Letter of 17 January 1939 from N. J. L. Pieper, Special Agent in Charge at San Francisco, on reports that Capone was paralyzed, from the FBI Vault, Part 18 — Open the full imageGIF, 1000 × 1269 px, 0.1 MB

San Francisco letter: reports that Capone is paralyzed are false; transfer to Terminal Island (17 January 1939)

The FBI's San Francisco office reports from a confidential source that newspaper stories of Capone being paralyzed were false, and that on his transfer from Alcatraz to Terminal Island he was in very good spirits.

Date: 1939-01-17
Kind: case-file
Source: FBI Records: The Vault
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: A record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under FOIA. A work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Newspaper text reproduced inside the file is described, not reproduced.

Part 18 of the FBI Vault’s Capone file, scans 32 and 33. A one-page letter on Federal Bureau of Investigation letterhead, San Francisco, California, dated January 17, 1939, from N. J. L. Pieper, Special Agent in Charge, to the Director, captioned “Re: Al Capone.” It is stamped 62-39128-88 and recorded on 23 January 1939.

The letter reads: “Please be advised that we have ascertained through a confidential source that the newspaper reports to the effect that AL CAPONE is paralyzed are false. We have determined that on his transfer from Alcatraz to Terminal Island he was in very good spirits and was in a very receptive, talkative mood. He showed no evidences of being paralyzed.” Pieper forwards two copies of “the latest photograph of CAPONE” with his description, and two newspaper items. The photograph and description are not among the legible pages of this part.

Scan 33 is one of the enclosed items, a San Francisco News clipping of January 9, 1939 (United Press, San Pedro) headed “Capone Partly Paralyzed Now”. The research index summarizes it; it is described here, not reproduced. The letter does not give the date of the transfer. Its own date shows that Capone had left Alcatraz for Terminal Island by 17 January 1939. The text above was read from the page image stored here.

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itemDirector's memorandum on Capone's transfer to Alcatraz (21 August 1934)Hoover records calls with a Justice Department official and Inspector Clegg in San Francisco after the Attorney General was quoted as saying Capone was not being sent to Alcatraz; the memorandum states that Capone was on the prison train due the next morning.itemPress clippings on the August 1934 transfer from Atlanta to Alcatraz, filed in the FBI Capone filePart 06 of the Vault file is a run of wire-service and newspaper clippings, mostly of 20–24 August 1934, on the guarded rail transfer of Capone and other Atlanta prisoners to Alcatraz. They are listed here as a pointer and are not reproduced.

itemLetter to Hoover on a rumored Capone escape from Alcatraz, and Hoover's reply (September–October 1935)A Knoxville correspondent, prompted by a 'Dick Tracy' newspaper cartoon, wrote that some people in his town thought Capone might be staging a prison break from Alcatraz; Hoover thanked him for his interest.

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