# Al Capone

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/capone/

The public record on Alphonse Capone in six sourced spokes: the rise, Prohibition, the 1929 garage killings, the 1931 tax trial, Atlanta and Alcatraz, and his death in 1947. Each spoke is built from FBI, National Archives, court, Treasury and newspaper records filed in this archive.

This section follows Capone through the records, not through the legend. The FBI Vault file of 36 parts, the criminal case file of the Northern District of Illinois at the National Archives at Chicago, the Bureau of Internal Revenue's Intelligence Unit reports, the Bureau of Prisons' Alcatraz notebook page, and newspaper pages from Chronicling America are each filed as their own record. The FBI's history essay is cited as a federal narrative where no other record speaks, and is named as such. Where the records disagree on a date, the spokes give each date with its source.

## The spokes

- [Rise, 1899–1930](/capone/rise/): Brooklyn, Torrio and Colosimo as the FBI essay and a 1947 Bureau memorandum tell it, the wire pages of 1926 and 1928, the 1929 Philadelphia gun case, and the 1930 public-enemies list.
- [Prohibition, 1929–1931](/capone/prohibition/): the 1929 contempt case the Bureau later called its first Capone conviction, the 1930 juice-grape report, the concurrent tax cases against Guzik and Nitto, and the 1931 Prohibition indictment file.
- [Saint Valentine's Day, 1929](/capone/saint-valentines-day/): the killings at the S. M. C. Cartage Company garage from the newspapers of 1929, the inquest as reported, and Calvin Goddard's ballistics testimony.
- [Tax trial, 1931](/capone/tax-trial/): the indictments, the withdrawn plea, the verdict of 17 October and the judgment of 24 October 1931, the appeal, and Special Agent Frank J. Wilson's investigation.
- [Atlanta and Alcatraz, 1932–1939](/capone/alcatraz/): the Atlanta commitment and habeas case, the warden's notebook page for No. 85, the 1936 stabbing report, and the conflicting records of his transfer and release.
- [Death, 1947](/capone/death/): the FBI history page's statement of his death on 25 January 1947, the National Archives catalog entry, the Bureau's later file notes, and seven January 1947 newspaper pages.

## Headline records

The cards below are the records the section leans on most: the [Vault file](/items/fbi-vault-al-capone/), the FBI's [1934 mug shot](/items/fbi-capone-mugshot-1934/), the Alcatraz [notebook page](/items/nara-236736566-alcatraz-wardens-notebook-capone-85/), the [verdict](/items/nara-628966-capone-verdict-1931/) and the [judgment](/items/nara-55311708-capone-judgment-1931/) of October 1931, the [Evening Star of 14 February 1929](/clippings/clip-evening-star-1929-02-14-p1/), the FBI [history page](/items/fbi-history-al-capone/), and Wilson's [summary report](/items/irs-capone-file-2-wilson-report-1933/). The person page is [Alphonse Capone](/people/al-capone/). The [Chicago Outfit](/families/chicago-outfit/) family page and the [Chicago](/regions/chicago/) region are separate sections, and nothing here fills a seat on the Outfit chart.