Alfonse Capone was one of the first American-born Italian gangsters. His parents came from Italy like so many other immigrants seeking the American Dream. His father was a barber who wanted to open his own shop. They settled in Brooklyn near the Navy Yard.

The family later moved to a more ethnically diverse neighborhood. He mingled with kids who were Irish, German, Jewish, and Asian. This exposed young Al to the American “melting pot” experience, making him less insular than his Old-World relatives. He fell in line with the way of thinking that Lucky Luciano would later use to forge a new Mafia.

Al left school at the age of 14 after hitting a teacher who had struck him. He was expelled and never looked back. There were bigger things on the horizon for young Al Capone. He would soon take his first adolescent steps into the underworld. And there was no better place to be brought into “that life” than Brooklyn.

Johnny Torrio

The Capone family moved to another neighborhood, and their new residence was a few blocks away from the headquarters of Mafioso Johnny Torrio, who was one of the first of the modern hoodlums. Capone began running errands for Torrio, who took a liking to the pugnacious street urchin and gave him more and more responsibilities. Capone watched the older men conduct business, and they served as role models to the impressionable boy.

Capone also became involved in the teenage street gangs of the day. They were usually divided along ethnic lines and were territorial about their “turf.” At various times in his misspent youth, Capone belonged to the South Brooklyn Rippers, Forty Thieves Juniors, and the Five Point Juniors.

Yale Grad

The next mentor Al Capone had in the life of crime was Frankie Yale (born Francesco Ioele). Yale owned a bar ironically called the Harvard Inn, and he hired the 18-year-old Capone as a bartender and bouncer. It is in this gin mill that he made the inappropriate remark that resulted in the scar on his face.

Capone learned about business finesse from his first mentor, Johnny Torrio; Yale schooled him in the more brutal arts of the Mafia. Capone became proficient at both in his notorious career. During this time Capone met and married (after their first child was born) an Irish-American girl named Mae Coughlin.

Shortly after his wedding, Capone flirted with respectability by taking a regular job, but this phase did not last long. His former boss, Johnny Torrio, called Brooklyn for his former protégé. Torrio had gone out to the Midwest and the emerging metropolis of Chicago. With its organized crime anything but organized, Torrio saw it as an opportunity to make something big. And he knew Al would fit right in.

Chi-Town

The Windy City was already known for vice and corruption when Capone got off the train in 1920. It was known as a slaughterhouse in more than one respect. Neighbors could hear the feral squeals from the meatpacking district, and the pitter-patter of Tommy guns punctuated the night.

The “Mr. Big” at the time was a man named “Big Jim” Colosimo. His wife was also Chicago's most celebrated madam, Victoria Moresco. At that time the fledgling crime gang had a large-scale prostitution empire. When Johnny Torrio arrived in Chicago, he became Colosimo's right-hand man. Together the two men opened a brothel, and Torrio had Al Capone work there when he arrived from New York.

Torrio was a stable gangster who did not indulge in the vices from which he profited. The same could not be said of Colosimo, who was spiraling out of control. He became wrapped around the little finger of a singer named Dale Winter. The call of the siren distracted him from more important matters, such as business. When Prohibition started Torrio suggested that Big Jim start making big money from booze. Jim was more into his women, so Torrio had him taken out of the picture.

Now that Johnny was top dog, Al rose to be his second in command. Capone started out managing the many brothels in Chicago, but he was not very comfortable in the role of pimp. When Prohibition roared into the 1920s, he got into the speakeasy end of the business.

Equal-Opportunity Mafioso

Capone, being American-born and exposed to many other ethnic groups growing up, was not as clannish as other Mafiosi. He married an Irish girl and met his new best friend in Chicago, an Orthodox Jewish family man named Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik. Capone put on the façade of a mild-mannered used-furniture dealer for his neighbors while he let it loose when engaged in his other life. Like many Mafiosi, he strived for respectability while making a living in illegal enterprises and using terror and murder as tools of his trade.

For many years Capone had a free ride in Chicago. The politicians and police were shamelessly corrupt. The people wanted their vices, and Capone was more than happy to provide them. Cries of outrage and calls for reform from the political machine were nothing more than lip service. It was a wide-open town where the mob ruled. Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson was considered to be one of the most corrupt men in a long line of corrupt politicians.

However, real reform was slowly making inroads into the Windy City. A man named William E. Dever succeeded Thompson as mayor, and he promised to crack down on the vice and corruption on his town. The Mafia took it in stride. A reformer at the top was a minor inconvenience when the rest of the team was more than eager to play ball.

Al's Private Fiefdom

When the heat in Chicago proper got too hot, Al left for the nearby suburb of Cicero. Located just outside the city, Cicero was a perfect place to open a new headquarters. They simply bought the town with the smoking barrels of their machine guns, using bribery as needed.

In short order Capone controlled all the prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging in the town. He even took over the racetrack. Capone's brother Frank acted as liaison with the corrupt local government.

Freedom of the Press

A maverick journalist named Robert St. John openly opposed the Capone invasion in his newspaper. It looked like Capone's handpicked politicos might lose the election of 1924. Capone used muscle to try to sway the voting public. His goons loomed around polling places making it clear which candidate would be the “healthiest” choice.

The cops were called in response, and Frank Capone was gunned down. He allegedly pulled his revolver when he found himself surrounded. (A dumb move, if indeed it's true.) It was deemed that the police acted in self-defense when they killed him. At the end of the day, Al Capone owned Cicero, but at a terrible price, a brother's blood.

Capone vented his frustration by shooting a small-time hood who dared to call the little big man an ethnic slur. He was brought to trial for the first time in his life, but he beat the murder rap. Witnesses were hard to come by, as was always the case with Mafia trials. The highly public trial made him something most mobsters did not want to be — famous.