body guards were legion”: Sean Dennis Cashman, Prohibition: The Lie of the Land (New York: Free Press, 1981), 81–82.

  Guzik: Guzik’s birth name was probably Jacob. He preferred to be called Jack but is usually known as Jake by those who wrote about AC in later years. He is Jack on his World War I draft registration card and on his 1907 marriage license is Jack Cusik. Because most other sources call him Jake, that is the name I use here.

  Edward J. O’Hare: O’Hare was the co-inventor of the mechanical rabbit in dog racing and was the owner of the Hawthorne Race Course. He was murdered years after he betrayed AC by testifying against him at his trial.

  All told, there were several hundred: The Harvard chart gives a partial listing; a full list of names and positions is in Cashman, Prohibition, 81–82, but his accuracy is disputed both in a private communication with John Binder, 2015, and in The Beer Wars.

  “a supertrust operating”: Pasley, Al Capone, 70.

  At its most robust: Binder, The Beer Wars and private communication, 2015.

  By the end of 1928: Harvard and Cashman represent the high number, Binder the low.

  “between seven hundred”: Cashman, Prohibition, 96. Binder, private communication, 2015, puts the number at five hundred.

  “You know what will happen”: Helmer, “Wisdom of Al Capone.”

  “He’s the boss”: Elmer I. Irey and William J. Slocum, The Tax Dodgers (New York: Greenberg Press, 1948), 36.

  Money was no object: Schwarz, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 124.

  His betting was even more: Original source is Timothy Sullivan (via John Kobler), “Caddying for a Man Who Never Shot Par,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 6, 1972. Luciano Iorizzo, Al Capone: A Biography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003), 65, writes, “At first, he seldom broke 60 for 9 holes; he eventually increased to playing 18 holes, though there is no evidence that he was ever anything but a hacker on the golf course. His rounds were devoted to having fun with his gangster friends, who drank plenty on each hole, gambled recklessly on the stroke of a ball, and carried loaded weapons in their golf bags for eventual uses in emergencies.”

  Some accounts say: The first version is from the Chicago Tribune, Sept. 21, 1928; the second is from Timothy Sullivan, who gave his version of caddying for AC and his sister Ida Mae’s involvement with AC to Kobler in “Caddying for a Man Who Never Shot Par.” AC’s nephew, the son of his brother John, described some of the revels that took place, including this one, which happened in a fit of temper. Other members of the extended Capone family provided information about Mae’s reaction. The official version is from AC’s medical records taken at the Atlanta penitentiary on September 12, 1932, now in the National Archives at San Bruno, California.

  Under Al Capone’s direction: The first quotation is Kobler, Capone, 200; the second is Pasley, Al Capone, 148.

  “a steady stream”: Kobler, Capone, 200, 202.

  “when I sell liquor”: Helmer, “Wisdom of Al Capone.”

  “gangster chic”: Schwarz, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 53.

  Sophie Tucker’s biographers: Joanne Palmer, “Filming Sophie Tucker: Rockland Couple Researches, Tells Story of Last Red-Hot Mama,” New Jersey Jewish Standard, March 21, 2014; Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days: The Autobiography of Sophie Tucker (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1945). Tucker makes cursory mention of AC and writes nothing about playing cards with him.

  Joe E. Lewis ran afoul: Because so many different versions of this event exist, I will cite two of the most different here: Russo’s restrained factual retelling in The Outfit, 124n1; Bergreen’s more creative account in Capone, 251–54.

  Their buskers guided white voyeurs: Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 226.

  “more or less a Robin Hood”: Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 163. The filmmaker Richard Larsen, producing Capone’s Treasure of the Heart (with the expected release date of Valentine’s Day 2015; as of that date, 2016, it has not yet appeared), tells the unsubstantiated story that AC rushed to Hinton’s hospital bedside when he was threatened with the loss of an index finger in a car accident. AC allegedly forced doctors to repair the injured finger and then paid for all Hinton’s medical costs. Mina Bloom, “Filmmaker Seeks to Show a Softer Side of Capone,” DNAinfo Chicago, Oct. 6, 2014.

  “had all the black guys”: Milt Hinton, video recording in the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, Hamilton, N.Y., May 31, 1995. Portions also quoted by Iorizzo, Al Capone, 69, 70n4.

  “first exposure to gangsters”: Brothers, Master of Modernism, 226.

  “because we kept their clubs”: Ibid., 227.

  Benton Harbor: In later years, he did visit Dempsey’s camp at Benton Harbor, and the town itself became one of his favorite spots for the times when he needed a quick nearby getaway and Tony Lombardo’s house provided sanctuary.

