# Death, 1947

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

The FBI's history page states that Capone died on Palm Island of a stroke and pneumonia on 25 January 1947; the National Archives catalog gives 01/25/1947 at Miami Beach. The Bureau's 1947 and 1964 file entries and seven newspaper pages of January 1947 are filed beside them.

No death certificate or Florida death record is filed in this archive. The cited federal statements are the FBI's history page [Al Capone](/items/fbi-history-al-capone/) and the National Archives catalog entry for his [Alcatraz case file](/items/nara-117695842-capone-alcatraz-case-file/) (which gives 01/25/1947, Miami Beach). The FBI page says: "Capone resided on Palm Island with his wife and immediate family, in a secluded atmosphere, until his death due to a stroke and pneumonia on January 25, 1947." The same page says that after his release on 16 November 1939 he entered a Baltimore hospital and then went to "an estate on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay near Miami, which he had purchased in 1928." The case file's catalog entry gives the death date as 01/25/1947 and the place as Miami Beach, FL; the catalog entry for the [warden's notebook page](/items/nara-236736566-alcatraz-wardens-notebook-capone-85/) gives the same. The FBI Vault's summary says he died in Florida in 1947.

## The Bureau's file

On 25 January 1947 Edward A. Tamm told Hoover that the columnist Drew Pearson had telephoned for "color" about "the anticipated death of Al Capone," and that he had given Pearson the Bureau's write-up of the 1929 contempt case ([memorandum](/items/fbi-vault-capone-p31-pearson-inquiry-memo-1947/)). It speaks of the death only as anticipated and is not a death record.

In 1964 Hoover answered a Memphis writer: Capone "died on January 25, 1947, at Palm Island, Miami, Florida." A note on the file copy says the information "was contained in his identification record and from the Miami Beach, Florida, Police Department death notice" ([reply of 15 January 1964](/items/fbi-vault-capone-p21-palm-island-reply-1964/)). Neither underlying record is filed in this archive. The same form reply gives a release from Terminal Island on 19 January 1939, which conflicts with the Bureau's own records of November 1939; see the [Alcatraz spoke](/capone/alcatraz/). In 1968 Clyde Tolson told James A. Farley that the Bureau had no information on whether President Roosevelt had used Capone's car, because Capone's tax conviction was outside its jurisdiction ([letter of 25 July 1968](/items/fbi-vault-capone-p22-tolson-farley-letter-1968/)). That letter is filed as a record of how the FBI described its part in the case, not as a record of the death.

## The newspaper pages

Seven pages of January 1947 are filed: the Evening Star of 22 and 25 January, the Sunday Star and the Sunday Star-News of Wilmington of 26 January, the Daily Alaska Empire and the Evening Star of 27 January, and the Wilmington Morning Star of 28 January. They are post-1930 issues, filed on the editor's decision of 12 October 2026 to treat the Library of Congress title records' statement as a no-known-restrictions mark, pending a renewal check. Six carry Associated Press wire copy; the Evening Star of 27 January is the paper's own unsigned editorial, "End of Capone," filed as a record of one paper's opinion.

The wire reports print the illness as his physicians described it to reporters, and the Sunday Star prints an hour of death and a cause in his physician's words. This archive does not adopt the hour or the cause printed in wire copy as fact; the cause stated on this page is the FBI history page's. The reports of his estate, of funeral plans and of an expected burial in Chicago are the papers' and are not taken as findings. One wire story's phrase "seven and a half years in Alcatraz" does not match the federal custody dates on the Alcatraz spoke and is not used.

## What is not here

No death certificate, Dade County record, Miami Beach police death notice, or burial record has been opened for this archive. This page gives no medical detail beyond the FBI history page's words "a stroke and pneumonia."