Al Capone's Unofficial Biography and Pertinent Chicago Outfit History.

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FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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One of the most notorious American gangsters, Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (1899-1947), ran the Chicago Outfit, a Chicago-based crime syndicate, in the Prohibition era (1920-1933), smuggling and bootlegging alcohol, amongst other illegal activities such as prostitution and gambling.

Alphonse Gabriel “Al” Capone

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1899, Capone became involved in gang activity from a young age. Capone showed promise as a student but struggled with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school. His schooling ended at 14 after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face. 

Capone became involved with small-time gangs, including the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He joined the Brooklyn Rippers and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. 

Members of the [Well-Dressed] Five Points Gang from the 1800s Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Circa 1910.

Five Points Gang (the 1890s-1920s) of New York City, mainly active in Lower Manhattan, Harlem, and Brooklyn. Some of the Five Points Gang members later became prominent criminals in their own right, including Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano.

Five Points (or The Five Points) was a 19th-century neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

Capone worked odd jobs around Brooklyn, including in a candy store and a bowling alley.

When the Capones lived on Navy street, Al was baptized at the original St. Michael's Archangel Church that burned down in 1914. It was quickly rebuilt and opened in 1915 at a new location a few blocks away. Al Capone was a First baseman and fireballing pitcher from 1916 to 1918 alongside his older brother Ralph who also played for St. Michael's Church. Al, who was five years younger, would go "anywhere that Ralph would go," and the two played for St. Michael's Church in 1916. One game that year attracted 3,000 fans. The brothers formed the Al Capone Stars in 1918 at St. Michael's Church when the roster started turning over. Initially, the team wasn't very good; they lost most of their games. But they found their stride once Al moved from first base to the mound. Al was then a muscular 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds. It worked better with Al pitching and Ralph playing first or third and switching with their cousin Charlie Fischetti. Fischetti had an arm like a rifle but later earned the nickname "Trigger Happy" while serving as his cousin's bodyguard. "The game's feature was the twirling of Al Capone, who whiffed 15 of the opposing batsmen. Al got three hits, including a double," gushed a June 6, 1918 story in the Brooklyn Citizen about the team's 13-6 victory over Lockport. 

Al Capone in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.

In 1917, Capone was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in the Harvard Inn, a Coney Island Saloon and Dance Hall. Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door, and he was slashed with a knife three times on the left side of his face by her brother Frank Galluccio. After achieving prominence as a gangster, Capone was dubbed Scarface by the press, a nickname he despised. Capone would attempt to shield the scarred side of his face in photographs.

Mary "Mae" Josephine Coughlin, an Irish Catholic girl, married Alphonse Capone on December 30, 1918, at the St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Brooklyn, New York. They either met at a party in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, or their marriage was arranged by Al's mother, Teresina "Raiola" Capone, a seamstress who knew Mae from church. Mae was two years older than her husband. On their marriage certificate, Al increased his age by one year, and Mae decreased her age by two, making them both appear 20 years old. Earlier in December had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone (1918-2004). Albert lost most of his hearing in his left ear as a child. By all accounts, the two had a happy, loving marriage, despite his criminal lifestyle.

Al was called "Snorky," but only by his closest friends, a term he liked, meaning a sharp dresser. Among other nicknames given to Capone were Big Boy, the Beast, the Behemoth, Big Al, the Big Fellow, the Big Guy, Al Brown, and Tony Scarface, most being said behind Capone's back.

When Capone was 20 years old in 1919, he left New York City for Chicago at the invitation of Johnny Torrio and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum (jack-of-all-trades) for Torrio, the head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana (today; the Italian-American National Union). Torrio was imported by crime boss Vincenzo Colosimo, aka James "Big Jim" Colosimo (and Diamond Jim), as an enforcer. 

Colosimo's Cafe, 2126 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

James "Big Jim" Colosimo (Chicago's first crime boss) was a longtime gang leader who ran a popular restaurant, Colosimo's Cafe, a hot spot for vice in Chicago. 

An interior view of Colosimo's Cafe.

Colosimo was gunned down in his restaurant on May 11, 1920. One theory is that his second-in-command, Johnny Torrio, set up the killing. Torrio took over Big Jim's empire until he handed the reins to Al Capone.

Capone began as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis. 

Salvarsan, a treatment for syphilis. Timely use of Salvarsan probably could have
cured the infection, but Capone never sought treatment.

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There were seven (7) ways to legally possess and drink alcohol during the 5,072 days of Prohibition (January 17, 1920 – December 5, 1933).

In 1923, he purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the city's south side for $5,500. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, hijacker Joe Howard was killed on May 7, 1923, after he tried to interfere with the Capone-Torrio bootleg beer business. In the early decade, his name began appearing on newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's crime empire after Colosimo was murdered, in which Capone was suspected of being involved.

Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. The smaller North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion came under pressure from the Genna brothers, who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes. In a fateful step, Torrio arranged the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.

During Prohibition, Capone was involved with bootleggers in Canada, who helped him smuggle liquor into the US. When Capone was asked if he knew Rocco Perri, billed as Canada's "King of the Bootleggers," he replied: "Why I don't even know which street Canada is on." Other sources, however, claim that Capone had visited Canada, where he maintained some hideaways. Still, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says there is no "evidence that he ever set foot on Canadian soil."

In January 1925, Capone was ambushed, leaving him shaken but unhurt. Twelve days later, Torrio returned from a shopping trip when he was shot several times. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control to Capone, age 26, who became the new boss of an organization that took in illegal breweries and a transportation network that reached Canada with political and law-enforcement protection. In turn, he was able to use more violence to increase revenue. An establishment that refused to purchase liquor from him often got blown up. As many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during the 1920s. Rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city.

