# Chicago report on alleged privileges for Capone in the Cook County Jail (17 December 1931)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/fbi-vault-capone-p29-cook-county-jail-report-1931/

A Bureau of Investigation report on an anonymous charge that Capone was running his business from the Cook County Jail while held for the U.S. Marshal after his tax conviction; jail officials denied it and the U.S. Attorney judged further inquiry unwarranted.

Part 29 of the FBI Vault's Capone file, scans 9 to 22. The Bureau's cover sheet for the part (scan 1) reads "Alphonse Capone, Part 9", with Bufile numbers 69-180 and 62-20619. This is a Form No. 1 investigative report made at Chicago by W. A. McSwain, Special Agent in Charge, for the period December 14 to 17, 1931, titled for David T. Moneypenny, Superintendent, and George Gibson, Assistant Superintendent, Cook County Jail, "Contempt of Court". It is serial 69-180-95.

The report starts from an anonymous telegram of December 2, 1931 that Judge Wilkerson handed to the Bureau. The research index, which checked the Chicago telegram of December 3 in Part 28 against the page image, gives its substance: that Capone was using the county jail for his liquor business, that visitors came all day and evening, and that every privilege was extended to him and none to the other prisoners. The report records that Capone had been remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshal pending his appeal and held in the jail's hospital ward. It sets out allegations relayed by informants, then interviews with Moneypenny, Gibson, assistant superintendents, a guard and an inmate, who described visits through a wire mesh on passes and denied any special privileges. A jail clerk produced Capone's account, opened with a deposit of $500 on October 26, 1931, and its disbursements. Special Agent Hollis inspected the hospital ward and saw nothing beyond regulation prison equipment.

The report closes with United States Attorney Johnson's view that a grand jury inquiry would bring heavy newspaper publicity and was not warranted on the facts so far, and with his arrangement that no person would visit Capone without a pass from the U.S. Marshal. The OCR of these pages is noisy; this summary follows the research index for Part 29, which checked the report against the page images, and the readable OCR text. Allegations are reported as allegations.

## Sources

- FBI Records: The Vault: https://vault.fbi.gov/Al%20Capone/Al%20Capone%20Part%2029/view
- FBI Vault: Al Capone (file index): https://vault.fbi.gov/Al%20Capone