- 8 hours ago
From Al Capone, to the real Peaky Blinders, from The Krays twins to the Queen of Harlem, each hour-long episode of Original Gangsters will see the legendary actor Sean Bean take a deep dive through a rogues gallery of some of the most notorious criminals in history to separate the fact from the fiction, as we find out what they mean to us today and just why they were the original gangsters.
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00:00One man's name has become synonymous with crime in the 1930s feared and respected
00:12idolized and immortalized on screen countless times regarded by some
00:20as the ultimate gangster
00:25he's here gentlemen but who was he really
00:34what do we actually know about him
00:39it's all yours Al
00:42me I'm Quicken
00:46at only 26 years old
00:53Alphonse Gabriel Capone
00:55will become the boss of one of the biggest crime syndicates
00:59America has ever known
01:01but this was just the beginning of the Al Capone story
01:07the Al Capone story
01:12the Al Capone story
01:14of what's found Here we are
01:20here we are
01:22I'm gonna adapt
01:24we got anань
01:25locked in
01:26the prison
01:27that was here
01:27We all know the name.
01:57But what do we really know about the man?
02:05Why is it that his name sits above so many others?
02:11The day that I learned about Al Capone in school, I went back to my grandfather and I told him that I had learned about this guy, Al Capone.
02:20He said, oh yeah, what did they teach you?
02:22Well, they taught me that he was a thief and a robber and he killed people.
02:28He said, oh yeah, is that all they taught you?
02:31Did he tell you that he gave people jobs?
02:34No.
02:36Did they tell you that he gave people soup in the time when they couldn't get soup at the other kitchens?
02:41No.
02:43Did they tell you that he had given money to build an orphanage?
02:46I said no.
02:47He goes, what kind of school you go to, they teach you this.
02:49Next time you go to school, don't pay attention to everything they say.
02:53Come and ask me next.
02:54What I learned was that Al Capone was many things.
02:58He was almost anything to anybody, which is what makes him such a good mythological figure.
03:04My name is Deirdre Marie Capone.
03:07I am Al Capone's grandniece.
03:11Was Al Capone a mobster?
03:12Yes, he was.
03:13Was Al Capone a monster?
03:16No, he was not.
03:17The myth has become the reality, and that's the difficult part of it.
03:22Once something has been said so many times, it becomes the norm.
03:27The myth is so enormous that we have to go back to the sources.
03:30I keep wondering if there were signs early on of what Al Capone would become.
03:37By all accounts, he came from a stable, caring family.
03:42No evidence of cruelty or violence or abuse.
03:45So what led him down that path?
03:53We know that his father, Gabriel Capone, was 29 years old when he boarded the ship, the Werra, bound for America.
04:01Alongside his pregnant wife, Teresa, 27, and their two children.
04:08It was a time of mass immigration to America.
04:13In the 1890s, over 600,000 Italians would make the crossing.
04:19The prejudice against Italians was tremendous.
04:24The Italians were the largest immigrant group to come during that period.
04:28And people didn't know when these numbers were going to stop.
04:32You can go back and look at political cartoons of the time.
04:35And they show Italians swarming onto the shores like little rats with knives in their teeth.
04:45They were the last to be hired and the first to be fired.
04:49There's signs that were out in the window.
04:51If you're Italian, don't apply for a job here.
04:55They had to learn not only to navigate the world in a foreign language,
05:00but they had to do it without skills that would have gotten them jobs.
05:06The system fails the immigrant.
05:10And so the immigrant must resort to other ways of doing things.
05:15The family moved to a small apartment at 95 Navy Street in Brooklyn.
05:21And it's here, five years after their arrival,
05:26that Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born.
05:29On the 17th of January, 1899.
05:34The first child conceived and born
05:37in their adopted America.
05:43Capone grew up very poor.
05:44He was one of nine kids
05:46and really had to start working pretty young
05:49to try to help his family out.
05:50His parents were law-abiding citizens.
05:53His father was a barber in Brooklyn.
05:56You know, barber's salary wasn't going to feed nine kids.
05:58So he and his brothers all went to work at a pretty young age.
06:03He eventually leaves school at 14,
06:05having apparently beaten up one of the teachers.
06:09And for me, psychologically, that tells us a couple of things.
06:12One, he had no respect for authority.
06:14Or is it that he felt anger and rage?