Capone often enlisted the help of local members of the black community in his operations; jazz musicians Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton had uncles who worked for Capone on the South Side of Chicago. Capone, a jazz fan, once asked clarinetist Johnny Dodds to play a number that Dodds did not know; Capone tore a $100 bill in half, handed Dodds a half, and told Dodds that he would get the other half when he learned it. On Earl Hines group's road tour, Capone sent two bodyguards to accompany the jazz pianist.

Capone indulged in custom-made suits, expensive cigars, gourmet food and drink, and female companionship. He was mainly known for his flashy and costly jewelry. His favorite responses to questions about his activities were: "I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want"; and "All I do is satisfy a public demand." Capone had become a national celebrity and talking point.

Capone apparently reveled in all the attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at baseball games. 

Al Capone with his son, Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone.

He donated to various charities and was viewed by many as a "modern-day Robin Hood." However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged the public image of Chicago and Capone, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone "Public Enemy № 1."

He based himself in Cicero, Illinois, after using bribery and widespread intimidation to take over town council elections (such as the 1924 Cicero municipal elections), making it difficult for the North Siders to target him. His driver was found tortured and murdered, and there was an attempt on Weiss's life in the Chicago Loop. On September 20, 1926, the North Side Gang used a ploy outside the Capone headquarters at the Hawthorne Inn to draw him to the windows. Gunmen in several cars then opened fire with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns at the windows of the first-floor restaurant. Capone was unhurt and called for a truce, but the negotiations failed. Three weeks later, on October 11, Weiss was killed outside the former O'Banion flower shop North Side headquarters. 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. Reports of Capone's intimidation became well known to the point where it was alleged that some companies, such as the makers of Vine-Glo [1], would use supposed Capone threats as a marketing tactic.

Capone became increasingly security-minded and desirous of getting away from Chicago. As a precaution, he and his entourage would often show up suddenly at one of Chicago's train depots and buy up an entire Pullman sleeper car on a night train to Cleveland, Omaha, Kansas City, Little Rock, or Hot Springs, where they would spend a week in luxury hotel suites under assumed names. In 1928, Capone paid $40,000 to Clarence Busch of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family for a 10,000-square-foot house on Palm Island, Florida, in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach.

In November 1925, Antonio Lombardo was named head of the Unione Siciliana, a benevolent Sicilian-American society corrupted by gangsters. An infuriated Joe Aiello, who had wanted the position himself, believed Capone was responsible for Lombardo's ascension, and he resented the non-Sicilian's attempts to manipulate affairs within the Unione. Aiello severed all personal and business ties with Lombardo and entered a feud with him and Capone. Aiello allied himself with several other Capone enemies, including Jack Zuta, who ran vice and gambling houses together. 

Aiello plotted to eliminate Lombardo and Capone and, starting in the spring of 1927, made several attempts to assassinate Capone. On one occasion, Aiello offered money to the chef of Joseph "Diamond Joe" Esposito's Bella Napoli Café, Capone's favorite restaurant, to put prussic acid in Capone's and Lombardo's soup; reports indicated he offered between $10,000 and $35,000. Instead, the chef exposed the plot to Capone, who responded by dispatching men to destroy one of Aiello's stores on West Division Street with machine-gun fire. Over 200 bullets were fired into the Aiello Brothers Bakery on May 28, 1927, wounding Joe's brother Antonio. During the summer and autumn of 1927, several hitmen Aiello hired to kill Capone were slain. Anthony Russo and Vincent Spicuzza were among them. Each was offered $25,000 by Aiello to kill Capone and Lombardo. Aiello eventually offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who eliminated Capone. At least 10 gunmen tried to collect on Aiello's bounty but ended up dead. Capone's ally Ralph Sheldon attempted to kill Capone and Lombardo for Aiello's reward. Still, Capone's henchman Frank Nitti's intelligence network learned of the transaction and had Sheldon shot in front of a West Side hotel, although he did not die.

In November 1927, Aiello organized machine-gun ambushes across from Lombardo's home and a cigar store frequented by Capone. Those 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. After the police discovered receipts for the apartments in La Mantio's pockets, he confessed that Aiello had hired him to kill Capone and Lombardo, leading the police to arrest Aiello himself and bring him to the South Clark Street police station. Upon learning of the arrest, Capone dispatched nearly two dozen gunmen to stand guard outside the station and await Aiello's release. The men made no attempt to conceal their purpose there, and reporters and photographers rushed to the scene to observe Aiello's expected murder.

Capone was primarily known for ordering other men to do his dirty work. In May 1929, one of Capone's bodyguards, Frank Rio, uncovered a plot by three men, Albert Anselmi, John Scalise, and Joseph Giunta, who had been persuaded by Aiello to depose Capone and take over the Chicago Outfit. Capone later beat the men with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene that was included in the 1987 film The Untouchables. Deirdre Bair and writers and historians such as William Elliot Hazelgrove have questioned the claim's veracity. Bair asked why "three trained killers could sit quietly and let this happen," while Hazelgrove stated that Capone would have been "hard-pressed to beat three men to death with a baseball bat" and would have let an enforcer perform the murders. However, despite claims that the story was first reported by author Walter Noble Burns in his 1931 book "The One-way Ride: The red trail of Chicago gangland from prohibition to Jake Lingle," Capone biographers Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz have found versions of the story in press coverage shortly after the crime. Collins and Schwartz suggest that similarities among reported versions of the story indicate a basis in truth and that The Outfit deliberately spread the tale to enhance Capone's fearsome reputation. George Meyer, an associate of Capone's, also claimed to have witnessed both the planning of the murders and the event itself.

Al Capone was declared the public enemy number one by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1930.

