The most infamous crime boss of the Prohibition years was tied to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
The 1920s saw a new exuberance and confidence after the horrors of the First World War. Happiness and good times reigned, and people were enjoying themselves once again. There was just one problem, Prohibition. Otherwise known as the Volstead Act the manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol was made illegal in the United States starting from January, 1920. This didn't stop people however from making "bathtub gin" in their backyards, and the law certainly didn't mean much to the bootleggers who transported bottles of the good stuff from the Canadian border. And there was one man who rose to become the most powerful crime boss in the city of Chicago in the Roaring Twenties, a man who was also known by another name, Scarface. His name was Al Capone.
The Young Capone
Born in 1899 to Italian parents, Alphonse Capone grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Like many other immigrants at that time, his mother and father were struggling with long hours of work and low pay. The boy knew a similar fate was waiting for him, and wanted nothing to do with that sort of life. He was expelled from school for hitting a teacher and never stepped foot in a classroom again. His new family was the Five Points Gang, where he learnt how to survive as a criminal. After fleeing to Chicago to escape a charge for murder he went to work for a gangster named John Torrio.
Chicago, 1920
Al Capone was making a name for himself. After Torrio was severely wounded by a rival gang and was forced to retire, Capone took control of the speakeasies, saloons and gambling parlours which mushroomed all over town. He worked from the posh Lexington Hotel at 22nd and Michigan Avenues, and raked in huge amounts of money from his "businesses." Chicago gained a reputation for horrible gang warfare as groups competed for a share of the illicit booze trade, and the weapon favoured by many was the Thompson submachine gun which had other names. The Tommy gun was one of them and the more amusing, and ominous, was the Chicago typewriter.
February 14, 1929
Capone's biggest adversary was George "Bugs" Moran and his gang who operated on Chicago's north side. He had one of his henchmen to convince some of Moran's men to buy some cheap whiskey from a garage at 2122 North Clark Street. The killers, who were dressed as cops, lined up seven men against the wall and opened fire with machine guns, a shotgun and a .45 calibre pistol. Capone wasn't charged with the crime, much less arrested. His alibi was solid, because he was in Florida. This crime was forever to be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The murderers were never caught.
Eliot Ness and the Untouchables
This U.S. Treasury Agent and his band of "untouchables," lawmen, who couldn't be bought or bribed, dismantled Capone's businesses one brewery at a time. His distilleries were shut down, the flow of alcohol dried up and eventually Capone was nailed for failure to pay federal income taxes. One of the most richest and powerful men in the United States was shipped off to prison in Atlanta, and then to Alcatraz prison in San Francisco.
His criminal empire never recovered and he died in January, 1947.