06:21He pretty much grew up on the streets.
06:27Street gangs were prevalent at the time.
06:30And Al's early involvement with Brooklyn gangs
06:33exposed him to people
06:35who would go on to lead him down a far darker path.
06:45He was a bruiser.
06:46He grew to about 5 foot 11,
06:49and he's hefty.
06:51What happens when you see a tough guy on the street,
06:54the gangsters begin to put them to work?
06:58One time, I did something I regretted.
07:01I held this guy who somebody else beat up.
07:06When it was all over, I had blood on my shirt.
07:10The guy peeled off a $50 bill and threw it to me.
07:15So when you see that kind of money come out,
07:17it's like, whoa.
07:19When you are around that violence,
07:22you begin to take it for granted,
07:23and you begin to think of it as an option.
07:26Wow, this is pretty profitable.
07:30I think as the son of an immigrant,
07:32it would have taken him a long time
07:33to find his sense of self,
07:35to figure out who he wanted to relate to and why.
07:39But in finding that he was good at something,
07:42finding a foothold in this criminal career
07:44gave him a very, very strong sense of identity.
07:50He's connected with the Five Points Gang,
07:52which is one of the leading gangs at the time.
07:57His opportunities are pretty limited
07:59as an uneducated, first-generation immigrant,
08:03and suddenly he sees a way
08:06that if he's willing to take some risks,
08:08he can make some good money.
08:12He found himself working
08:14at a place called the Harvard Inn on Coney Island,
08:18which was definitely not an Ivy League establishment.
08:21This was a really rough bar
08:23owned by a guy named Frankie Yale.
08:27Frankie Yale was a really tough guy.
08:30He ran the ice rackets in Brooklyn.
08:32If you tried to sell ice without Frankie's approval,
08:35you were going to end up with an ice pick in your knee.
08:37That's the kind of guy Frankie was,
08:40and that's the guy Capone went to work for as a teenager.
08:44So he's hanging around the Harvard Inn,
08:47and he's meeting some of the toughest,
08:49most dangerous guys in New York,
08:51and he's getting ideas.
08:54This is what it takes to be successful.
08:57So Capone's working at Frankie Yale's Harvard Inn in 1917,
09:01and a fight breaks out.
09:04A fight that Capone's responsible for starting,
09:08and one, in a way,
09:11that he'd never recover from.
09:17When we think of gangsters,
09:20what's the name we think of first?
09:25Al Capone.
09:26But who was he really?
09:31How did he get those infamous scars?
09:35When he was just a teenager working at the Harvard Inn,
09:39he saw a girl that he liked.
09:43He started talking to her,
09:44and she told him to get lost.
09:47Capone didn't give up quite so easily.
09:49He approached her again,
09:50maybe two or three times,
09:52and finally this girl's brother stepped in.
09:56We're not sure whether it was using a knife,
09:59or whether it was actually using a bottle.
10:02Whatever it was,
10:03it left Capone with three deep scars down his and cheek.
10:16Al Capone is 17 years old,
10:19and he's just been marked for life.
10:22He's been made to look like a criminal,
10:24scarred by violence.
10:28Did this turn him away from leading a normal life?
10:31Did it change him?
10:34He's a young man.
10:35He's a teenager.
10:37He hasn't found a wife yet.
10:40Suddenly, he's got these three brutal,
10:42really bright scars across his face and neck.
10:45You can't avoid seeing it.
10:47It's probably the first thing you notice when you look at him.
10:50So this must have been, you know, really traumatic.
10:53When you're looking at a young person who's been scarred,
10:55they can go one of two ways.
10:56Either they're going to take it inward
10:58and be very insular about what's happened,
11:01try and hide it, try and disguise it.
11:04Or you might have someone who eventually turns that into something else
11:07where they feel the rage from what's happened to them.
11:12At this stage in his life,
11:14Capone's still just tired muscle.
11:17He's not a gangster.
11:19Not yet.
11:20In 1918, Al would meet the woman he'd spend the rest of his life with,
11:27May, a devout Irish Catholic from a respectable family.
11:31They would get married three weeks after the birth of their only child,
11:35Albert Francis Sonny Capone.
11:38Capone was a very good husband and father in a peculiar way.
11:44He loved his only child, Sonny.
11:46He absolutely adored him.
11:48He rang his mother and his wife every single night.
