"The Man Who Tried to Kill Al Capone" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)

National Park Service article on Alcatraz inmate James "Tex" Lucas. It states that on June 23, 1936 Lucas attacked Capone in the shower room and that Capone suffered a minor chest wound and superficial cuts to his hands.

Date: 1936-06-23
Kind: agency-history
Source: National Park Service, Alcatraz Island (Golden Gate National Recreation Area)
Retrieved: 2026-10-11
Rights: Text published by the National Park Service on nps.gov. A United States government work, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The page's photograph of James Lucas is credited "National Archives & Records Administration Photo" and is not reproduced here.

This is a National Park Service history article, last updated August 30, 2019, about James “Tex” Lucas, an Alcatraz inmate. It is an agency essay, not the incident report. It states that on June 23, 1936 Lucas attacked Capone in the shower room with half of a pair of scissors, that Capone “suffered a minor chest wound and superficial cuts to his hands,” and that Lucas lost 3,600 days of good time. The rest of the article concerns Lucas’s later escape attempt and release.

The contemporaneous federal record of the assault is the FBI San Francisco report of 1 July 1936 in the Vault file (serial 62-39128-45). That report describes a stab in the back with a blade of barber shears and calls the wound superficial. The two accounts differ on where the wound was; each is cited as it stands.

itemFBI report on the 23 June 1936 assault on Capone at Alcatraz (serial 62-39128-45)A San Francisco FBI report states that inmate James C. Lucas stabbed Capone in the back with a blade of barber shears at Alcatraz on 23 June 1936, that the wound was superficial, and that the U.S. Attorney declined prosecution as a prison administrative matter.itemAlcatraz (Federal Bureau of Prisons history page)The Bureau of Prisons' history page on Alcatraz names Al Capone among the well-known criminals who did time there, and says most of its prisoners were not well-known gangsters.

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.itemNational Archives list of former Alcatraz inmates: Capone, register 85The National Archives at San Francisco lists Alphonse Capone, called Scarface on the list, among former inmates of the U.S. Penitentiary, Alcatraz, register number 85.

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.