The Brothers Capone

 By Allan May 

    The name Al Capone is to crime, what the name Babe Ruth is to baseball. Ruth was an over achiever and rose to the top of his profession, so did Capone. Ruth’s fame, at the height of his career filled newspaper headlines across the country, so did Capone’s. Ruth was proficient in the use of a baseball bat, so was Capone. Ruth died relatively young, fortunately, so did Capone. Ruth was an orphan here the similarity ends. Al Capone was one of seven brothers. 

    Gabriel and Teresa Capone, like many Italians, produced a large family; seven boys all in a row, followed by two daughters. Sons James and Ralph were born in Italy, Frank was conceived there, and Alphonse, John, Albert and Matt were born in America. Daughters Rose and Mafalda brought mother Teresa Capone’s childbearing days to an end. 

    When Alphonse Capone was born on January 17, 1899, he was the forth child of the couple who were hoping desperately for a little girl. To the future chagrin of a nation, it wasn’t. 

    Vincenzo was the first child born and perhaps led the most interesting life of all the Capone brothers. Born in Italy in 1892, he was called James by family members. At the age of sixteen he ran away from home to join the circus. A year after he departed he wrote the family to let them know that he was fine and not to worry. The letter was postmarked Wichita, Kansas. 

    James enjoyed living in the mid-west, moving from town to town doing his best to hide his Brooklyn accent. He never revealed his Italian ancestry letting everybody believe he was Mexican, Indian or a combination of both. He became fascinated with guns and would spend hours shooting at empty beer bottles and tin cans turning himself into an expert marksman. 

    During World War I he enlisted in the infantry and served in France rising to the rank of lieutenant. There he received a sharpshooter’s medal from the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General John J. Pershing. All the while his family knew nothing of his whereabouts and years would pass before they heard from him again. 

    Returning from Europe, James ended up in Homer, Nebraska where he took the name Richard Hart in honor of a popular silent movie cowboy of that time. James married in 1919 and had three children, all boys, in quick succession. While the rest of his brothers drifted into a life of crime, James sought to differentiate himself from them and in 1920 became a prohibition agent. 

    As Richard Hart, he led many raids and most of his arrests ended with convictions. Several times his raids created sensational headlines in the local newspapers. His successful string of raids earned him the nickname “Two-Gun” Hart. Using disguises he entered towns to do undercover investigating and find out about local bootlegging operations. In 1923, Hart was involved in a shooting in which an innocent man was killed. Although a formal inquiry cleared Hart of any wrong doing his image was tarnished for the time being. By 1924 the newspapers had found out that “Two-Gun” Hart was related to the Chicago Capones and printed front-page stories about it. Hart and his family then moved away from Homer. 

    He slowly reestablished his relationship with his family and traveled alone to Chicago once a year, usually during the holidays to visit. When he did, he wouldn’t tell his wife where he was going or why. He never told his children about their notorious uncles although rumors would occasionally come up. 

    In 1926 Hart became a special agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and moved to a Cheyenne Indian reservation in South Dakota. Here he and his wife had a fourth son. During the summer of 1927, Hart served as a bodyguard for President Calvin Coolidge when he and his family vacationed in the Black Hills. Coolidge had not known his protector was the brother of the most infamous gangster of all time. 

    A short time later Hart moved to Idaho, close to the Washington State border, near the Spokane Indian reservation. Here he was involved in the arrests of no less than 20 wanted killers. He spent the next four years in the northwest moving from one Indian reservation to another chasing bootleggers and outlaws. Hart got into scrapes with both outlaw Indians and law enforcement alike. He would once again go to trial, this time for the killing of a fugitive Indian. 

    In 1931, Hart returned to Homer, Nebraska. The country was in the middle of the great depression and the mid-west was hit the hardest. Prohibition would soon come to an end and Hart would be out of a job. He accepted a position as a justice of the peace but the pay was low and he soon had to take on several odd jobs to make ends meet. As 1940 approached things had gotten so bad for Hart that he could not afford to pay his light bill and the power company was threatening to shut off his electricity. 

