The
Final Chapter
Initially, Al was a prisoner at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta
and quickly became its most famous prisoner. There were
charges almost immediately that he was living "like a
king." While that was certainly an exaggeration, he
clearly lived better than the rest of the prisoners. He had
more socks, underwear, sets of sheets, etc. than anyone else.
He maintained these extravagances by virtue of a hollow handle in
his tennis racket in which he secreted several thousand dollars in
cash.
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
In 1934, Attorney General Homer Cummings took over the prison on
Alcatraz Island to warehouse dangerous, intractable criminals.
In a radio address, Cummings explained that "here may be
isolated the criminals of the vicious and irredeemable type so that
their evil influence may not be extended to other prisoners."
In August of 1934, Capone was sent to Alcatraz. His days of
living like a king in prison were gone. "Capone would run
nothing on or from Alcatraz; he wouldn't even know what was
happening outside. There would be no smuggled letters or
messages.
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Mae Capone hiding from reporters at
Alcatraz (UPI) |
All incoming letters were censored, then retyped by guards with
prohibited subjects omitted, which included the faintest whiff
of business or the doings of former associates. Censors
excised even mention of current events. No newspapers were
allowed; magazines had to be more than seven months old. The
only source of news was new arrivals. At best, prisoners could
write one letter a week, rigorously censored, and only to their
immediate family members. Only immediate family could visit,
only two of them each month, and they had to write the warden for
permission each time. Visitors and prisoners made no physical
contact. They sat on opposite side of plate glass... No one
could smuggle money into Capone, and he could not have spent it
anyway." (Schoenberg).
How did Capone manage with the loss of popularity and
status? He seemed to do reasonably well and got along better
than most from the standpoint of adjustment. The same
was not true of his health. The syphilis that he had
contracted as a very young man was moving into the tertiary stage
called neurosyphilis. By 1938, he was confused and
disoriented.
Al spent the last year of his sentence, which had been reduced to
six years and five months for a combination of good behavior and
work credits, in the hospital section being treated for
syphilis. He was released in November of 1939. Mae took
him to a hospital in Baltimore where he was treated until March of
1940.
Sonny Capone seemed to be a remarkably friendly and
well-adjusted young man, despite his very unusual background.
In 1940, he married an Irish girl and settled in Miami.
Sonny and Diana provided Al and Mae with four granddaughters, which
were treated with lavish attention.
For his remaining years, Al slowly deteriorated in the quiet
splendor of his Palm Island palace. Mae stuck by him until
January 25, 1947 when he died of cardiac arrest, his grieving family
surrounding him. A week before, Andrew Volstead, author of the
Volstead Act that ushered in the era of Prohibition from 1920 to
1933, died at the age of 87.
"In his forty-eight years, Capone had left his mark on the
rackets and on Chicago, and more than anyone else he had
demonstrated the folly of Prohibition; in the process he also made a
fortune. Beyond that, he captured and held the imagination of
the American public as few public figures ever do. Capone's
fame should have been fleeting, a passing sensation, but instead it
lodged permanently in the consciousness of Americans, for whom he
redefined the concept of crime into an organized endeavor modeled on
corporate enterprise. As he was at pains to point out, many of
his crimes were relative; bootlegging was criminal only because a
certain set of laws decreed it, and then the laws were changed"
(Bergreen).
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Mount Carmel Cemetery
(Mark Levell) |
