In 1920, New York native Al Capone arrived in Chicago and turned 21 the same day Prohibition was enacted.
His nefarious acts became well documented in the Chicago Tribune starting with a car crash in 1922, in which he was identified as a brothel owner, apprehended for driving while intoxicated and declared to his arresting officer, “I’ll fix this thing so easy you won’t know how it’s done.”
Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of Capone’s death.
Some wonder if the legendary Chicago Outfit boss should be remembered given his brutal resume — which included bootlegger, racketeer and suspected orchestrator of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929. The Chicago Crime Commission named him “chief of gangland,” and the Tribune first referred to Capone as “public enemy No. 1? in 1930. Tribune readers voiced the same concerns following a front-page headline about his impending death in 1947.
One asked, “What law abiding, decent citizen cares for Al Capone? What has he done for Chicago?
“It would be better, instead, to arouse the people about the potato situation. When millions of people are starving in Europe, why must we dump the potatoes?” — Mrs. H.H.
A Tribune editorial responding to readers’ concerns in 1947 is still relevant:
The editorial continued: “Al Capone was a vile influence on Chicago from the day he came here until he was finally rendered harmless by an occupational disease of his original vocation of pandering.”
Syphilis-related complications earned Capone an early release from prison in 1939, after he served seven years for tax evasion.
Almost eight years later and some 1,400 miles away from Chicago, Capone’s final months were spent with family at his Palm Island estate near Miami.
Diane Patricia Capone, his oldest surviving granddaughter, says a photo taken there on Dec. 25, 1946, captures her, her sisters and their “glowing” grandparents. (This photo is considered the last one taken of Capone before his death and sold for $19,630 in an October auction of family heirlooms.)
“That was Christmas afternoon and, you know, he certainly was not unwell in any sense,” she said. “We had no inkling of what was coming.”
A combined celebration for “Pat” (her nickname) and “Papa” (the term she used for her grandfather) followed in mid-January 1947 at Palm Island, since their birthdays were three days apart. Though just 3 years old then, she remembers sitting on his lap while her grandmother presented them with “a big birthday cake with candles” while their family sang.
“It was to be the last birthday party ever celebrated in the Capone dining room,” Diane wrote in her book, “Al Capone: Stories My Grandmother Told Me.”
Just one week later, Capone suffered a stroke.
Reporters milled about outside the estate, waiting for updates from Dr. Kenneth Phillips, Capone’s personal physician.
He is “entirely out of danger, barring complications,” Phillips told them on Jan. 22, 1947.
Two days later, however, pneumonia developed.
Diane and her sisters were awakened by their parents that night and rushed to Palm Island. She recalls the goodbye her grandfather uttered to her from his bed: “I love you, baby girl.”
Capone died of heart failure at 6:25 p.m. Chicago time on Jan. 25, 1947. He was 48.
A small wake was held at a Miami Beach funeral home, where someone took the only known photos of Capone’s body. The $2,000 bronze casket was placed prominently in a “room decorated in gray pastel, carpeted in green, and furnished with flowered love seats,” the Tribune reported.
Visitors — unidentified for their preference of “entering and leaving the mortuary via the back door” — observed Capone “dressed in a new blue double breasted suit, white shirt, black tie, black silk socks, and black and white sport shoes.”
Missing from a typical Chicago gangster’s death vigil, however: “A huge basket of roses that always included a card signed simply — ‘From Al.’“
Louis Rago, a Chicago undertaker, flew to Miami to oversee care of Capone’s body and prepare it for transport to Illinois, the Tribune reported. It’s unclear how Capone’s body made the journey. It could have been placed in the baggage car of a train carrying his family, driven by hearse, or both.
“Whether the body was to be placed aboard a train at some other spot was not indicated. If the journey is made by motor, it is expected that with two drivers alternating, the trip will take 36 to 48 hours. It is probable the body will be delivered to Rago’s chapel at 624 N. Western av.,” the Tribune reported.
Louis H. Rago, current president of The Original Rago Brothers Funeral Homes, had no comment.
“The guy never had a funeral here,” he told the Tribune in 2008. Why no funeral Mass? That’s fuzzy, too.
Bearing a blanket of gardenias and orchids, Capone’s casket was carried to its resting place beside his father, Gabriel, and brother, Frank, on Feb. 4, 1947, not by traditional pallbearers — but by gravediggers. And in contrast to Prohibition-era mobster burials when “dozens of policemen mingled in the crowds,” only two were on site for Capone’s brief affair.
Fifteen carloads of mourners quickly gathered at the grave in near-zero temperatures. Capone’s mother reportedly “became hysterical as she was led to the grave.” Capone’s wife, Mae, and Diane’s parents, Albert Francis “Sonny” and Diana, were present. Diane and her sisters were not.
“In fact, we did not come to Chicago again for quite a long time after my grandfather died,” she said.
There’s also a grave marker for Capone at Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Hillside. It’s believed his body was moved there during the 1950s. That information is private, a spokesperson for Catholic Cemeteries of Chicago told the Tribune.
John J. Binder, author of “Al Capone’s Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition” and “The Chicago Outfit,” has a theory on why Capone’s body was moved — the family needed more space to bury its loved ones. The infamous underworld leader was one of nine siblings.
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