Every
intimate detail in the criminal life of Alphonso Caponi is common knowledge in
most households. The name conjures up images of early 1900s Chicago,
Prohibition, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre; or Eliot Ness, tax evasion,
and the Untouchables. Some legends are fact, others fiction. Either way, Al
Capone had people killed.
While
there is no excuse for murdering a dinner guest with a baseball bat, an
examination of Capone’s formative years is revealing. Not much is publicized
about young Alphonse, how he quit attending a Brooklyn school and joined up
with one of the gangs of New York.
The
gangs Martin Scorsese portrayed in his movie of the same name were the
forerunners and mentors to the ones Alphonse and his brothers joined. Likely,
Capone was a descendant member of the original and ruthless Five Points gang,
the gang that won elections with the sharp end of a hatchet.
Alphonse
Capone, also known as Scarface, wasn’t a unique mob boss. He was a lemming who
followed in the footsteps of earlier generations, ‘survival of the fittest’
gangs with names like Dead Rabbits, Bowery Boys, and Plug Uglies.
Would
you agree that inhumanity, not Eliot Ness, ended the reign of Al Capone?