11:52He would phone them.
11:55He was and he wanted to be a family man.
11:59But he played around.
12:02And in those days, playing around had serious consequences.
12:08During Al's youth, syphilis was very, very common.
12:13He probably contracted syphilis as a young man in his early 20s
12:19and didn't seek the treatment that could have nicked it in the bud.
12:23Alcohol was seen to be one of the big contributing factors to the spread of venereal disease.
12:29Perception was that people were more likely to engage in extramarital sexual encounters
12:35if they had been drinking.
12:39Around the turn of the century, there was a movement to see about maybe banning alcohol.
12:46And liquor has no more business in the constitution of my country
12:51than a rattlesnake has in your baby's cradle.
12:54The National Women's Christian Temperance Union announces a campaign
12:58for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
13:07It seems so bizarre looking at it now
13:10that an entire country would ban the sale and production of alcohol
13:14Al Capone turned 21 just as prohibition was becoming the law.
13:25It passes at a time when the nation was really more conservative.
13:30And unfortunately, by the time it becomes the law in the early 1920s,
13:34those attitudes have changed.
13:37People no longer want to sacrifice.
13:39They want to have a good time.
13:40But now we've got this law that we passed a while ago.
13:43So what happens when you take away
13:45one of the biggest industries in America,
13:48a business that brings pleasure to people,
13:50and you say, it's over.
13:52You can't go to your local liquor store.
13:54You can't go to your local bar.
13:56Some people might decide that they're going to take that into their own hands.
14:00There was one criminal that would alter the course of Al's life like no other.
14:07When Capone was working at the Harvard Inn on Coney Island,
14:10he met a lot of powerful people.
14:12And one of them was Johnny Torrio.
14:17Johnny Torrio is one of the brightest people in that business.
14:22If it wasn't for Johnny Torrio,
14:24Al Capone would have never been able to be what he was.
14:28Torrio was much older and a very careful, dignified guy
14:32who treated the crime work that he did as a serious undertaking,
14:36something not to be handled capriciously.
14:40He goes home every night to his wife.
14:43He treats it as a nine-to-five job,
14:45even though that nine-to-five job is extraordinarily violent.
14:49He really takes to Capone, and he takes him under his wing.
14:51I think he sees Capone as brighter than the average thug,
14:58and he trains him up.
15:00He realized that he was an intelligent man who could actually do the job well.
15:05Torrio eventually left New York and moved to Chicago,
15:12where he became one of the biggest of all operators in the underworld.
15:19Torrio recruited Capone to come to Chicago.
15:21So it's 1920, Al's now living in Chicago.
15:33In the early 20th century, it's very much a working-class city.
15:38It has a population of about 2.8 million,
15:42which has doubled almost every decade since the mid-19th century.
15:47It's a crazy town then because it was growing so fast.
15:50It seemed out of control at times,
15:53and that led to a kind of wildness, a kind of lawless...
15:56The great thing about Prohibition for gangsters
15:58is that it provides all sorts of different options.
16:01You can distill, you can brew, you can ship,
16:05and of course, because it's illegal, you can hijack other people.
16:08He's working for Johnny Torrio,
16:10but at this point, he isn't the man at the top in Chicago.
16:15So who is?
16:16Johnny Torrio goes over to Chicago to work for his uncle, Jim Colosimo.
16:27Who is the man in town?
16:30He's a ruthless businessman.
16:33He's built up an empire of a hundred brothels.
16:36He not only runs brothels and gambling operations,
16:40he runs one of the most popular restaurants.
16:43Jim will become the catalyst for Capone's success.
16:50Colosimo didn't really want to change things.
16:53He knew his business.
16:55He was very good at the brothel business.
16:57He felt he had a formula that worked.
17:00He could see that other groups had managed to buy up
17:04most of the breweries and the distilleries in the area,
17:07so he thought they'd be starting from scratch.
17:10He's dragging his heels, whereas Torrio is ambitious.
17:15He rightly thinks that prohibition will be the making
17:18of any criminal enterprise during the 1920s.
17:23Torrio knows that regardless of the law,
17:26people will always want to drink.
17:28And whoever fills the glasses is going to get rich.
17:34There's a growing sense that something has to be done.
17:40On May the 11th, 1920,
17:43Colosimo gets out of his car and walks into his restaurant.