In 1930, upon learning of Aiello's continued plotting against him, Capone resolved to finally eliminate him. In the weeks before Aiello's death, Capone's men tracked him to Rochester, New York, where he had connections through Buffalo crime family boss Stefano Magaddino and plotted to kill him there. Still, Aiello returned to Chicago before the plot could be executed. Angst-ridden from the constant need to hide out and the killings of several of his men, Aiello set up residence in the Chicago apartment of Unione Siciliana treasurer Pasquale "Patsy Presto" Prestogiacomo at 205 North Kolmar Avenue. On October 23, upon exiting Prestogiacomo's building to enter a taxicab, a gunman in a second-floor window across the street started firing at Aiello with a submachine gun] Aiello was said to have been shot at least 13 times before he toppled off the building steps and moved around the corner, attempting to move out of the line of fire. Instead, he moved directly into the range of a second submachine gun positioned on the third floor of another apartment block and was subsequently gunned down.

In the wake of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, Walter A. Strong, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, asked his friend President Herbert Hoover for federal intervention to stem Chicago's lawlessness. He arranged a secret meeting at the White House two weeks after Hoover's inauguration. On March 19, 1929, Strong, joined by Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission and Laird Bell, made their case to the President. In Hoover's 1952 Memoir, the former President reported that Strong argued "Chicago was in the hands of the gangsters, that the police and magistrates were completely under their control, …that the Federal government was the only force by which the city's ability to govern itself could be restored. At once, I directed that all the Federal agencies concentrate upon Mr. Capone and his allies."

That meeting launched a multi-agency attack on Capone. Treasury and Justice Departments developed plans for income tax prosecutions against Chicago gangsters. A small, elite squad of Prohibition Bureau agents (whose members included Eliot Ness) was deployed against bootleggers. In a city used to corruption, these lawmen were incorruptible. Charles Schwarz, a writer for the Chicago Daily News, dubbed them Untouchables. Strong secretly used his newspaper's resources to gather and share intelligence on the Capone to support Federal efforts.

On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance. On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for carrying a concealed weapon. 

On May 17, 1929, Capone was indicted by a grand jury, and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh. Following entering a guilty plea by his attorney, Capone was sentenced to a prison term of one year. On August 8, 1929, Capone was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as the number one "Public Enemy" 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. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements but was acquitted after a three-day trial in July. In September, a Chicago judge issued a warrant for Capone's arrest on charges of vagrancy and then used the publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. In February 1931, Capone was tried on a contempt of court charge. In court, Judge James Herbert Wilkerson intervened to reinforce the prosecutor's questioning of Capone's doctor. Wilkerson sentenced Capone to six months but remained free while on appeal of the contempt conviction.

In February 1930, Capone's organization was linked to the murder of Julius Rosenheim, who served as a police informant in the Chicago Outfit for 20 years.

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Capone had been trying to diversify his investments in legitimate businesses for some time, even while consolidating his brewing, distilling, and distribution concerns. It was reported in the early 1930s that one of Al Capone's Chicago family members became sick from drinking milk that wasn't fresh... but had not soured yet. He bought Meadowmoor Dairies, a dairy processing and bottling business. Al Capone and his older brother Ralph, who ran Meadowmoor, are responsible for milk expiration dating in Chicago in 1933. 

Al Capone as Santa Claus

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In 1930, Al Capone played Santa Claus for the neighborhood during the depression, saving Christmas for the young and old alike.

Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt recognized that mob figures publicly led lavish lifestyles yet never filed tax returns. Thus, they could be convicted of tax evasion without requiring hard evidence to get testimony about their other crimes. She tested this approach by prosecuting a South Carolina bootlegger, Manley Sullivan. In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sullivan that the approach was legally sound: illegally earned income was subject to income tax; Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. rejected the argument that the Fifth Amendment protected criminals from reporting illegal income.

The IRS special investigation unit chose Frank J. Wilson to investigate Capone, with a focus on his spending. The key to Capone's conviction on tax charges was proving his income, and the most valuable evidence in that regard originated in his offer to pay tax. Ralph, his brother and a gangster in his own right, was tried for tax evasion in 1930. After being convicted in a two-week trial over which Wilkerson presided, Ralph spent three years in prison.

Capone ordered his lawyer to regularize his tax position. Crucially, during the ultimately abortive negotiations that followed, his lawyer stated the income that Capone was willing to pay tax on for various years, admitting income of $100,000 for 1928 and 1929, for instance. 

Hence, without any investigation, the government had been given a letter from a lawyer acting for Capone, conceding his significant taxable income for specific years. 

Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen opened by Capone in Chicago during the Depression, February 1931.

When Al Capone's soup kitchen opened at 935 South State Street, in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood, in mid-November 1930, hundreds of thousands were out of work. By the following year, 624,000 people, or 50% of the Chicago workforce, were out of a job.

Capone's charity had no name, just a sign over the door that advertised "Free Soup, Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed." Inside, women in white aprons served an average of 2200 people daily with a smile and no questions asked. Breakfast was hot coffee and sweet rolls, and lunch and dinner consisted of soup and bread. Every 24 hours, diners devoured 350 loaves of bread and 100 dozen rolls. They washed down their meals with 30 pounds of coffee sweetened with 50 pounds of sugar. The whole operation costs $300 per day.

On March 13, 1931, Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924 by a secret grand jury. On June 5, 1931, Capone was indicted by a federal grand jury on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929; he was released on $50,000 bail. A week later, Eliot Ness and his team of Untouchables inflicted significant financial damage on Capone's operations, leading to his indictment on 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act (Prohibition laws).