    At this point Hart had to swallow his pride and ask his family for help. Ralph insisted that he come up to his summer home in Mercer, Wisconsin. Hart made the long trek. When he got back to Homer he was wearing a brand new suit with the pockets stuffed with $100 dollar bills. He would not reveal where the money came from. Ralph continued to help his older brother and when Hart made a return trip to Mercer the following summer he was shocked to find Al there. Hart stated it was hard to tell how sick Al was because he “looked healthy and happy; he just didn’t have much of a memory.” 

    Hart took three of his sons up to Mercer where they spent the summer with Uncle Ralph and Uncle Al. The children loved Al viewing him as a “lovable bear of a man,” and they enjoyed wrestling with him. 

    During the early 1950s Hart was called to testify at an income tax evasion trial involving Ralph. This was Ralph’s second encounter with the I. R. S. He had listed his older brother as the owner of his Mercer home. Hart, who had no prior knowledge of this, bailed his brother out by claiming this was true. Hart returned to Homer after the trial and died there on October 1, 1952 at the age of 60. Mother Teresa Capone, who was happy to see her family get back together again before she died, passed away less than two months later. 

    Raffaele Capone was born in 1894, the second child and last to be born in Italy. After James left, the family looked to Ralph for family leadership. Ralph did not excel in this role, as he was not as smart as either Frank or Al. He left school in the sixth grade to help supplement the family’s income by working as a telegram messenger boy. Ralph became the first of the Capone brothers to marry, although it would be a stormy one. Two years after the wedding Ralph Jr. was born, but the couple would soon separate and eventually divorce. Ralph continued a legitimate life in New York selling life insurance and later handled a soft drink delivery route where he earned the nickname “Bottles.” 

    After Al moved to Chicago to work for Johnny Torrio, Ralph followed about a year later. The two shared an apartment while they both worked for Torrio in the vice trade. When their father, Gabriel Capone, passed away the rest of the family moved to Chicago in 1923 into a home Al had just purchased. Compared to the home the Capones had left behind in Brooklyn, their new family residence on Prairie Avenue was heaven. It was a sign of having “made it” in America. The home, by Chicago standards, was considered just ordinary, but for the Capones it was ideal. They lived in the home the same way they had lived back in Brooklyn, the same way their ancestors had lived back in Naples, one on top of another. Teresa Capone lived on the top floor of the home. On the first floor, in a suite of rooms in the back, lived Al, with his wife Mae and son, Albert Francis, who was called Sonny. The other brothers came and went living in different rooms in the house. Only Ralph, who at the time was almost 30, lived outside the home. 

    After the Torrio gang’s move to Cicero, Ralph took control of the speakeasies and nightclubs there. A problem soon arose in the form of Robert St. John, the editor of the Cicero Tribune. A crusading young man, he tried his best to publicize the mob’s takeover of the town. The Capone gangsters soon tired of the aggressive editor and their first effort to quiet him was to scare the merchants who advertised in his paper into switching to another newspaper. St. John responded with an expose on a Capone brothel. During his undercover investigation, St. John visited the brothel and interviewed a prostitute until four o’clock in the morning. He left the brothel by jumping out a second floor window. The brothel story enraged the citizens of Cicero and a few weeks later a carefully timed fire burned the premises to the ground. 

    Now the Capone gang was enraged. Al sent an associate to see St. John and let him know that he and Ralph “were extremely angry with the Cicero Tribune.” Two days later as St. John was walking to work, Ralph and three others jumped out of an automobile and beat him unmercifully. The attack, directed by Ralph, happened while two Cicero policemen stood by and watched. The only individual who tried to help was the Tribune’s society editor, but her attempts were futile. Later this same day, Capone henchmen kidnapped St. John’s brother who was the editor of a newspaper in nearby Berwyn. After several hours he was taken to a wooded area and left to find his way home. 