17:58Chicago police, acting on tips,
18:01theorized that the person responsible
18:03was none other than Brooklyn mobster
18:05and Al Capone's old employer at the Harvard Inn,
18:11Frankie Yale.
18:15I think there's a pretty decent chance
18:17that Capone was involved in the hit on Big Jim.
18:20He was young, he was new in town.
18:22It's the kind of thing that Johnny Torrio
18:24might have expected a new guy to do to prove himself.
18:26But nobody saw Capone there,
18:29so we really don't know.
18:31No one is ever convicted for the crime, surprisingly.
18:35Now we have Johnny Torrio right at the top of the pile.
18:39And who does he take with him?
18:511920 was a big year for Al Capone.
18:53With Jim Colosimo,
18:56the head of the Chicago outfit, dead.
18:59And the opportunities for bootlegging growing by the day,
19:03the money is starting to roll in.
19:05He's running 100 brothels.
19:07He expands into bootlegging,
19:09but he also expands into all sorts of other businesses.
19:12They can't keep track of it all.
19:14They can't even keep track of how much money's coming in.
19:16Then on November the 14th,
19:21his father, Gabriel, dies at 55 years old,
19:25and Al becomes the new head of the family.
19:29Once Capone started making a little bit of money,
19:31he brought his whole family with him from Brooklyn.
19:34He moved his mother, his brothers, and sister
19:37into this big house on South Prairie Avenue.
19:39His older brothers, Frank and Ralph,
19:42start working with him in the business.
19:46Suddenly, he's not just the family man,
19:48he's the leader of the family.
19:50In some ways, he's stepping in for his dad
19:52to supply and to provide for the entire crew.
19:57Chicago is a divided city.
20:00Turf wars are raging,
20:02especially between the Northside gang and Torrio's outfit.
20:05Once Big Jim was out of the way,
20:09Chicago was wide open.
20:11Suddenly, the amount of money he could make
20:12explodes infinitely.
20:15Torrio and Capone,
20:17they had the best operation in Chicago,
20:18the best and the biggest operation.
20:20They were smart enough to go to some of the breweries
20:23and say, hey, the feds have shut you down.
20:26We'll put you back in business.
20:27We'll take all the risk.
20:28We just want you to keep producing some beer for us,
20:31and we'll distribute it.
20:33We'll pay you for your time.
20:35A lot of other guys have the same idea,
20:39so rivals emerge all over town,
20:43and Capone and Torrio can't keep them all at bay.
20:46The Northside gang is run by an Irishman,
20:50Dino Banyan.
20:52Dino Banyan was a thorn in the side of the outfit.
20:56Who ran a flower shop by day
20:58and used that flower shop for cover.
21:00The interesting thing about the Northside
21:02is even though they're quite a small gang,
21:04they're very cleverly bought up almost all the breweries,
21:08so they have control of the product.
21:11And that puts them in a very strong position.
21:14These guys were in constant battle.
21:17There was sort of a code that if you took out one of my guys,
21:20I'm going to take out one of your guys.
21:22And then once you introduce the Tommy gun
21:24and the much greater firepower,
21:27then the death count started to rise.
21:34Dino Banyan is killed in 1924.
21:38And that led to Jaime Weiss and Bugs Moran,
21:44the head of the Northside.
21:45They would have to seek revenge.
21:49Capone and his brothers move operations
21:51out of Chicago Central
21:53and into one of the suburbs called Cicero,
21:56where they have the local city manager in their pocket
22:01and manage to do pretty much what they want.
22:04There's an election out there.
22:06They want to make sure people vote right.
22:07The election is being tampered with,
22:09that voters are being intimidated.
22:11A judge hears about this
22:12and sends a bunch of police officers
22:14to turn back these gangsters from the polls
22:16to let the people vote.
22:19Shooting breaks out
22:20and Frank Capone gets killed.
22:25On January the 10th, 1925,
22:31Capone's sedan was strafed with a machine gun fire.
22:38On January the 24th,
22:41Torrio and his wife Anne
22:42were set upon by Moran and Weiss.
22:47Several shots hit Torrio,
22:48but when Weiss went to deliver the coup de grace,
22:52the gun jammed and the two fled.
22:56Johnny Torrio received
22:58really significant bullet points
23:00and everyone thinks
23:00that he can't possibly make it through this.
23:04Capone takes this shooting really to heart.
