Al Capone Timeline

As originally reported in the Chicago Tribune, hijacker Joe Howard was killed on May 8, 1924, after he tried to interfere with the Capone-Torrio bootlegging business. A 1936 Tribune article erroneously reported the date as May 7, 1923.

In a fateful step that escalated Chicago's gang wars, Torrio arranged the murder of North Side gang leader Dean O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924.

An ambush in January 1925 left Capone shaken, but unhurt, as gang violence intensified in the wake of O'Banion's murder.

On September 20, 1926, the North Siders used a ploy outside Capone's headquarters at the Hawthorne Inn aimed at drawing him to the windows.

Aiello plotted to eliminate both Antonio Lombardo and Capone, and starting in the spring of 1927 made several attempts to assassinate Capone. During the summer and autumn of 1927, a number of hitmen Aiello hired were themselves slain.

The owner of Hawthorne's restaurant was a friend of Capone's, and he was kidnapped and killed by Moran and Drucci in January 1927.

More than 200 bullets were fired into the bakery on May 28, 1927, wounding Aiello's brother Antonio.

In November 1927, Aiello organized machine-gun ambushes across from Lombardo's home and a cigar store frequented by Capone, but the plans were foiled after an anonymous tip led police to raid several addresses and arrest Milwaukee gunman Angelo La Mantio and four other Aiello gunmen.

Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, despite being at his Florida home at the time. His men had rented an apartment across from the trucking warehouse at 2122 North Clark Street, Moran's headquarters, and on the morning of February 14, 1929, lookouts signaled four gunmen disguised as police officers to initiate a fake "police raid".

Image source: Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

In May 1929, one of Capone's bodyguards, Frank Rio, uncovered a plot by three of his men: Albert Anselmi, John Scalise and Joseph Giunta. Capone reportedly beat the men with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene depicted in the 1987 film The Untouchables.

On March 19, 1929, Cameron Strong, joined by Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission and Laird Bell, made their case to President Hoover, arguing that Chicago was in the hands of gangsters and only the federal government could restore the city's ability to govern itself. On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying before a grand jury investigating federal prohibition violations.

On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for carrying a concealed weapon. He was indicted by a grand jury on May 17 and tried before Judge John E Walsh. On August 8, 1929, he was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary.

A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as "Public Enemy #1" on the unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's widely publicized list.

In April 1930, Capone was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach; the governor had ordered sheriffs to run him out of the state.

On March 13, 1931, Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924 in a secret grand jury. On June 5, 1931, a federal grand jury indicted him on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929; he was released on $50,000 bail.

On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building, Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence plea bargain. On July 30, 1931, Judge Wilkerson refused to honor the plea bargain, and Capone's counsel rescinded the guilty pleas.

Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, and was sentenced a week later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and held liable for $215,000 plus interest due on back taxes.

Capone entered a federal penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33, and was later moved in August 1934 to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco.

On June 23, 1936, while imprisoned at Alcatraz, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow inmate James C. Lucas.

Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his contempt-of-court sentence. Due to his failing health, he was released and paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court based on his reduced mental capabilities.

At Alcatraz, Capone's decline became increasingly evident as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties; his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938.

After his release, Capone was referred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment of syphilitic paresis. Grateful for the compassionate care he received, he donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to Union Memorial Hospital in 1939. On March 20, 1940, a very sickly Capone left Baltimore and traveled to his mansion in Palm Island, Florida.

In 1942, after mass production of penicillin started in the United States, Capone became one of the first American patients treated with the new drug.

In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined Capone and concluded that he had the mentality of a 12-year-old child due to the effects of neurosyphilis.

On January 21, 1947, Capone suffered a stroke. He died of cardiac arrest after the stroke on January 25, 1947, at his Palm Island home in Florida.

In 1950, Capone's remains, along with those of his father Gabriele and brother Frank, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. Capone remains one of the most notorious American gangsters of the 20th century, the subject of numerous articles, books, and films.