On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building in the courtroom of Wilkerson, Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a 2½-year prison sentence plea bargain. However, on July 30, 1931, Wilkerson refused to honor the plea bargain, and Capone's counsel rescinded the guilty pleas. On the second day of the trial, Wilkerson overruled objections that a lawyer could not confess for his client, saying that anyone making a statement to the government did so at his own risk. Wilkerson deemed that the 1930 letter to federal authorities could be admitted into evidence from a lawyer acting for Capone. Wilkerson later tried Capone only on the income tax evasion charges as he determined they took precedence over the Volstead Act charges.

Much was later made of other evidence, such as witnesses and ledgers, but these strongly implied Capone's control rather than stating it. Capone's lawyers, who had relied on the plea bargain Wilkerson refused to honor and therefore had mere hours to prepare for the trial, ran a weak defense focused on claiming that essentially all his income was lost to gambling. This would have been irrelevant regardless since gambling losses can only be subtracted from gambling winnings. However, it was further undercut by Capone's expenses, which were well beyond what his claimed income could support; Wilkerson allowed Capone's spending to be presented at great length. During the five years, the government charged Capone with evasion of $215,000 in taxes on a total income of $1,038,654. Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, sentenced to 11 years in federal prison a week later, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and held liable for $215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes. The contempt of court sentence was served concurrently. New lawyers hired to represent Capone were Washington-based tax experts. They filed a writ of habeas corpus based on a Supreme Court ruling that tax evasion was not fraud, which apparently meant that Capone had been convicted on charges relating to years outside the time limit for prosecution. However, a judge interpreted the law so that the time that Capone had spent in Miami was subtracted from the age of the offenses, thereby denying the appeal of both Capone's conviction and sentence.

Capone's FBI criminal record in 1932 shows most of his criminal charges were discharged/dismissed.

Capone was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his arrival in Atlanta, Capone was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhea. He was also suffering from withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum. Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. He was seen as a weak personality, so out of his depth dealing with fellow bullying inmates, his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, feared that Capone would have a breakdown. Rudensky was formerly a small-time criminal associated with the Capone gang and found himself becoming a protector for Capone. The conspicuous protection of Rudensky and other prisoners drew accusations from less friendly inmates and fueled suspicion that Capone was receiving special treatment. No solid evidence ever emerged, but it formed part of the rationale for moving Capone to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco in August 1934. On June 23, 1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow-Alcatraz inmate James C. Lucas.

Here is what Al Capone's prison cell at Alcatraz looked like.

Due to his good behavior, Capone was permitted to play banjo in the Alcatraz prison band, the Rock Islanders, which gave regular Sunday concerts for other inmates. Capone also transcribed the song "Madonna Mia," creating his own arrangement as a tribute to his wife, Mae.

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. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in the hospital section, confused and disoriented. 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 sentence for contempt of court. Based on his reduced mental capabilities, he was paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court.

The main effect of Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately after his imprisonment. Still, those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as considerably undermining the city's organized crime syndicate. Capone's underboss, Frank Nitti, took over as boss of the Outfit after being released from prison in March 1932, having also been convicted of tax evasion charges. Far from being smashed, the Outfit continued without being troubled by the Chicago police, but at a lower level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule. Organized crime in the city had a lower profile once Prohibition was repealed, already wary of attention after seeing Capone's notoriety bring him down, to the extent that there was a lack of consensus among writers about who was actually in control and who was a figurehead "front boss." Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in the city without incurring a serious investigation. In the late 1950s, FBI agents discovered an organization led by Capone's former lieutenants reigning supreme over the Chicago underworld.

Some historians have speculated that Capone ordered the 1939 murder of Edward J. O'Hare a week before his release to help federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion. However, there are other theories for O'Hare's death.

Due to his failing health, Capone was released from prison on November 16, 1939, and referred to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to treat paresis (caused by late-stage syphilis). Hopkins refused to admit him on his reputation alone, but Union Memorial Hospital accepted him. Capone was grateful for the compassionate care he received and donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to Union Memorial Hospital in 1939. After a few weeks of inpatient and outpatient care, a sickly Capone left Baltimore on March 20, 1940, for Palm Island, Florida. In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Capone was one of the first American patients treated with the new drug. Though it was too late for him to reverse the damage to his brain, it slowed the disease's progression.

In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. He spent the last years of his life at his Palm Island, Florida mansion, spending time with his wife and grandchildren. 

On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve but contracted bronchopneumonia. He suffered Cardiac arrest on January 22, and on January 25, surrounded by his family in his home, Capone died after his heart failed due to apoplexy. His body was transported back to Chicago a week later, and a private funeral was held. He was initially buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago. In 1950, Capone's remains and those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Salvatore, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Vine-Glo was a grape concentrate brick product (aka wine bricks) sold in the United States during Prohibition by Fruit Industries Ltd in 1929. It was sold as a grape concentrate to make grape juice from but included a specific warning that told people how 'not' to make wine from it. Watch the video below.

Wine Bricks & Prohibition

Deadly Encounter Between Two Chicago Bridge Tenders. One of the Combatants Badly Wounded. 1867

A desperate struggle, resulting almost in murder, occurred at one o'clock in the morning of November 2, 1867, between two assistant bridge-tenders at the State street crossing. That murder was not committed, was in no way the fault of the combatants, for there was neither a lack of intent nor were the weapons employed impotent to produce such a result.

The first State Street Bridge was completed in 1864. The bridge was 184 feet in length and cost $32,000. It was built of wooden braces and chords. State Street Bridge #1, Looking North from Lake Street in 1868.

Chicago's first horse-drawn streetcar began running along a single railroad track laid in the middle of State Street between Madison and Twelfth Streets on April 25, 1859. (Twelfth '12th' Street was renamed Roosevelt Road on May 25, 1919.) By 1866, the State Street horse car service was extended to South Water Street on the north to 39th street on the south. 

