THE
LAST DAYS OF AL CAPONE
On this
date, January 6, 1939, former Chicago mob boss Al Capone left the Alcatraz
federal prison in San Francisco Bay. By the time of his discharge, he was a
broken man. Gone were the glory days when he literally ran the city of Chicago
and gone were the days of the vibrant, brutal man who ordered the deaths of
rivals and ran the Outfit with an iron hand.
The
attempts on his life in prison, the days of enforced silence, the trips of
punishment to the “hole, the grinding daily routine and likely what was, by
now, an advanced case of syphilis began to take their toll on Capone.
Eventually, he stopped going into the recreation yard and practiced his banjo,
which he played in the prison band, instead. Once practice was over, he
returned immediately to his cell, avoiding all of the inmates except for a few
of his closest friends. Occasionally, guards reported that he would refuse to
leave his cell to go to the mess hall and eat. They would often find him
crouched down in the corner like an animal. On other occasions, he would mumble
to himself or babble in baby talk or simply sit on his bed and strum little
tunes on the banjo. Years later, another inmate recalled that Capone would
sometimes stay in his cell and make his bunk over and over again.
It was
a long hard fall for a man who once knew absolute power.
Capone’s
real decline began about ten months before his eventual release. When the Alcatraz
guards decided that the weather was cold enough for the inmates to wear their
pea coats during yard time, they indicated the decision with three blasts of a
whistle. The morning of February 5, 1938, started off unseasonably warm and no
whistle blew. Capone nevertheless put on his pea coat. For a year, he had been
on library duty, delivering and collecting books and magazines. Alvin Karpis,
who occupied the second cell to the left of Capone and always followed him in
the line to the mess hall, had a magazine to return and he tossed it into
Capone’s cell as he passed it. Seeing Capone standing there in his winter coat,
including a cap and gloves, he called to him that he didn’t need his jacket
that day. Capone seemed to neither hear nor recognize him. He simply stood
there, staring vacantly into space.
Capone’s
initial entry forms at Alcatraz Prison. It would become a deadly place for
Capone as a number of small-time inmates tried to make a name for themselves by
killing the one-great mob leader.
He
failed to fall into line when ordered to do so, a breach of discipline
ordinarily punished by a trip to the hole, but the guards sensed something was
seriously wrong and watched without disturbing him. He finally left his cell
and entered the mess hall, last in line. A thread of drool dripped down his
chin. As he moved mechanically toward the steam table, a deputy warden, Ernest
Miller, spoke to him quietly and patted his arm. Capone grinned strangely and
for some reason, pointed out the window. Then, suddenly, he started to choke
and retch. Miller led him to a locked gate across the hall and called to the
guard on the other side to unlock it. They helped Capone up a flight of stairs
to the hospital ward.
To the
prison physician, and a consulting psychiatrist for whom he sent, Capone’s
symptoms suggested central nervous system damage characteristic of advanced
syphilis. When Capone, after a return to lucidity, understood this, he finally
agreed to the spinal puncture and the other tests that he had refused in
Atlanta. The fluid was rushed to the Marine Hospital in San Francisco for
analysis. Warden Johnston later stopped by his bed to ask him what had happened
to him that morning. Capone replied, “I dunno, they tell me that I acted like I
was a little whacky.”
The
report from the Marine Hospital confirmed the doctors’ diagnosis. Word of it
reached the press and newspapers from coast to coast painted a picture of
Capone as a man driven insane by the horrors of Alcatraz. Mae Capone pleaded
with Warden Johnston by telephone, imploring him to free her husband, an act
that was far beyond his power. The hardened warden must have taken some pity on
the former gangland boss, though. Capone was never returned to the cellblock
and spent the remainder of his sentence in the hospital ward, subjected to
injections of arsphenamine, shock treatments and induced fever. His disease was
slowed down but not stopped. He alternated between lucidity and confusion,
often at the brink of total insanity. He spent most of his time sitting by
himself, plucking at the strings of his banjo, sometimes completely unaware of
his surroundings.
Capone
finally left Alcatraz on January 6, 1939 – and some say may have left a bit of
himself behind. Troy Taylor’s book, BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES recounts not
only the ghost that allegedly haunted Capone for the last 17 years of his life,
but the haunts of the prison as well.
Capone
was discharged from Alcatraz on January 6, 1939 but still owed another year’s
sentence for the misdemeanor offense of failing to file a tax return. Reducible
by good behavior, he still had about ten months to serve. Due to his
deteriorated state, officials decided not to ship him to Chicago to serve out
the sentence at the Cook County Jail. Instead, they sent him to the newly
opened federal prison at Terminal Island, just outside Los Angeles. He was
taken there by Deputy Warden Miller and three armed guards, with extra weights
added to his leg chains, which was rather pointless since he was partially
paralyzed.
The
following November, after the last of his fines were paid through a Chicago
gang lawyer, Capone was transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania. He arrived on November 16 and was met by his brother, Ralph, and
his wife, Mae, who drove him to Baltimore’s Union Hospital. Until spring, he
lived with Mae in Baltimore as an outpatient of the hospital under the care of
Dr. Joseph Moore, a syphilis specialist from Johns Hopkins.
In Chicago,
reporters asked Jake Guzik if Capone was now going to return to Chicago and
take command of the mob again. Jake, despite being one of Al’s closest and most
loyal friends replied, “Al is nuttier than a fruitcake.”
