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Brooklyn to Chicago: How Capone Took Command of a City
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Al Capone rose from a Brooklyn street kid to the undisputed ruler of Prohibition-era Chicago before his twenty-seventh birthday — controlling police, politicians, and the liquor supply of an entire city. This opening chapter traces his Brooklyn origins, his apprenticeship under Johnny Torrio, and his violent seizure of Cicero that turned a gangster into an emperor.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
He ran Chicago at twenty-six years old. Not metaphorically.
The pivot came in nineteen nineteen. Johnny Torrio was already established in Chicago, running operations on the South Side with a precision and intelligence that set him apart from the typical gang leadership of the era.
By nineteen twenty-four, the operation had expanded well beyond the South Wabash footprint. Capone needed territory, and he identified Cicero, a suburb just west of Chicago, as the right place to anchor his growing power.
The late nineteen twenties were the height of what Capone built. By the end of the decade, his operation was grossing roughly one hundred million dollars annually.
Eliot Ness and his Untouchables were pursuing Capone on Prohibition violations, building cases against his bootlegging operations. The bootlegging work mattered in terms of pressure and publicity.
Capone entered the federal prison system believing he could manage that too. In Atlanta, he reportedly tried to bribe his way into favorable conditions, as he had in a previous Philadelphia stint.
The question worth holding onto is this. What did the Four Deuces actually teach him?
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.