DATING THIS PHOTOGRAPH: John Van Buskirk and David Henry began their partnership in the "wholesale wine and liquors" business at 20 State Street in 1864. During 1867 and 1868, Van Buskirk became a junior partner, and the company name was changed from "Van Buskirk & Henry" to "David Henry & Co." In 1870, David Henry moved his business to 79 Wabash where he was listed as a distiller.

The names of the parties who were engaged in the brutal and desperate affair were John Gannon and Edward Williams, both employed as assistants by Thomas Lewis, the head bridge-tender. Gannon, it appears, was off duty during the early part of the night, and returned about midnight somewhat the worse for the liquor he had imbibed during his vacation.

When he made his appearance at the bridge-house, Williams, his fellow-assistant, who had also imbibed somewhat freely, began to upbraid him in terms more forcible than elegant for returning in a condition that would prevent him from attending to his duties.

State Street Bridge #1, Looking North from South Water Street. 1868

The party thus accused denied the "slander," and retorted in a manner equally impressive. From words, they soon resorted to blows, and a desperate struggle ensued in the little bridge-house, about which a number of persons now began to collect. At first, only blows and kicks were given and taken. However, nature's implements soon failed as mediums which to express their feelings. Willimas, being evidently the soberest of the two, had the advantage from the beginning, and during the struggle succeeded in laying hold of a club, with which he felled his adversary to the floor. However, he was down only for a moment, and the struggle was continued with redoubled fury.

Williams now sprang for an ax, standing in a corner of the little hut, and with this, he dealt a crushing blow on his adversary's skull. This more than sufficed to bring Gannon down. However, not satisfied with the punishment inflicted, Williams was about to repeat the blow and already was the ax descending, when Mr. Lewis and a young man sprang into the hut, and, after a desperate struggle, wrung the weapon out of the hands of the would-be murderer. At this juncture Officers Lull and Layman, who had been attracted to the scene by the crowd, made their appearance and took William in charge. 

The little shanty, after the struggle, presented a fearful scene. The walls, the floor, the bed, and everything about the place was thickly covered with blood, while the prostate body of Gannon was covered with gore from his head to his feet. By means of a generous application of water, he was eventually revived, and, when able to walk, both parties were conveyed to the Armory, where Gannon's wounds received careful attention.

The blow with the ax caused a gash on the back of the skull, and it was not at all improbable that it may prove fatal. His body and face were also terribly beaten and bruised. Williams' injuries were not so severe, although his face was badly cut up. Altogether, the two constitute an exemplary pair of bridge-tenders, who ought to receive promotion. Their case will receive proper attention at the Police Court this morning.  

Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1867

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

John Wilkes Booth Diary

The text of the surviving pages of John Wilkes Booth's diary is as follows:

John Wilkes Booth's diary is on display at Ford's Theatre, 511 10th Street NW, Washington, D.C. Call before visiting to verify if they are open due to COVID-19.  (202) 347-4833

"Until today nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country. The night before the deed I wrote a long article and left it for one of the editors of the National Intelligencer, in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the gov'r-

After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for. What made Tell a hero? And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his country's but his own, wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end, and yet now behold the cold hands they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see my wrong, except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little, I left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in the Heaven for me, since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with horror. God, try and forgive me, and bless my mother. Tonight I will once more try the river with the intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name - which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to man. I think I have done well. Though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness. Tonight I try to escape these bloodhounds once more. Who, who can read his fate? God's will be done. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh, may He, may He spare me that, and let me die bravely. I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so, and it's with Him to damn or bless me. As for this brave boy with me, who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart - was it crime in him? If so, why can he pray the same?

I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but 'I must fight the course.' Tis all that's left to me."

Chain of Custody for Booth's Diary

Mystery surrounds this diary. The little book was taken off Booth's body by Colonel Everton Conger. He took it to Washington and gave it to Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the War Department's National Detective Police. Baker in turn gave it to Edwin McMasters Stanton [1], Secretary of War (1862–1868). 

Edwin McMasters Stanton, 27th United States Secretary of War, (1862-1868).

The book was not produced as evidence in the 1865 Conspiracy Trial. In 1867 the diary was rediscovered in a "forgotten" War Department file with pages missing. Although most sources indicate, 9 separate sheets—18 pages of text were missing. Were all those pages missing since 1867?

Over the years there has been endless speculation on those missing pages including rumors that they had surfaced. Nevertheless, they remain officially missing. Two of the pages were torn out by Booth himself and used to write messages to Dr. Richard H. Stuart on April 24, 1865. To speculate on their contents makes for interesting reading, but it's essentially fruitless as no one knows for sure what the rest of the missing pages may or may not have contained.

John Wilkes Booth Missing Diary Pages

Booth's diary was a small book, which was actually an 1864 appointment book kept as a diary, was found on the body of John Wilkes Booth on April 26, 1865. The datebook was printed and sold by James M. Crawford, a St. Louis stationer. The book measured 6 by 3 1/2 inches with the pictures of 5 women found in the diary pockets. Booth's entries in the diary were probably written between April 17 and April 22, 1865. 

Mystery surrounds Booth’s diary. The little book was taken off Booth’s body by Colonel Everton Conger. He took it to Washington and gave it to Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the War Department’s National Detective Police. Baker in turn gave it to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Despite its obvious interest in the case, the book was not produced as evidence in the 1865 Conspiracy Trial.

In 1867 the diary was re-discovered in a forgotten War Department file with more than a dozen pages missing. Conspiracy theorists became convinced that the missing pages contained the key to who really was behind Lincoln’s assassination, and several fingers pointed toward Edwin Stanton. 