    Al paid for St. John’s hospital bills. When St. John tried to press charges against Ralph, Al met him at the police station and tried to reason with him by pulling out a fist full of $100 dollar bills. After St. John refused the offer, Al and Ralph ended the problem by simply purchasing the Cicero Tribune. 

    Although not a bright or intelligent individual, Ralph would become Al’s right hand man and the person Al trusted the most. When Al went to prison, in 1929 for carrying a concealed weapon, he ran the gang through Ralph. Also, during the times when Al would get out of control due to anger or alcohol, it was always Ralph who had the ability to calm him down. 

    During the time Al was in prison, Ralph came under legal attack from the Internal Revenue Service. In early October 1929, a grand jury returned seven indictments against him for failing to file income tax returns and for defrauding the United States government. On the night of October 8, the U. S. Treasury department decided it was going to make a public spectacle of the arrest of Ralph Capone and did so as he sat ringside at a boxing match. Arresting agents led Ralph away in handcuffs. Due to the late hour bond could not be set and he had to spend the night in jail. 

    Ralph had made serious mistakes in handling his income and by not filing returns. He now made matters worse by not lying low after his release on bail. He returned to running his brother’s bootleg empire out of the Montmartre Café where the telephone lines had recently been tapped by a young prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. 

    In April 1930 Ralph was convicted of tax evasion and faced a prison term and a $40,000 fine. He remained free while appeals were in process. During this period Al threw a party for his brother where he publicly humiliated Ralph by telling him “you got caught because you weren’t smart, you talked too much and put too many things in writing. You gotta be smart Ralph, and I hope you will be when you get out.” 

    Through appeals Ralph was able to stave off going to prison until November 1930. Then he was packed off to Leavenworth to begin a three-year sentence. The Internal Revenue Service had actually considered their prosecution of Ralph a test case. When it was successful they went after other Capone associates like Jake Guzik and Frank Nitti, fine-tuning their efforts before they proceeded against Big Al. 

    After Al’s conviction, Ralph’s importance to the Chicago mob quickly declined. Ralph ran a dance hall in Stickney and had an interest in a bottling company and a cigarette-vending firm. He purchased a summer home in Mercer, Wisconsin where he spent most of his time. Ralph married again, but this union too would end in divorce. 

    When Al became gravely ill, Ralph went to Miami to be with the family at Al’s Palm Island estate. The home was surrounded with newspaper people and Ralph kept them abreast of his brother’s condition and served them cold beer as they stood in the hot sun. Al died on January 25, 1947 after years of suffering from brain disease brought on by untreated syphilis. 

    In 1950 Ralph was called to Washington D. C. to appear before the Kefauver committee which was investigating organized crime in interstate commerce. Ralph answered questions about his bootlegging days but refused to talk about any of the people he was associated with. The committee asked Ralph how he spent his time when he went to Miami. 

    “At the dog tracks,” Ralph replied. 

    “When you showed up they rolled out the red carpet for you, didn’t they?” asked a committee member. 

    “When I went there they were out of red carpet,” Ralph responded. 

    Shortly after Ralph’s testimony, his son committed suicide. The 33-year-old Ralphie, who had drifted in and out of a series of jobs and one marriage, mixed alcohol with a bottle of cold medicine one night before writing a note to his girl friend. Ralph was devastated by the loss but had little time to mourn as another I. R. S. investigation of his finances had begun. Ralph survived the I. R. S. attack without having to go back to prison. 

    The remainder of his life was spent in relative obscurity. On November 22, 1974 Ralph Capone died of a heart attack in Mercer where he spent his final years. He was 80 years old. 

    Some Capone historians believe that had Frank Capone lived he would have been the brother to take the lead role in the family’s affairs. Of all the brothers he fit the Torrio mold the best. 

    Salvatore Capone, always called Frank, was born in 1895. Frank was two years younger than Ralph and four years older than Al. Of the seven brothers, Frank by far had the most promise. He was described as the best looking - he was tall and lean, with thick wavy hair. When the Torrio/Capone gang moved into Cicero in 1922, Frank was the most visible of the Capone brothers. He served as the front man for the gang and represented the organization in its dealings with the Cicero town council. Frank was mild mannered compared to both Al and Ralph and took on the air of a respectable businessman, always attired in a neat suit. 