23:07He sleeps by Torrio's bed
23:10every night in a cot that he has made up.
23:12And he is the person that takes care
23:14of the day-to-day running of the business
23:16while Torrio is incapacitated.
23:20His time in hospital really is where we see
23:22this passing of the baton to Al Capone.
23:26Against all odds, Torrio would recover from his wounds.
23:32He would be taken straight from his hospital bed to prison
23:35to serve a short sentence for bootlegging.
23:38Though there are some who suggest this prison sentence
23:40came about as a result of Torrio's own negotiating.
23:44After all, where could he be safer than a prison
23:47where he could buy off the guards?
23:48If you run into a situation where your life is threatened
23:52or you begin to think differently...
23:54There's something really deeply ingrained here
23:57about the legacy building of this kind of industry.
24:00It wouldn't be enough just to have it exist
24:03and for it to completely fall apart.
24:06Any good leader knows that you hand on your empire.
24:11When Capone is 26, he really faces a huge crossroads.
24:15Capone could have said,
24:15You know what, I'm good.
24:17I've made enough money.
24:18I'd like to get back to my family.
24:21I can take the money I've made
24:22and set up a legitimate business somewhere.
24:24You're getting out.
24:25I'm going to get out too.
24:25But, no, he actually embraces this new challenge.
24:31So Al Capone, at only 26,
24:35has handed the keys to the kingdom.
24:40He takes over the running of the business
24:42and no one objects to it.
24:44So it was obvious that he was actually the ordained.
24:47He was 26 years old
24:50when he took over a business
24:51which, in today's terms,
24:53was worth $1.5 billion.
24:56I mean, it's an extraordinary thing at 26 years old.
25:03And I think there's a part of him
25:05that really likes the attention
25:08that comes with this job.
25:11With this change in leadership
25:13comes a new way of interacting
25:15with the public and the media.
25:19Al Capone loved the limelight.
25:21His garishly colored suits.
25:27His pale gray fedora that he always wore.
25:30His overcoat that he always wore.
25:32These are symbols of Capone.
25:35The Italians have some very important coats
25:39and one of them is the coat of Bella Figura.
25:43You've got to make yourself look better
25:45than you actually are.
25:47You never let people know
25:48exactly what's going on inside of you,
25:51especially in front of public audiences.
25:54He wanted to dress like a banker,
25:58except even more.
26:00So he would go with bigger, wider pinstripes
26:03and brighter colors.
26:04He wanted to show a certain lifestyle.
26:06And not just because he wanted to show off
26:08that he was making money,
26:08he wanted to be taken seriously.
26:10Sound and image are coming together
26:13to create newsreels.
26:16He's probably the first real media gangster
26:19that we have.
26:20And he becomes iconic.
26:23They started making movies
26:24with characters based on him.
26:27That would really kind of feed into his ego.
26:30So there's really strong elements
26:32of narcissism there.
26:33This kind of attention is validation.
26:37That, you know, how bad can I really be
26:39if all these people are paying attention to me?
26:43That's why he's giving interviews
26:44to the newspapers.
26:45He's giving interviews to Cosmo magazine,
26:47a women's magazine, right?
26:48He's basically saying,
26:50why don't you understand me?
26:51I'm just a good guy.
26:52I'm just an American entrepreneur.
26:54He was a businessman.
26:56He had a very successful business.
26:59He supplied the demand.
27:00You know, people wanted to be in bars.
27:02They wanted to have alcohol.
27:03And he supplied the alcohol.
27:06He has an oversized personality,
27:08a nodding relationship with the truth.
27:11But he's charming,
27:13a bit like people regard Trump today.
27:19One of Capone's great strokes of genius
27:22was that he realized that
27:24you don't keep all the money.
27:26You hand it out.
27:28You make friends.
27:29When people were really struggling,
27:33he gave people jobs.
27:34He was responsible for, you know,
27:36opening a soup kitchen on the south side.
27:40The Italians weren't always allowed
27:42into the typical soup kitchens that were up.
27:46Capone was responsible for creating
27:50alternative soup kitchens,
27:52soup kitchens that, you know,
27:53that actually had good food
27:55that the Italians would eat
27:57because Italians are very particular
27:58about their food.
28:00But he also had people come to him
28:02and complain about buying spoiled milk.