  Everyone came to it: Adler, A House Is Not a Home, 79; Louella Parsons, The Gay Illiterate (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City, 1944), 108; Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack
Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 402.

  “your friend…Jack Dempsey”: Kahn, Flame of Pure Fire, 412–13.

  All forms of governance: Hoffman, Scarface Al, 30.

  He knew how to quell this: Asbury, Gem of the Prairie, 102; John Landesco, Organized Crime in Chicago, Part III (copublished by the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice in cooperation with the Chicago Crime Commission, 1929), 132; Hoffman, Scarface Al, 30; Binder, Beer Wars, 56.

  “I told them we are making a shooting gallery”: Helmer, “Wisdom of Al Capone.”

  Before the truce, he said, he needed: “Capone Happy as Peace Reigns,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, Oct. 23, 1926.

  CHAPTER 10: INVENTING AL CAPONE

  “educated the guy in this respect”: Berardi senior is usually described as being on staff at the Tribune, although his obituary in that paper did not say he was. His son, Anthony Berardi Jr., was, however, that newspaper’s chief photographer.

  “I knew what he was”: Berardi, interview with Bergreen, Capone, 148.

  There was the man who somehow: From a press conference reported in the Chicago Tribune, Dec. 6, 1927.

  When Tony Berardi invited him: Tony Berardi, interview with Bergreen, Capone, 150.

  “allowed his imagination to take over”: Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, 188–89. He uses a personal system for his sources. For their provenance, see notes, 416, and “Explanations,” 366–69.

  Capone tried to put a good front: Chicago Tribune, Dec. 17, 1927.

  Tijuana, Mexico: Information about AC and Tijuana is from John Alessio, Sophia Alessio, Dominic J. Alessio, Maria Eugenia Bonifaz de Novelo, and Roberto Valdez. Also from the Sociedad de Historia de Tijuana, A. C., and the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas UNAM-UABC. Signora Bonifaz de Novelo, a historian of Ensenada and Baja California, provided the following information in a letter of April 9, 2013: “The hotel casino was disbanded by the government and replaced by the Hotel Playa Ensenada (now Hotel Riviera de Ensenada) in October, 1930. U.S. investors developed these hotels due to the Prohibition in the United States. I do not know of Al Capone having anything to do with any of this. The story of the tunnels is a legend made up by the tourist guides…the name of Capone is being used by the tourist guides. If he was indeed here, there are no records of it. What we can suppose is that the [U.S.] Mafia sent the liquor from possible distilleries in California but from this to the fact that Al Capone was here in Baja, it’s a stretch.”

  The cheering hordes: Information that follows is from stories in the Los Angeles Examiner, Dec. 13 and 14, 1927.

  “a citizen with an unblemished record”: Chicago Herald and Examiner, Dec. 17, 1927.

  “You’d think I was Jesse James”: From articles in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Journal, all Dec. 16 and 17, 1927.

  “Capone’s Son Finds Sins of Father Heavy”: Chicago Herald and Examiner, Dec. 15, 1927.

  Al Capone thought he had found: Newspaper articles in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Herald and Examiner, Jan. 9 and 10, 1928.

  “Capone Hunted”: Chicago Tribune, Jan. 12, 1928.

  They were close friends as children: Their closeness was lifelong: when Ralph Gabriel’s daughter, Deirdre Marie Gabriel, was born in 1940, Sonny became her godfather.

  members of the Capone family never met there: Deirdre Marie Griswold, Ralphie’s daughter and Sonny’s goddaughter who now calls herself Capone, has made this claim on various television programs. She is also the source of the myth that fish swam in the swimming pool.

  And then there was the interior: Information about the interior furnishings is from interviews and conversations with AC’s descendants, photographs of the property during AC’s residency and when it was being sold in 2013–14, and from the Auction Bulletin, April 15, 1992, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, Chicago.

  “curiosity, dare-deviltry”: Kobler, Capone, 285.

  a staple of local lore: The first, and probably the version closest to the truth, was given by Pasley, Al Capone, 85; another, and probably the most susceptible to the biographer’s interpretation, was given by Bergreen, Capone, 284. These are only two of the many variants.

  “you can get a man’s arm broken”: Kobler, Capone, 221.

  Bombs continued to burst: Enright, Capone’s Chicago, 78, wrote that AC, “supposed to be in Florida, cast his vote at his Chicago home.” Perhaps someone else cast the vote for him because all other evidence that I have consulted has him remaining at Palm Island throughout this election.

  “Gentlemen, the King!”: Damon Runyon, “Gentlemen, the King!,” Collier’s, April 25, 1931.