    In exchange for allowing the gang’s gambling dens and brothels to operate without interference from the local police, Frank made sure that on Election Day cooperating office seekers achieved victory by an overwhelming majority. Once, one of the Capone sponsored candidates found out that he, as a member of the Cicero Town Board, was making less money than one of the lower ranking members of the gang. He then demanded a percentage of the Torrio-Capone income. Al responded by berated Frank for choosing such a stupid candidate. 

    April 1, 1924 was primary election day in Cicero and the Capone mob was voting Republican. Although the early morning hours saw many Democratic election workers out supporting their candidates, by midday an alarming amount of them had disappeared. Some had been kidnapped, some beaten, others were just frightened off. Voters at the polls had ballots ripped from their hands by Capone gunmen to see how they were voting. Women were scared off and many a voter was sent home without having cast their ballot. When word of this reached Chicago, a special contingent of Chicago policemen were deputized to go to Cicero and restore order. The policemen, all in plain clothes, drove to Cicero in the same type of large black touring sedans the gangsters used. 

    When the police caravan arrived in Cicero, newspaper editor Robert St. John described what happened: 

    “I set up my observation post on the Cicero side of Forty-eighth Avenue near a public telephone booth. In a few minutes I saw the cavalcade approaching. At the same time I saw a neatly dressed man leave a building on the Cicero side of the street. He might have been a banker or a prosperous dry-goods-store owner. As he came closer I recognized him as Frank Capone. About the same time I recognized him, the driver of the first police car recognized him too.” As the driver of the first car slammed on his brakes, “the drivers of the other nine black touring cars were forced to come to a quick stop to avoid piling into the first one. In those days when brakes were applied to a car going fifty miles an hour the noise was slightly disturbing to the ears. I was not able to interview Frank Capone later, but it was not difficult to imagine what had gone through his mind in that split second when life and death hung in a delicate balance. He heard the screaming of the brakes, turned quickly, saw thirty or forty men in ordinary street clothes leaping from a long line of black touring cars. With that instinct for self-preservation . . . he reached for his right rear trousers pocket. His hand was still on the revolver, which was still in his pocket, when we rolled over the corpse. For the first time I understood that newspaper cliché about a body riddled with bullets.” 

    At the inquest the police told a much different story of the day’s events. They said Frank had “lured” them into a pitched gunfight and had fired at least twice at them. Despite St. John’s testimony to the contrary, the jury returned a verdict that Frank had been killed while resisting arrest. 

    Frank’s funeral proved to be the grandest of any of the Capone brothers. Laid out in a silver plated coffin he was surrounded by $20,000 worth of floral arrangements. The funeral cortege consisted of no fewer that 100 cars, fifteen of which carried flowers. 

    Erminio was born in 1901 and was called John or Mimi by family and friends. If there was a loser in the family, though, it was John. Fined once for disorderly conduct when he was 18, John’s contributions to the gang were only menial ones. One of these jobs was escorting beer trucks on deliveries to the suburban cabarets. At one stop, the Arrowhead Club in Burnham, Illinois, John fell in love with a cabaret singer. Brother Al decided that this was a bad match and ordered the bandleader to fire the girl stating, “Get her out of here. If I hear any more stuff about her and Mimi,” you’ll go to. 

    The bandleader, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, refused saying; “I won’t fire her. She’s one of the best entertainers we’ve got around here. Why don’t you keep Mimi out of here, if that’s the way you feel about it?” 

    Well. “She can’t sing anyway,” Al grumbled. 

    “Can’t sing! Why you couldn’t even tell good whiskey if you smelled it and that your racket, so how do you figure to tell me about music.” 

    Capone must have been in a good mood. Mezzrow lived. Al left warning the bandleader he’d better not catch the girl around John anymore. 

