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The Courtroom That Changed Everything: Capone's Empire on Trial
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Al Capone walked into a federal courtroom in 1931 expecting a deal — Judge Wilkerson rejected it, and the most powerful gangster in America was suddenly exposed. From Brooklyn street kid to Prohibition-era crime lord, this is the full arc of how Capone built his empire and how the law finally broke it.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The morning of June sixth, nineteen thirty one, Al Capone walked into a federal courtroom in Chicago confident. He had reason to be.
To understand what was at stake in that courtroom, you have to go back to the beginning. Capone was born in nineteen ninety nine in Brooklyn to Italian immigrant parents.
Prohibition opened the door. The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in nineteen twenty, banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol across the country.
Then came February fourteenth, nineteen twenty nine. Seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang were gathered in a garage at twenty-one twenty-two North Clark Street.
The logic of the tax prosecution was straightforward, even if every gangster in America thought it would never work. Capone had made millions.
Capone went first to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. He arrived still believing, on some level, that money could manage the situation.
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