Al "Scarface" Capone
Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17th, 1899. He attended school until the sixth grade, then he dropped out. From there he joined a local gang called Five Points. While in that gang he worked for a man by the name of Frankie Yale. He received the scars that gave him his nickname, Scarface, while working in one of Yale's Harvard Inn. He insulted a woman and her brother attacked him for it.
In 1918 Capone met a women named Mary Coughlin. She later had their son, Albert Francis, on December 4th and on the 30th of that month Al and Mary were married. Then, in 1919 he and his family moved to Chicago where he found work with one of Frankie Yale's friends, John Torrio. He and Torrio became real close, real fast. By mid-1922 Capone was already considered Torrio's number two man. When Torrio shot by another gang he decided to leave Chicago, this left all of his land and gang in the hands of Al Capone. Through this work it was reported that he had an income of $100,000,000.
The mayor of Chicago soon decided that Capone, and the gang activity, makes the city so he had Capone chased out of the city. This was only after making some deals with Capone himself. While looking for a new place to live Capone discovered that his family was disliked in many places because of the acts that were connected to his name. Eventually in 1928 he found a place in Florida, called Palm Island, where he would be accepted and could live out his life.
Out of all of the murders that Capone had orchestrated he was only arrested for three of them at one time. Then he was not charged with any crimes because there was not enough evidence to prove that he actually killed the men. He was never charged for any of the murders mostly because he always had an alibi for the time of the crime. For his first sentence in jail he was only charged for carrying a weapon. Finally in 1931 he was indicted for tax evasion. An IRS agent stumbled upon a ledger for cash receipts while assigned on Capone. In the ledger it had the net profit of his gambling business and it stated Capone's name in it. Later his tax lawyer confessed that Al Capone actually had an income. These two things along with witnesses were the main points that helped convict Capone.
In the end of the trial Capone was found not guilty on eighteen of the twenty-three charges. This left him with ten years in a federal prison and one year in a county jail. Also he had to pay $50,000 in fines with an additional $7,692.29 to the prosecution. In 1932 he was sent to Atlanta, the toughest of the federal prisons, to begin serving his eleven year sentence. There he had control of the whole prison. He bought luxuries such as a mirror or rugs to furnish his cell. He even went to the extent of getting a set of encyclopedias to go in his cell. Word that he had control of the prison soon spread everywhere, because the wrong people found out he was sent to Alcatraz. In there he realized that he could not use his power to get what he wanted and became the model inmate trying to get out early on good behavior.
Capone was released from prison on November 16th, 1939. From there he went back to his home in Palm Island to live out the rest of his life. Because of syphilitic dementia, that became apparent while in prison, he was not fit to run the gang anymore. In January 1947 he had a stroke but, regained consciousnesses and continued to look better. That was until pneumonia set in on January 24th. The great Al Capone died a day later from cardiac arrest.