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| “ | I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man. | „ |
| ~ Al Capone |
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone, also known as Scarface, (January 17th, 1899 - January 25th, 1947) was a notorious Chicago gangster who was active throughout the 1920s. The son of Italian immigrants from New York City, Capone was expelled from school at age 14 and became involved with organized crime soon after, moving to Chicago in his early twenties. Al Capone rose to power in the crime–filled prohibition era, running a group known as the Chicago Outfit which specialized in smuggling and bootlegging alcohol as well as prostitution. To maintain a positive public image with the poor, who were the main consumers of his "business", Capone made many donations to charities with some of his illegitimately acquired money.
Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager, and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police meant he seemed safe from law enforcement.
His image took significant damage in 1929 when he was exposed for involvement in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in which seven rival gang members were killed, and later he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz. He was paroled on November 16th, 1939. He died at his Florida home on January 25th, 1947 from complications from a stroke.
Years later in 1986, news celebrity Geraldo Rivera hosted a television special called "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults" in which he uncovered a secret vault that used to be owned by Capone and supposedly contained treasure. However, to his embarrassment and the disappointment of everyone else, it was empty.
More Quotes
| “ | You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. | „ |
| ~ Al Capone |