Now Playing
Scarface, Syphilis, and the Empire Nobody Could Take From Him
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Al Capone built a hundred-million-dollar criminal empire across Prohibition-era Chicago — but it was syphilis, not Eliot Ness or Alcatraz, that finally destroyed him. From Brooklyn streets to Palm Island, this is the full arc of America's most infamous mob boss.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
By the time Al Capone died in January of nineteen forty-seven, most people assumed he'd been destroyed by the government. By Eliot Ness.
He was born in eighteen ninety-nine in Brooklyn, the son of Italian immigrants who had come to New York with almost nothing. The neighborhood shaped him early.
When Torrio survived an assassination attempt in nineteen twenty-five and decided he'd had enough of Chicago, he handed the operation to Capone. Capone was twenty-six years old.
The gang war that defined Capone's peak years was the running conflict with the North Side Gang. Dean O'Banion, then Hymie Weiss, then Bugs Moran.
The federal government had been trying to reach Capone for years. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables pursued his bootlegging operations, raiding breweries, gathering evidence, making noise.
Capone initially went to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. He did what he'd always done.
He was released in nineteen thirty-nine. He served slightly less than his full sentence due to good behavior and the progression of his illness.
The mythology around Capone tends to end with the courtroom. The conviction.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.