Director's memorandum to Mrs. Willebrandt opening the Capone contempt inquiry (21 March 1929)
The Bureau of Investigation's Director tells Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt that he has ordered a discreet, quick inquiry into whether Al Capone and Dr. Kenneth Phillips could be held in contempt over a Miami doctor's affidavit.
- Date
- 1929-03-21
- 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.
This one-page memorandum is scan 3 of the FBI Vault’s Al Capone file, Part 23. The Bureau’s cover sheet for the part reads “Alphonse Capone, Part 7, Bufile 69-180”, and this page carries the first serial of that file, 69-180-1, with a “Recorded” stamp of 22 March 1929 and a Bureau Files mailing stamp of 21 March 1929. It is dated March 21, 1929, headed “Memorandum for Mrs. Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney General”, and signed “Director”. The typed name of the signer is not legible on the scan.
The memorandum answers one Mrs. Willebrandt sent that morning “requesting an investigation in order to ascertain if Al Capone and Dr. Kenneth Phillips might be held in contempt of court in connection with an affidavit executed by Dr. Phillips, which indicated that Capone had been unable, physically, to answer a subpoena for his appearance before a Federal Grand Jury at Chicago, Illinois.” The Director writes that he has issued instructions by telephone for the inquiry “to be made in a very discreet manner at the earliest possible moment”, promises copies of the reports, and returns the letter of United States Attorney Johnson to the Attorney General with its enclosure, the affidavit.
The text above was read from the page image, which is stored here. The rest of Part 23 holds the Jacksonville and Miami reports and affidavits that followed. The research index for the part notes that many of its pages are dark or illegible.
