Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [74]
Capone arrived in Chicago in 1921, bringing his entire family with him. Torrio and Capone progressively built a powerful crime syndicate that would monopolize the entire bootlegging trade in Chicago. The two men found themselves presiding over an immense empire of gangsters, which kept illegal liquor flowing in and around Chicago by paying off the local politicians and police. By 1927 it was estimated that the two men were averaging a massive $240 million in annual revenues from their gangland rackets.
By this period, Capone had now mastered the art of politics and although he was already a wealthy, powerful gangland figure, he also attempted to balance his activities. Despite his illegitimate occupation, he had become a highly visible public personality. He made daily trips to city hall, opened soup kitchens to feed the poor, and even lobbied for milk bottle dating to ensure the safety of the city’s children. City officials often were embarrassed by Capone’s political strength, so they began leveraging his illegal activities. Police raids and even intentional fires at his places of business were no match for Capone’s supremacy.
In the beginning, the public glamorized Capone’s activities and identified with him as a modern day Robin Hood. It wasn’t long, however, before public opinion started turning against him when it was believed that he had ordered the death of a famed local public prosecutor named Billy McSwiggin. The young prosecutor had earlier tried to pin the violent murder of a rival gang member on Capone. Although many argued against Al’s involvement in McSwiggin’s death, there was a great outcry over gangland violence at the time, and public sentiment went against Capone.
Capone quickly went into hiding, fearing he would be tried for McSwiggin’s murder. He remained out of sight for nearly three months, and then after realizing he couldn’t live the remainder of his life underground, he negotiated his own surrender to the Chicago Police. The authorities eventually recognized that they lacked sufficient evidence to bring Capone to trial, and though the decision proved very unpopular with the public, he was eventually set free. The community was outraged and law officials were left publicly embarrassed by the incident. “Big Al” had become one of the most powerful crime czars in Chicago. It was said that Capone was now larger than life, and more powerful than the Mayor himself.
By 1929 Capone’s personal empire was worth over $62 million and he was ready to wage war on his most prominent bootlegging rival, George “Bugs” Moran. Bugs was another of Chicago’s principal gangsters. He was known to talk openly against Capone and he maintained an attitude of spiteful arrogance that was said to anger Capone so much that Moran became one of Al’s regular topics of discussion. It was rumored that Capone gave orders to take Bugs down by assassinating his gang members from the bottom up, not stopping until they reached Bugs himself.
Capone was now living lavishly on Palm Island in Miami Beach, Florida, and he drafted one of his top associates Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn to mastermind the hit. McGurn had one of his bootleggers lure members of the Moran gang into a garage to buy liquor at an unreasonably cheap price. The deal was made and the delivery was scheduled to take place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1929. McGurn and his men awaited their victims in stolen police uniforms. When the rival mobsters arrived, McGurn’s gang pretended to be policemen making a bust and ordered