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Scarface to Alcatraz: The Full Rise and Ruin of Al Capone
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
From Brooklyn street kid to the most powerful mob boss in American history, Al Capone built a hundred-million-dollar empire on Prohibition's broken promise — then lost everything to the tax code and syphilis. This chapter traces the complete arc: Cicero, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Eliot Ness, and a broken man dying in Miami.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's what most people get wrong about Al Capone. They think he was brought down by Eliot Ness.
By nineteen twenty-four, Capone was no longer just running errands. Torrio had expanded aggressively across Chicago's South Side, and Capone had become essential to that expansion.
February fourteenth, nineteen twenty-nine. Seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang were standing in a garage at twenty-one twenty-two North Clark Street.
The logic of the tax prosecution was elegant in a way that infuriated gangsters. Capone had made millions.
Capone started his sentence at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. True to form, he initially found ways to make the environment comfortable, securing privileges and easing his conditions through whatever influence he could apply.
The Palm Island house in Miami was beautiful. Waterfront property, a pool, a place that in different circumstances might have signaled success and arrival.
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