28:05I mean, I don't think he went to City Hall
28:07and did it himself,
28:08but he made sure that the expiration dates
28:12were put on milk cartons in Chicago.
28:15You can only do this when you have so much money
28:17you don't know what to do with your money.
28:19But also when you do have some compassion
28:21for the people that are your people.
28:25You see this kind of Robin Hood-type character
28:27come to life,
28:28and I think that that really fed the story,
28:31the facade, the character
28:32that he wanted to portray to the outside world.
28:35Like a lot of men in his position,
28:37he was able to groom people to do the dirty work.
28:40He had a really compelling vision
28:42and could compel people
28:44and draw them into his vision.
28:47If you want to stay in business a while,
28:49you've got to have friends,
28:50and so he buys off the cops,
28:52he buys off the courts.
28:54He can't get arrested if he tries.
28:56He understands that in order to protect himself,
28:59he's got to buy everyone else off.
29:01At his height, Capone probably had 60%
29:04of the Chicago Police Department in his pocket.
29:09They always say about Capone
29:11that if you met him,
29:12he was absolutely charming.
29:13He would have a glint in his eye
29:15and he would just have this great smile,
29:18but it could turn.
29:18And he would suddenly become a reptile.
29:27There's a story about how when he found out
29:30that there was an assassination attempt against him,
29:32he beat one of the victims to death with a baseball bat.
29:36It's estimated that in the period of the 1920s
29:42that we're interested in,
29:43there were 700 gangland killings in Chicago,
29:48of which 200 are associated with Capone's gang.
29:52Sometimes it felt like the Wild West in Chicago.
29:55You just have guys, you know, rolling by,
29:57shooting at each other,
29:58seemingly unprovoked,
29:59for grudges that you couldn't keep track of after a while.
30:02We start to get a little pushback.
30:05You start to see business leaders
30:07going to Washington, D.C. and saying,
30:10you've got to help us,
30:11because our local elected officials,
30:12they're not doing anything.
30:14People are afraid to do business in Chicago.
30:16They're afraid to come here as tourists.
30:17So there's a growing sense that something has to be done,
30:20that this is becoming a national problem,
30:22that lawlessness is out of control.
30:24At 10.30 in the morning,
30:30on St. Valentine's Day 1929,
30:33seven men associated with George Bugs Moran's bootlegging operation
30:38were inside a garage in the Lincoln Park neighborhood
30:42of Chicago's Northside.
30:45Four men, two wearing police uniforms,
30:49pulled up in a police car and entered the garage.
30:52They drew guns and forced the men to line up against a wall,
30:57shoulder to shoulder.
31:00At first, Moran's men offered no resistance
31:03until a side door opened
31:05and two other men carrying Thompson's submachine guns entered.
31:13The pictures go straight into the press
31:15and no one holds back.
31:18Folks are drinking their coffee and eating their Wheaties,
31:22looking at the newspaper,
31:23and suddenly this gruesome, bloody scene
31:28is right in front of them.
31:29We have the impression that Capone was responsible.
31:40But it makes no sense.
31:42He already knew the feds were breathing down his neck.
31:45People thought the cops did it
31:46because when one of the Gusenberg boys
31:48who died in the garage was still alive
31:50when police got there,
31:52he said it was the cops that did it.
31:53Well, there's a bunch of different possible theories,
31:56but I don't think we're ever going to really know.
32:00Either way, there's a sense that this is going too far.
32:04Up until that point,
32:06crime fighting had always been considered a local issue.
32:09It was left to your police chief and your sheriff,
32:11but now the federal government is getting involved,
32:13and J. Edgar Hoover is taking over the FBI
32:16and building a national response to crime.
32:20Never before was there a greater need for unity,
32:25for a calm appraisal
32:26of the forces which work against us.
32:31Is this the beginning of the end for Capone?
32:36Seems like he's finally got a problem on his hands
32:38he can't buy his way out of.
32:42But the fortunes of the whole nation
32:44are about to change.
32:46So, things are beginning to shift now for Capone.
32:59His image is tarnished.
33:02The press have turned on him.
33:04And now the federal government
33:05have labelled him
33:07public enemy number one.
33:11The president, Herbert Hoover,
33:13no relation to J. Edgar Hoover
33:15or the FBI,
33:17starts talking to his cabinet.
33:18What are we going to do about Capone?
