Al capone 2
Al capone 2Al Capone is perhaps the best known gangster of all time and by far the most powerful mob boss of his era. His mob dominated the Chicago area from 1925 to 1931, when he was imprisoned for income tax evasion. This was the only crime the courts could prove against him. He went to jail at Alcatraz for eight years until he became very ill withsyphilis and died from the disease in 1947 RL:http://www.broonale.co.uk/austria/capone.html 1-3). Al Capone was born somewhere in Brooklyn on January 17,1899 but knowbody really knows for sure. Capone grew up in a tough neighborhood inBrooklyn, N.Y. He attended school through the sixth grade. He recieved his nicknameScarface during these years as a result of a knife attack from the brother of a girl he hadinsulted which left three scares (Kobler 23). Soon after, Capone joined the James Streetgang which was headed by a guy named Johnny Torrio. In 1920, Torrio asked Capone to go to Chicago and work with his uncle who controlled the city's largest prostitution and gambling ring at the time. Later that year the Prohibition act came into affect and Capone became interested in selling illegal whiskey and other alcoholic beverages. Torrio's uncle did not agree with this idea but within the next month he was shot and killed. Capone and Torrio took over Torrio's uncles business and added the selling of illegal alcohol. After Torrio was gunned down and almost killed by a rival gang, he retired from the underworld which left Capone to run the empire alone (Kobler 34). At the age of 26, Capone was managing more than 1,000 employees with a payroll of more than $300,000 a week. He demanded total loyalty from all of his employes (URL:http://www.nara.gov/nara/events/calendar/capone.html 2). During this time Capone became so rich that he gave out free food for Chicago's unemployed which made him look like he had a heart of gold. By 1927, Capone was grossing about $105,000,000 a year from various illegal operations (the average law-abiding US citizen in 1927 was taking home just $2,400 a year in pay). When appearing in public, he travelled in a seven ton limousine and had 18 bodyguards including the guy who gave him the scares on his face. Capone was a marked man by this time, and after several attempts on his life from a rival gang, he struck back with the St. Valentine's Day Massacre on February 14, 1929 (Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia � 1996, 1997 Compton's NewMedia). It may be the greatest violence that ever occured during the Chicago gang era, as seven members of "Bugsy" Moran's mob were killed with machine- guns by Capone's mob posing as police officers (URL:http://user.capone/life/story.html 1). The massacre was credited to the Capone mob, although Capone himself was...
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