 

Support for this theory came about in 1975 when Joseph Lynch, a rare books dealer, claimed to have found the missing pages through one of Edwin Stanton’s descendants. Despite the apparent authenticity of Lynch’s claim, his story contained a few missing pages of its own. Over the years there has been endless speculation on those missing pages including rumors that they had surfaced. Nevertheless, they remain officially missing.

In 1977, yet another administrator with the National Park Service’s National Capital properties asked the FBI to examine this little book “in order to rest any question about the possibility of invisible writing in the diary.” (The concerns of the Park Service grew from the release that same year of The Lincoln Conspiracy, a film that alleged the secret involvement of Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton in the president’s death.) In addition, the Park Service hoped that the FBI would authenticate Booth’s handwriting by comparing the hand script in the diary with the handwriting in letters known to have been composed by Booth. The FBI did disclose they felt confident no one had added to or edited the diary entries. They also confirmed nothing was written with invisible ink.

The FBI exposed the historical artifact to a variety of light frequencies, including ultraviolet, fluorescence with ultraviolet excitation, infrared, and x-ray. No hidden notations appeared. The agency judged the handwriting to be that of John Wilkes Booth. FBI's forensic laboratory has examined the diary and stated that 43 separate sheets are missing. This means that 86 pages of text are missing. 

Was Lincoln’s death part of a larger conspiracy? Did Booth write about working for the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton? Were the missing pages torn out deliberately by Edwin Stanton, or was it someone else who had something to hide? We may never know.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

---

[1] While the Congress was not in session, Johnson had suspended Edwin M. Stanton and appointed General Ulysses S. Grant as secretary of war. From August 12, 1867, until January 14, 1868, Stanton was suspended from office, and Ulysses S. Grant served as Acting Secretary of War.

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act by attempting to replace Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, while Congress was not in session and other abuses of presidential power from February 24, 1868, to May 26, 1868. 

The Senate voted 35 "guilty" and 19 "not guilty," resulting in acquittal. (36 "guilty" votes necessary for a conviction). 

NOTE: Six former Confederate states were also readmitted separately from the regular election, each electing two Republicans. This increased the Republicans' already overwhelming majority to the largest proportion of seats ever controlled by the party.

Majority Party: Republican (57); Minority Party: Democratic (9); Other Parties: (0); Vacant: (8); For a total of 74 seats. 25 of the 66 (8 vacant) total of 74 seats in the United States Senate (with special elections), 34 seats needed for a majority.

John Wilkes Booth's Failed Lincoln Abduction Plots.

The Lincoln assassination story is well known: On April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln, at point-blank range in the head, at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning in the Petersen's boarding house directly across the street from the theatre. Booth escaped—temporarily—but was shot 12 days later in Virginia.

John Wilkes Booth

What is lesser known is that Booth did not always plan on killing Lincoln. In fact, the actor’s original plan was not to strike a fatal blow. He wanted to abduct Lincoln, take him to Richmond, and exchange him for Confederate soldiers then held in Union prisons.

Booth sent a message to his brother-in-law, John Clarke Sleeper (changed to "John Sleeper Clarke" as his stage name). In 1859 Clarke became part of the Booth family when he married Asia Booth, John Wilkes Booth's sister. On November 25, 1864, Booth wrote: “My love, as things stand today, is for the South alone. Nor do I deem it a dishonor in attempting to make for her a prisoner of this man to whom she owes so much misery.”

In 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant had stopped all prisoner exchange between the Union and the Confederacy in an attempt to decrease the Confederacy's military capability. The Confederacy did not have as much manpower as the Union, so every soldier counted. Booth said as much to would-be co-conspirator John Harrison Surratt Jr.: “We cannot spare one man, whereas the United States government is willing to let their own soldiers remain in our prisons because she has no need of the men. I have a proposition to submit to you, which I think if we can carry out will bring about the desired exchange.”

To carry out his plan, Booth enlisted the help of six men: John Surratt Jr., Samuel Bland Arnold, George Andrew Atzerodt, Michael O'Laughlen, Jr., David Edgar Herold, and Lewis Thornton Powell (aka Lewis Paine or Payne).

They all had a specific skill or knowledge, which made them an asset to the team. Arnold and O’Laughlin were old friends of Booth. Atzerodt was known for helping Confederate spies across the Potomac River. Surratt often helped the Confederate secret service and knew all about the secret routes in Southern Maryland used by Confederate spies to enter and leave Washington. Powell (who worked with the Confederate Secret Service in Maryland) had the physical strength to overwhelm the 6’4” president. Herold knew the poorly mapped routes that existed below Washington D.C.

The men were motivated by an undying loyalty to the Confederacy—something to which even those loyal to the Union might relate, as John Surratt opined years later.

“And now reverse the case. Where is there a young man in the North with one spark of patriotism in his heart who would not have with enthusiastic ardor joined in any undertaking for the capture of Jefferson Davis and brought him to Washington? There is not one who could have not done so. And so I was led on by a sincere desire to assist the South in gaining her independence.”

One plan was to capture Lincoln while he was watching a play in Ford’s Theater on January 18, 1865. They would kidnap the President in his box, lower him onto the stage and carry him out of the theater. This plan was never carried out as some of the men deemed it unfeasible. It so happened that Lincoln changed his plans at the last minute, opting to stay at home instead of going to the theater on a stormy night.

Another plot was to capture the President while he was traveling to the Soldiers’ Home. Located several miles from the White House in what was then the rural Washington County part of the District, the Soldiers’ Home was Lincoln’s main residence during the hot summer months. The President would often take a carriage there with little or no protection, making him a vulnerable target.