  “as a bomb such as these Guineas”: The Damon Runyon Omnibus (Garden City, N.Y.: Sun Dial Press, 1944), 238.

  “gangster chic”: Schwarz, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 53.

  “womanizing narcissist”: Ibid., 9.

  These two were just the beginning: Kobler, Capone, 309, estimates there were seven. Some of the most important (and lasting) besides Pasley’s were Walter N. Burns, The One-Way Ride: The Red Trail of Chicago Gangland from Prohibition to Jake Lingle (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1931); Edward Dean Sullivan, Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime (New York: Van, 1929); Richard T. Enright, Al Capone on the Spot: Inside Story of the Master Criminal and His Bloody Career (Fawcett, 1931; reprinted by USM, INC., Rapid City, S.D., 2000).

  “Journalists took the leading role”: David E. Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918–1934 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 119.

  “Sunny Jim”: A character created by advertisers as early as 1902 to sell two separate products: a breakfast cereal and peanut butter.

  “the toast of Chicago”: Russo, Outfit, 37.

  “a wonderful person”: Kobler, Capone, 229.

  “It is a curious fact”: Pasley, Al Capone, 83–85.

  “Gangland King”: Pasley was referring to a newsreel photograph showing AC with the prizefighter Jack Sharkey and the all-American football player Bill Cunningham and captioned “Gangland’s King.” What is interesting about the photograph and the story that accompanied it is the focus on AC the criminal and not on the revered athletes.

  “to spend some money”: Sullivan, Chicago Surrenders, 86–87.

  He claimed that he could not recognize himself: O’Brien, All Things Considered, 61. O’Brien mistakenly spells Pasley’s name as Paisley. Information that follows is from ibid., 60–66.

  O’Brien told the story: Ibid., 58–66.

  CHAPTER 11: LEGAL WOES

  a necklace she wore all the time: According to her caregivers during her last years, neither Jeanette nor Vincent DeMarco ever married but always lived together in Florida. He died before her, and both were cremated. A search of state records for their death certificates found no documentation for either, leading to the supposition by people who knew her that both she and her brother used DeMarco as a pseudonym and were buried under their legal names. Her caregivers also state that her possessions were inherited by “a niece” who “showed up one day and removed them from the house.” Jeanette always wore a necklace that featured a large ruby pendant at the end of a long and thick gold chain that, shortly after her death, the niece allegedly put up for auction with a Las Vegas pawnshop that was supposed to have advertised it on television. To date, no pawnshop has any record of this incident, and if the necklace exists, it has not been found. According to Jessica Daugherty in an e-mail of June 19, 2014, the only two items purporting to belong to AC that were ever auctioned on television were his “[unspecified] jail cell keys and his guitar.” Also, in photographs DeMarco showed to her caregivers during the years she claimed to be with AC, she was bleached blond because he wanted her to be, but as soon as he went to prison, she reverted to her natural color, which was black. She also claimed AC never allowed a photograph of them to be taken together because he feared Mae would see them. According to the caregivers, all photographs disappeared with the niece who inherited her estate.
>
  “I love you alone”: AC to MC, March 3, 1935, reprinted in Michael Esslinger, Letters from Alcatraz (San Francisco: Ocean View, 2008), 56. Also, copies in National Archives and Record Administration and/or U.S. Library of Congress Historic Records Collection, and copies and some originals of correspondence in possession of AC’s descendants.

  He also took Dr. Phillips, who was reluctant: Dr. Phillips mentions throughout his correspondence with Dr. Moore of being wary, if not actually frightened, of Al’s brothers and how reluctant he was to disobey any of them, but most particularly Ralph because of his violent temper and frequent eruptions.

  “Cicero mobster in the public’s mind”: The quotation is from William J. Helmer and Arthur J. Bilek, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: The Untold Story of the Gangland Bloodbath That Brought Down Al Capone (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2004), 101, whose contention differs from most other writers and biographers.

  “the death knell of gangdom”: Chicago Daily News, March 19, 1929. Quoted in Hoffman, Scarface Al, 51.

  “each agency [having] its own agenda”: Helmer and Bilek, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, 105.

  “a Volsteadian paradox”: Pasley, Al Capone, 87.

  “broncho-pneumonia pleurisy”: A copy of the affidavit is in the Phillips/Moore collection. The original is dated March 5, 1929, and is in the FBI’s “Permanent File, Al Capone,” Washington, D.C.

  “only Capone kills like that”: There are various versions of this remark in newspapers and books, but it has been questioned from the beginning whether Moran actually said it. It falls into the category of when truth can’t be printed, print the legend.

  “possessor of one of the keenest”: Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010), 138. See ibid., 137–41, for further biographical information.