Brooklyn, NY

One of the most notorious criminals in American history is surely Alphonse Gabriel Capone, or more simply Al Capone. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17th 1899 although his parents were originally from Naples in Italy. He came from a large family, having six brothers and two sisters.

Capone's life of crime started at an early age after he was expelled from school for seriously attacking one of his teachers. He was only 14. So instead of studying, he joined one or two small gangs before he joined one of the largest and most notorious in all of New York - the Five Points Gang. It was while in this gang that he had a knife fight with another gangster and his cheek was cut very deeply. This is how he got his most famous nickname, Scarface.

When he was 19 he became a father and soon after he married the young Irish woman who was the child's mother. The baby boy was called Albert, but his nickname was Sonny. The next year Capone was sent to work in Chicago because the New York Police were looking for him in connection with two murders.

In Chicago he helped to organise bootlegging. This means that he distributed alcohol in the city even though alcohol was banned at the time. This was the Prohibition era and the bootlegging was a very good business for the gangsters. By the time Scarface was 26 he was controlling the biggest gang in Chicago. He had thousands of people working for him, and even had policemen and politicians on his 'payroll'. He was even more powerful then the Mayor of Chicago. He was very popular with the local people and he helped many people who were in financial difficulty. They considered him as a kind of hero.

One of the most famous events in Chicago's history was the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Scarface wanted to eliminate a rival gang boss, Bugs Moran, so he sent his men disguised as police officers to their warehouse and killed seven of the gang. Bugs Moran was late for this particular meeting so he survived. However, this event helped to change the public's opinion of Capone and he started to become less popular.

The police never officially found out who was responsible for these killings and so Scarface was not arrested. However, by this time he was officially Public Enemy Number One - another of his nicknames. The police still wanted to arrest him but could not link him to any of the crime in the city. Instead, the city called in a group of loyal and honest men from the Treasury department to investigate Capone's finances. They were called The Untouchables and their leader was Elliot Ness. After a lot of investigating Capone was finally arrested for not paying his taxes and sentenced to eleven years in prison. Most of this time was spent in the famous prison, Alcatraz. He had a difficult time in prison and outside his business empire collapsed. This caused his mental health to suffer and he eventually went mad.

He tried to rebuild his business when he was released from Alcatraz but he failed, so he moved to Miami and retired. He died on 24th January 1947 from a stroke and was buried in Chicago between the graves of his father and brother.