33:20We can't have this kind of stuff
33:21on the front page of the newspaper.
33:23We can't have these gangland killings anymore.
33:25We either have to enforce prohibition
33:27or we have to strike it from the books.
33:29But we can't just keep looking the other way.
33:31So he decides that he's going to do something about it.
33:34This is the president
33:35deciding that he's going to get involved
33:37in an effort to take down Al Capone.
33:42The Wall Street crash of 1929
33:45was a catastrophic collapse
33:47in the world economy,
33:48which would take a generation to recover from.
33:53We are now into this horrible depression.
33:56The economy is tanking.
33:57Stock market is nosedived.
33:59People are losing their fortunes.
34:01They're blaming President Hoover for this.
34:02And he figures that going after Al Capone
34:05will make him look good.
34:10Now, you'd think it'd be pretty easy, right?
34:12Because Capone is admitting that he's a bootlegger.
34:15He's obviously making a fortune
34:17selling booze and running guns
34:19and keeping brothels, casinos.
34:22How hard could it be to take this guy out?
34:24But remember, the Chicago cops aren't going to do it.
34:28Capone was also very careful.
34:31He didn't put a lot of the business in his own name,
34:34so it wasn't clear
34:35how they were going to take him down.
34:37You've got federal prohibition agents
34:40trying to stop Capone,
34:41and they're raiding his breweries
34:44and his brothels,
34:45looking for evidence of crime,
34:47but they can't pin anything on him.
34:49But there's a federal prosecutor,
34:52a U.S. attorney named George E.Q. Johnson.
34:55The Justice Department has asked him
34:57to find a way to prosecute Al Capone.
34:59And he says, what about his taxes?
35:01Has he been paying his taxes?
35:04Capone was not paying taxes.
35:06All of his income was illegal.
35:08And the federal government said to him,
35:10hey, we'd like to talk to you about your taxes.
35:11You haven't filed any returns in years.
35:13Capone actually offered to pay taxes.
35:16He said, here's how much I think I made.
35:18Tell me what I owe you.
35:19And after a while, the negotiations fell apart.
35:21So Capone had a chance to get out of this,
35:24but he didn't.
35:24He didn't pay.
35:26Capone should have realized
35:28that this was a pretty good situation for him, right?
35:30The best they can do is come after me
35:32for income tax evasion.
35:33I'm going to hire myself a really good lawyer,
35:35and I'll probably pay a settlement,
35:37and I'll be good.
35:38But when this went to trial,
35:40Capone didn't hire a good tax lawyer.
35:41He hired one of the usual lawyers
35:43who he turned to any time he got in trouble with the law.
35:47And this guy really didn't know tax law that well.
35:50The biggest mistake they make
35:52is Capone is convicted of not providing tax returns
35:56for 1925 and 1926.
35:59Well, the law didn't demand that he had to until 1927.
36:04So they could have argued that quite clearly,
36:07which would have really damaged the prosecution's case.
36:10But they don't do that.
36:12It's ridiculous.
36:13They just don't seem to know it.
36:15The judge is determined that Capone is going to go down
36:18no matter what happens.
36:20He manages to stop Capone from tampering with the jury
36:24because he changes the jury the night before the actual trial.
36:27He swaps the jury with another jury.
36:29They're all from outside Chicago, rural characters,
36:33and they're absolutely shocked by Capone's behavior
36:35because Capone arrives on the first day of the trial
36:38in a suit that is described as glaring banana yellow.
36:42So they're pretty baffled by the whole of Capone anyway.
36:45They don't have any empathy with him.
36:47They certainly wouldn't have been the jury
36:49that Capone would have chosen.
36:52Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion
36:55on October the 17th, 1931.
36:59He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
37:06My grandfather got three years in the federal penitentiary
37:11for the same amount of money that he didn't declare on his income tax.
37:15Al Capone got 11 years
37:17for the same amount, the same thing.
37:21I mean, that's unheard of.
37:24If you look at what he was convicted of,
37:27today, more people are convicted of the same crime,
37:30and it's just a simple fine.
37:33I'm not saying he was a good guy,
37:35and I'm not saying he was innocent,
37:36and I'm not saying that he didn't deserve to go to jail,
37:39but he got a much stiffer sentence for income evasion
37:42than he should have gotten.
37:45Capone would serve his sentence
37:46in the infamous Alcatraz prison,
37:49a place reserved for the most dangerous criminals of the time.