This photo of the Soldiers' Home is from the Todd Family Album. It shows the Summer Cottage as it appeared in Lincoln’s time in 1864. Built in 1842-1843, the Cottage was the first building on the property. Banker George Washington Riggs had bought the land for a “country estate.” Taking inspiration from landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing’s Cottage Residences, the 34-room mansion and surrounding land was bought by the Federal Government in 1851. It served as the original housing for the inmates of the Soldiers’ Home, as the residents were called at the time. The Soldiers’ Home itself was called the “Military Asylum until 1857."

These were not the only plots to kidnap Lincoln. Two members of the Confederacy army also had plans to abduct the President. One was Joseph Walker Taylor, the nephew of former president Zachary Taylor. The other was Colonel Bradley T. Johnson. Neither was carried out and it is unknown whether Booth knew about them.

By Lincoln’s second inauguration on March 4, 1865, Booth was able to get increasingly closer to his target. In fact, he and his would-be accomplices were able to attend the inauguration as personal guests of Senator John Parker Hale’s daughter, Lucy—who also happened to be one of Booth’s girlfriends. During the day’s events, Booth got close enough to lunge at Lincoln and had to be restrained by police. Though he explained that he had simply stumbled, Booth later mused, “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!

Even as they schemed, Booth and his conspirators were on the lookout for new opportunities.

On March 17, 1865, Booth was told the President was going to attending a performance of the play "Still Waters Run Deep" at the Campbell Military Hospital. 

As Surratt remembered, “The report only reached us about three-quarters of an hour before the time appointed, but so perfect was our communication that we were instantly in our saddles on the way to the hospital.” The group met at a nearby restaurant to iron out the details. They would stop the carriage as Lincoln returned home after the play, and overpower the President and his driver. Both men would be handcuffed and taken across the Potomac River through Southern Maryland.

“We felt confident that all the cavalry in the city could never overhaul us,” Surrat explained. The group had quick horses, knowledge of the countryside, and had planned of getting rid of the carriage once they were out of D.C.

After the meeting, Booth decided to go to the hospital to make sure everything was set. To his surprise and disappointment, Lincoln was not there. It turned out the President was at a ceremony in the National Hotel.

After this failed attempt, some in the group gave up. As Surratt explained, “We soon after this became convinced that we could not remain much longer undiscovered, and that we must abandon our enterprise.” He left Washington and was in Canada by mid-April. Likewise, Arnold and O’Laughlin left D.C. and returned to their homes in Baltimore. Neither was involved in the assassination.

When he was planning the abduction, Booth showed few signs of wanting to kill the President. Only once did he hint at this when meeting with his group. The idea was turned down quickly and Booth excused himself saying that he “had drunk too much champagne.”

However, after the failure to carry out the abduction plot in March and Union’s capture of Richmond in early April, Booth’s attitude apparently changed. In 1865 Colonel and Brigadier General Thomas Thompson Eckert (the assistant Secretary of War from 1866 to 1867), testified that Powell said Booth showed his intent to murder the President during the celebration that followed the fall of Richmond.

“[On April 11th] The President made a speech that night from one of the windows of the White House" where the president voiced his intention to allow educated and all negro veterans to vote. "Powell and Booth were on the grounds in front,” Ecker said. “Booth tried to persuade him to shoot the President while [Lincoln was] in the window, but he told Booth he would take no such risk." They left then and walked around the square, and that Booth remarked: ‘That is the last speech he will ever make.’”

John Wilkes Booth took his last drink at the Star Saloon, across the street from the Ford's Theatre, fifteen minutes before he shot Abraham Lincoln. Booth and the remaining co-conspirators carried out the assassination plot on the evening of April 14, 1865. As he ran from the theater that night, Booth left behind some personal effects, including a letter from Arnold, urging patience:

“Time more propitious will arrive yet. Do not act rashly or in haste,” Arnold wrote. "Weigh all I have said, and, as a rational man and a friend, you can not censure or upbraid my conduct. I sincerely trust this, nor aught else that shall or may occur will ever be an obstacle to obliterate our former friendship and attachment.”

Booth, it seems, felt that the time for patience had passed.

NOTE: While Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, Lincoln had seen Booth at Ford's Theatre in 1863. After the assassination, actor Frank Mordaunt wrote that Lincoln, who apparently harbored no suspicions about Booth, admired the actor and had repeatedly invited him (without success) to visit the White House.

By Laura Castro Lindarte

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Rage of John Wilkes Booth.

THE ASSASSINATION

April 14, 1865, 10:25 PM, five days had passed since General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his troops at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. The long and bloody Civil War was over.

John Wilkes Booth, age 27, was a southern sympathizer and a famous, highly recognizable actor from a celebrated family of actors. He had gone to Ford’s Theatre in the afternoon to check out the building and possibly to make some preparations.

In the evening, he came back to the theatre to fulfill a deadly mission. Booth was the ringleader of a deadly conspiracy against President Abraham Lincoln and the government of the United States.

Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. by Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, 1871.

As Booth neared the Presidential Box, Charles Forbes, a personal assistant to the President, stopped him. Booth calmly showed Forbes something, but what exactly is unknown.

Booth crept up to the presidential box and silently entered. Lincoln was only a few feet away from him, watching the play, Our American Cousin, with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and their guests Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris.

Booth grasped his Philadelphia Derringer pistol and waited. He knew the play well, and he wanted to time his actions. He saw Lincoln was holding his wife’s hand.

“What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?” Mrs. Lincoln whispered to her husband. The president replied, “She won’t think anything about it.”

He had spoken his last words. One of the actors delivered the funny line Booth had been waiting for and Lincoln laughed. The assassin sprang forward and shot the president in the back of the head.

Major Rathbone immediately lunged at Booth and they wrestled for a moment. Booth dropped his pistol, drew a knife from his pocket, and stabbed Rathbone in the left arm. Booth struggled out of the major’s grip and leaped from the box onto the stage. It was a 12-foot drop and Booth landed awkwardly.

