Al Capone’s 80-year-old great-niece says she believes the legend that $100 million of the Chicago mobster’s money may be stashed somewhere but said knowledge of the location died with him.
“If it’s anywhere it would be Chicago,” Deirdre Capone told the Sun. “I also believe they have a lot of dealings in Cuba. I believe a lot of money was in safety deposit boxes in Cuba. But I have to let that be now.”
She told the Sun from her home in Florida that she’s “probably the last person on this Earth” to have really known him. She spoke of a new movie about her beloved “Uncle Al” being released on Netflix this week.
British actor Tom Hardy, complete with prosthetics, stars in the biopic “Capone.”
Deirdre, who was 7 when Capone died following a stroke in January, 1947, says the gangster had a sweet side and liked to teach her how to make spaghetti.
Al Capone was her grandfather Ralph’s younger brother.
Ralph was nicknamed “Bottles” for his role in the Capone bootleg empire, the Chicago Outfit, which made its fortune during Prohibition. Deirdre said Ralph was in charge but Al was the front man.
“Al loved the limelight, loved to be out with a beautiful woman on his arm. My grandfather hated it,” she said.
She insisted her relatives had nothing to do with the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven rival mobsters were killed giving Al Capone the title of “Public Enemy No 1.”
Capone wound up in Alcatraz and Deirdre says he loathed his stint in the island prison. “He couldn’t talk about it, it was so horrific,” she says.
Hardy portrays Capone in the period after his release from the prison — the last years of his life. The mobster died on January 25, 1947 at age 48.
According to the movie, Capone is beset with dementia, with the mental age of a 12-year-old.
Deirdre agrees that by the time he was released his mental state had deteriorated shockingly, but insists this was due to mercury injections she claims were given to him to treat syphilis.