Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Al Capone mug shot, 1939: front and profile views; the placard reads "No. 397-Cal Terminal Island 1-7-39", and "K4805 (1939)" is handwritten above.
Open the full imageJPG, 2000 × 1164 px, 0.8 MB

Al Capone mug shot, 1939 (FBI)

Photograph published by the FBI as "Al Capone Mug Shot 1939." The year comes only from the entry title; the FBI does not say which institution took it.

Date
1939
Kind
photograph
Source
Federal Bureau of Investigation, image repository
Retrieved
2026-10-11
Rights
Published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on fbi.gov with no third-party credit; treated here as a United States government publication, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The FBI serves it at the cited URL; a copy downloaded from it on 12 October 2026 is stored here.

The FBI image repository titles this entry “Al Capone Mug Shot 1939.” Its caption reads: “Alphonse Gabriel ‘Al’ Capone rose to infamy as a gangster in Chicago during the 1920s and early 1930s.” It illustrates the FBI history page Al Capone. The repository lists the file at 2,826 KB.

The year 1939 comes from the entry title alone. The FBI does not give a day or say which institution took the photograph. Federal records filed in this archive place Capone at Alcatraz until January 1939 and then at Terminal Island; the FBI history page says he was released on November 16, 1939. This page does not assign the photograph to any of those places.

The copy shown here was downloaded from the FBI image repository on 12 October 2026 and reduced from 2609 to 2000 pixels wide to keep it under 1.5 MB.

itemAl Capone mug shot, 1934 (front)Front identification photograph published by the FBI as Al Capone's 1934 mug shot. A copy is stored with this archive.itemAl Capone mug shot captioned 16 May 1929 (FBI)Police identification photograph of Al Capone in a fedora with a numbered placard, published by the FBI and captioned "Mug shot of Al Capone on May 16, 1929." The date conflicts with other federal captions.itemAlcatraz warden's notebook page for Alphonse Capone, No. 85Bureau of Prisons form with Capone's Alcatraz identification photograph, holding a card numbered 85. It records his receipt from Atlanta on Aug. 22, 1934, his tax sentence, parole denied in 1935, and his transfer to Terminal Island in January 1939.itemAl Capone (FBI history page)The FBI's history essay on Capone. It states that he was released on November 16, 1939, and that he lived on Palm Island until his death due to a stroke and pneumonia on January 25, 1947.itemFBI Vault file on Alphonse CaponeThe FBI Vault's release of the Bureau file on Alphonse Gabriel Capone, in 36 parts, with the Bureau's own summary of the investigation.