Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Case file

1933-01-06

FBI Records: The Vault

FBI Vault, Al Capone, Part 31: memorandum of January 6, 1933 on the Philadelphia arrest and commitment dates

Bureau memorandum of January 6, 1933, written while compiling an "Interesting Case" write-up on Capone, noting that the Identification Division recorded him received at the Philadelphia County Prison, Holmesburg, in May 1929 and that the Philadelphia office checked conflicting dates.

Date
1933-01-06
Kind
case-file
Source
FBI Records: The Vault
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under the Freedom of Information Act. A federal work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Redactions are as released by the FBI. Newspaper clippings filed inside FBI files are third-party material and are not covered by this basis.

A memorandum to the Director dated January 6, 1933, at about scan 2 of Part 31 of the FBI’s Capone file. Its writer was compiling an “Interesting Case” write-up on Capone. He noted that the record “contained in the Identification Division of the Bureau showed” Capone received at the “Philadelphia County Prison, Holmesburg, Pennsylvania,” in May 1929, for carrying concealed deadly weapons, sentenced to one year, and separately an arrest by the Philadelphia Police Department in May 1929 on charges of suspicious character and carrying concealed deadly weapons.

Because the two dates could not both be right, the Bureau’s Philadelphia office checked records at Holmesburg and in Philadelphia and reported the dates to use. The day numbers are unreadable in the OCR, so this archive takes no exact date from the memo; the newspapers of May 17 and 18, 1929 give the arrest, plea and sentence.

The Associated Press said Capone first entered Moyamensing Prison and would be moved to Holmesburg (Washington Daily News, May 18, 1929). The memo names Holmesburg. Read from the viewer’s OCR only.

clippingEvening Star, 17 May 1929, page 4: Capone and Cline sentenced, continued from page 1Continuation of the Associated Press report of 17 May 1929 on Al Capone's arrest in Philadelphia, his indictment less than 12 hours later, and his guilty plea before Judge John E. Walsh.clippingThe Washington Daily News, 18 May 1929, page 9: Capone in MoyamensingAssociated Press report from Philadelphia the day after Al Capone's sentence, with the mayor's statement, Capone's account of an Atlantic City meeting, and word that he would be moved from Moyamensing to Holmesburg.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.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.