Capone’s
final years were lived out on his estate near Miami. He often cried at night
and the sight of an automobile, especially one carrying men, would throw him
into a panic. No outsiders were ever allowed into the compound or near Al
because, Ralph cautioned, in his foggy mental state, he might talk about the
organization.
The
Capone house on Palm Island, outside of Miami, where Al spent his final days.
The
household on Palm Island was made up of Al, Mae, and Sonny; Mae’s sister,
Muriel; her husband, Louis Clark; and an old but alert fox terrier that barked
ferociously at any stranger. Two servants, “Brownie” Brown, cook and general
handyman, and Rose, the family’s maid, lived off the premises. There were a
variety of gunmen who came and went, all there to protect Capone, and Steve
from Steve’s Barber Shop at the Grand Hotel, a Miami hangout for gangsters,
came once each month to cut Capone’s hair.
Mae’s brother, Danny Coughlin, and his wife, Winifred, operated two
nearby establishments frequented by resident and visiting mobsters: Winnie’s
Waffle Shop and Winnie’s Little Club, which grossed between $500 and $700 a
day. Danny was also the business agent for the Miami Bartenders’ and Waiters’
Union.
At
least four times each week, Mae attended mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in
Miami Beach. Capone never accompanied her because he claimed that he would
embarrass the pastor, Monsignor William Barry. Capone’s boy, Sonny, had gone to
the private preparatory school run by the monsignor, who took a special
interest in the shy, semi-deaf boy, helping him to rise above the problems
caused by his family name. In 1937, Sonny had entered Notre Dame under his
father’s alias, Al Brown. He withdrew after his freshmen year, when his real
identity became known. He eventually earned a business degree from the
University of Miami.
Probably
because Capone slept so badly, the household kept strange hours. They often
retired around 10:00 p.m. and were up again by 3:00 a.m. Most of the day was
spent next to the pool. Capone, wearing pajamas and a dressing gown, would
spend hours on the dock, smoking cigars and holding a fishing rod.
Occasionally, he would hit a tennis ball over the net that had been strung
across the yard. He hated to be alone and always wanted people around him,
provided that he recognized them as trusted friends. He had grown obese and
looked much older than his years. He also enjoyed playing gin rummy and
pinochle; but the mental effort was usually too much for him and his friends
let him win.
On
December 30, 1941, Capone overcame his reluctance and went to church to witness
his son’s marriage to Diana Ruth Casey, a girl whom Sonny had first met in high
school. After the honeymoon, the newlyweds remained in Miami, where Sonny had
opened a florist shop. During World War II, Sonny was classified as 4-F because
of his defective hearing but he volunteered for civilian employment with the
War Department and was assigned to the Miami Air Depot as a mechanic. His wife
bore him four children, all girls, on whom their grandfather doted, constantly
buying them expensive gifts and playing with them in the Palm Island swimming
pool.
The
course of Capone’s syphilis was unpredictable. At times, he seemed normal but
at other times, his speech was slurred, he became disoriented and he suffered
from tremors and seizures. Even at the best of times, Capone lacked mental and
physical coordination and he skipped abruptly from subject to subject, humming,
whistling and singing as he chatted about nothing. By 1942, penicillin had
become available, but in an extremely limited supply due to the war. Dr. Moore
at Johns Hopkins was able to procure dosages for Capone, who became one of the
first syphilitics to be treated with antibiotics. His condition stabilized
somewhat after that, but no therapy could reverse the extensive damage that had
been done to his brain.
On
January 19, 1947, at just after 4 a.m., Capone collapsed from a brain
hemorrhage. Dr. Kenneth Phillips arrived, followed by Monsignor Barry, who
administered the last rites. The newspapers announced that Capone was dead, but
he rallied and Dr. Phillips pronounced him out of danger. The following week,
though, he developed bronchial pneumonia and reporters began to gather outside
the compound’s locked gates. As the hot day wore on, Ralph let them inside and
offered them cold beer.
On
Saturday night, January 25, witnesses claim that Capone was lucid – but he died
that night at 7:30 p.m. Capone’s body was dressed in a new blue suit, white
shirt, black tie and two-tone black and white two-tone shoes. He was placed in
a $2,000 bronze casket and returned to Chicago for burial. Two drivers took
turns behind the wheel of a Cadillac hearse for the 48-hour trip. Meanwhile, an
empty coffin had been loaded aboard a train bound for Chicago in order to fool
the press.
Capone was buried on a cold, winter’s day in
Mount Olivet Cemetery, sharing a black granite marker with this father,
Gabriele, and his brother, Frank, who had been killed by police in Cicero. This
was no typical “gangland funeral;” it was a simple affair with only family and
Al’s closest remaining friends in attendance, although a number of lavish
floral arrangements were delivered to the funeral home and the graveside. Among
them was a seven-foot-tall floral cross.
Capone’s
grave in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. On many days, it’s found “decorated”
by cigars, coins and liquor bottles, left in tribute to Al.
When
Capone’s mother died in 1952, Capone’s body was moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery,
where he now lies in the same burial ground with Dion O’Banion, Hymie Weiss,
the Genna brothers, Jack McGurn and Sam Giancana.
It was
a quiet end to the life of the man who had once ruled Chicago.
Troy’s
book, BLOOD, GUNS & VALENTINES is not only a biography of Capone and other
mobsters of the 1920s, but it also – for the first time – tells the whole story
of the ghost who haunted Capone to his grave, as well as other gangland
hauntings from Chicago. Click here to get an autographed copy – and say you saw
it on this blog and you’ll get the book for only $12! It’s also available as a
Kindle title from Amazon.com