37:54They built Alcatraz
37:56at a ridiculously high cost
37:58to try to deter crime,
38:00and what better way to call attention
38:02to your new tough-on-crime approach
38:06than by putting Al Capone there?
38:09And he's only a tax evasion conviction, right?
38:13Why do you got to put him in Alcatraz?
38:14But it's clear that they want to send a message,
38:16and this is really a new phase in American history,
38:19this emphasis on showing that we're tough on crime,
38:22building more prisons,
38:24something that really still runs through our society today.
38:27He started off not knowing who he was
38:29to finding a really strong character,
38:32so strong that he wears a costume
38:34to suddenly be imprisoned,
38:37where everything that provided that sense of status
38:40and character is stripped away from him.
38:42He's just now a man,
38:44and he's a very ill man.
38:47His health began to fail.
38:50After spending years of his life on the edge,
38:53syphilis was now taking a serious toll on him.
38:57We know that Al Capone lived
38:59with inadequately treated syphilis
39:02for a very long time,
39:03which is why he entered into a tertiary stage
39:08later on in his life.
39:10It's a slow degeneration of your nervous system
39:13that comes with cognitive and motor impairment,
39:19dementia, mood swings, delusions, hallucinations,
39:23personality changes, violent outbursts.
39:25Your entire person and sense of self
39:30changes, sometimes beyond all recognition.
39:36In 1939, he was released from Alcatraz
39:40due to his failing health,
39:42and he returned to his mansion in Florida.
39:44But the once powerful gangster
39:48was a shadow of his former self.
39:52Most people think he died in prison, but he didn't.
39:54He got out and lived another 10 years in Florida.
39:57The Al Capone that I knew,
40:01he was kind of like a big child.
40:03I was by his side with my father,
40:10and he would call me baby girl.
40:12He said, baby girl, I love you,
40:14and baby girl, baby girl.
40:16And my father turned to me, he said,
40:18dear, dear, we've got to go back to Chicago.
40:20You've got to go back to school.
40:21So we got on the train,
40:24and we came back to Chicago.
40:26The next day, my grandfather called
40:30and said, Al just died.
40:34He died on January the 25th, 1947,
40:38at the age of 48.
40:42His body was paraded through Chicago in a hearse,
40:51and people were lining up on the streets
40:56with their hands over their hearts,
40:59their hats in their hands, their heads bowed.
41:01when his casket went by.
41:06The church was filled with people.
41:11Yeah, it was quite something to see.
41:14So who was Al Capone?
41:21A hardened thug,
41:23who was also a savvy business leader,
41:26who might have been a successful CEO,
41:28or even president in another life.
41:32A brutal bully, who yet handed out food to the poor.
41:37A caring husband, who rang his wife every night,
41:41but whose countless infidelities exposed her to syphilis.
41:46A loving father, who was yet responsible for countless cold-blooded murders.
41:52The truth is, he was all those things, and yet as powerful and influential as Al Capone was,
42:00like all of us, he was still subject to the whims of history.
42:05We love the idea of Capone as a morality tale.
42:11Here's the man who makes this vast fortune from illegal and violent means.
42:18We can't have him win, he's got to be brought to justice.
42:22He's not only got to be brought to justice, but he's got to be seen to suffer.
42:27This is what we don't want you to do.
42:29This is evil.
42:31If you do this, you will end up dead.
42:35People didn't understand that even the dead gangsters become heroes to somebody.
42:44People who understood why the gangster rebelled against the system
42:50began to see that as a potential model for rebelling against the system.
42:57But what blessings are there to be taken from Capone's legacy?
43:02Why are we still talking about him almost a hundred years later?
43:09His story reflects the contradictions of America.
43:14A nation built on law and order, yet rife with corruption and rebellion.
43:23We've seen lots of criminals live out loud in America,
43:27feeling like they're above the law,
43:30and that if they don't try to hide what they're doing,
43:34they might just get away with it.
43:35One thing's for certain,
43:39the legend of Al Capone will continue.
43:44No matter how much coal you shovel in the mouth of your child,
43:58No matter how much coal you shovel in the mouth of your child,
44:10these furnaces still want more,
44:13these furnaces still want more,
44:15more to the standardization and women of the Selbstbeware detainty of the أخصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصصص
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