    In 1926, police arrested John at the family home on Prairie Avenue. At the time they were looking for Al in connection with the highly publicized murder of William McSwiggen, an assistant state’s attorney. While in Florida in 1929, John was arrested during a raid at Al’s Palm Island estate where police found bottles of liquor in his closet. An additional charge of vagrancy, a popular charge used against gangsters at that time, was placed against him. Another time, as he and Al drove to Miami for an afternoon movie the two were stopped and tossed in jail for “investigation” and “suspicion.” During the early 1930s John was called to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the liquor rackets. 

    After Al went to prison, John helped Al’s wife, Mae by delivering payments to clear up tax charges and other misdemeanor counts while trying to run a small business in Villanova, Pennsylvania. After Al’s release from Alcatraz, John served as the family spokesman carefully giving out information to the media. During the Kefauver Crime Committee hearings, he and Ralph were questioned in Washington D. C. In 1955, photographers caught him and his brother Albert attending the funeral of Louis “Little New York” Campagna, an old family friend. Then John changed his last name to Martin and stayed out of the public eye. As of the last book published about Al Capone, in 1994, John had not been reported dead, although he would have been 93 at that time. 

    Umberto Capone, who everyone called Albert, was born in 1906. He seems to have led the quietest existence of the seven brothers. He served an apprenticeship in the circulation department of the Cicero Tribune after his brothers purchased the newspaper. He too was arrested during the 1929 Palm Island police raid and charged with vagrancy. In the early 1930s he was arrested in connection with a bombing at the home of the mayor of Cicero. 

    Albert used aliases for a long time before legally changing his name in 1942 to Rayola, a version of his mother’s maiden name. Except for a court fine of $25 for assaulting his wife, Albert avoided the public eye. In June 1980, he died at the age of 74. 

    The last Capone brother, born in 1908, was named Amedoe, but was called Matthew, Mattie, or Matt. During the mid-1920s, Matt became friends with Mickey Cohen, a small time Chicago hood who would one day make a name for himself on the West Coast. 

    Cohen had done some boxing in Chicago and through his friendship with Ralph and Matt was invited to several of the Capone family’s Sunday dinners. Al liked Cohen and helped him and Matt get a poker game going in the Chicago loop section. Soon both of them got in trouble with Al when they tried to start a crap game there. According to Cohen, Matt and Al were not always on the best of terms. Mattie was said to resent Al’s prominence. 

    In the mid-1940s, Matt was running the Hall of Fame tavern in Cicero. One night two employees got into a fight over a $5 bill that was missing from the register. Witnesses said Matt started rifling through a drawer while the two employees pummeled each other. Suddenly a shot rang out and Matt ran out of the bar. Police later found the body of one of the employees in an alley some distance from the tavern. Police wanted to question Matt, but he had gone into hiding. By the time he reappeared, almost a year later, witnesses had disappeared and the case was dropped. 

    While attending Al’s funeral, Matt threatened a photographer who was attempting to take a picture of his Teresa Capone. Matt died on January 31, 1967, at the age of 59. Only 25 people attended the service. Two reporters covering the funeral were called upon to act as pallbearers. 

    One of the strengths of the Capone family was its ability to stay intact during the most adverse times. Their strength came from their numbers. They had survived the disappearance of the oldest brother James, and overcame their grief at the loss of Frank. However when both Al and Ralph were removed in the early 1930s, the family’s ascent as well as its ability to maintain control of the Chicago mob vanished. With Al gone for a long-time, no other brother could really take his place. The younger brothers – John, Albert and Matt – simply weren’t that interested in devoting their life to crime after seeing the price their three older brothers had paid. As for Ralph he was too easy-going and accommodating while lacking Al’s drive, daring, and ruthlessness. Ralph was content to hang around the racetrack or the nightclubs tending to his own interests. Smarter men, who came up through the ranks, were now taking over the Chicago outfit. Although many believed Al would be back one day, his deteriorating mental state in the late thirties eliminated that possibility. The Capone dynasty was over, thank God. But what a legacy was left behind. 

Copyright A. R. May  1999