Because Booth was a famous actor, many people in the audience recognized him, and most thought his entrance was part of the play. Booth shouted, “Sic Semper Tyrannus!” (Latin phrase meaning "thus always to tyrants").

NOTE: While Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, Lincoln had seen Booth at Ford's Theatre in 1863. After the assassination, actor Frank Mordaunt wrote that Lincoln, who apparently harbored no suspicions about Booth, admired the actor and had repeatedly invited him (without success) to visit the White House.

NOTE: It is now believed that John Wilkes Booth didn't fracture his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box at Ford's Theatre, but rather fractured his leg during his escape ride when his horse tripped and fell on Booth's left leg.

He had avenged the South. And, he had killed a man he hated. His diary recorded his thoughts about the president: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.

At least one man recognized that this was not a new scene in an old play. Major Joseph B. Stewart jumped from the auditorium onto the stage and ran after Booth. Screams were emanating from the presidential box and Major Rathbone shouted, “Stop that man!”

President Abraham Lincoln's Box at Ford's Theater, Washington D.C., April 1865.

Booth burst through the side door into the alley, where he had left his horse with a stagehand named Edmund Spangler, mounted and galloped away. His plan was to go south, where he would be protected by Confederate sympathizers.

Lincoln was mortally wounded. He was comatose. The doctors, military personnel, and actors clustering around the president knew he couldn’t possibly survive a trip to the White House. Instead, they carried him across the street to the home of a tailor named William Petersen. They made a hopeless attempt to shield his face from the rain he could no longer feel, and laid the tall president diagonally on Petersen’s bed.

Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. He was 56 years old. His friend and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was present and watched the president take his last breath. “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen,” he murmured. “Now he belongs to the ages.”

With Lincoln’s death ended any hope of empathy and kindness in Reconstruction. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was not well known by the public but no one harbored any hope he would have been as magnanimous as his predecessor.

Across the country and even the world, people heard of Lincoln’s murder with horror and despair. Abraham Lincoln was mourned. Many who had thought he was the worst president in the nation’s history saw him very differently now. There was no question of who had killed him or why. The only question on everyone’s lips was, “Where is John Wilkes Booth?”

A DISILLUSIONED FUGITIVE

John Wilkes Booth knew the shot he fired at Abraham Lincoln was fatal. He had a simple plan for his getaway. He ordered a stagehand to hold his horse at the side door and he fled Washington D.C. as fast as he could go.

Booth, meanwhile, had made good time getting out of town. He crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland and met one of his co-conspirators, 21-year-old David Herold.

Booth and Herold headed to Surratt Tavern, where they had left supplies to be in readiness. They picked up their things, but by then Booth’s left leg was giving him tremendous pain. He had broken it when he leaped from the balcony onto the stage, and now it forcibly derailed their plans. The two rode to the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd.

The doctor set Booth’s leg and gave him a pair of crutches. The fugitives stayed the night at the doctor’s home, but knowing a massive manhunt must be underway, they left in the morning.

The men then traveled to the home of a Confederate sympathizer named Samuel Cox the next day. From April 16–21, Cox helped Herold and Booth hide in the swamp to evade federal authorities.

Booth recorded his actions in his diary, and through his words, you get a sense of his feelings of grandiosity and how he perceived his own actions.

John Wilkes Booth Personal Diary.

The Text of John Wilkes Booth's diary is as follows:

"Until today nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country. The night before the deed I wrote a long article and left it for one of the editors of the National Intelligencer, in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the gov'r-

After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for. What made Tell a hero? And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his country's but his own, wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end, and yet now behold the cold hands they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see my wrong, except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little, I left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in the Heaven for me, since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with horror. God, try and forgive me, and bless my mother. Tonight I will once more try the river with the intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name - which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to man. I think I have done well. Though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness. Tonight I try to escape these bloodhounds once more. Who, who can read his fate? God's will be done. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh, may He, may He spare me that, and let me die bravely. I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so, and it's with Him to damn or bless me. As for this brave boy with me, who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart - was it crime in him? If so, why can he pray the same?

I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but 'I must fight the course.' Tis all that's left to me."

Word had reached Booth that the country was devastated over Lincoln’s assassination. Booth was in a state of disbelief. He had thought murdering Lincoln would make him a hero to Southerners. Now he was being denounced and life as he had known it—the grand Shakespearian plays, the adulation and fame, and his plans to marry Miss Lucy Hale—were out of reach forever.

The crowning blow was the first and only interview General Robert E. Lee gave after his surrender when he was asked about the assassination. Lee called it “deplorable.” He knew, as Booth did not, how generous Lincoln had been in his terms with the confederacy when Lee surrendered.

That night, Booth wrote in his diary, referencing an earlier failed plot to kidnap Lincoln. For six months we had worked to capture. 

A PLOT TO KIDNAP LINCOLN

In August of 1864, John Wilkes Booth recruited two longtime friends, Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, to help him kidnap the president. The abduction, he reasoned, would force the Union to free certain Confederate prisoners. Their plan was to attack Lincoln in his box at Ford’s Theatre on January 18, 1895, then tie him up and lower him down from the balcony to make a quick getaway. They didn’t get a chance to test this asinine plan because Lincoln changed his plans at the last minute, opting to stay at home instead of going to the theater on a stormy night.

But our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill.

The two men were able to cross the Potomac River on April 22nd and slept in a cabin on April 23rd. Booth, cold, hungry, and aching, wrote bitterly in his diary once more: With every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for… And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat.

A SHAKESPEAREAN FINALE?

On April 24, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold arrived at the tobacco farm of Richard H. Garrett. They had been on the run for nine days. Booth lied to Garrett, claiming to be a wounded Confederate soldier, and the farmer agreed to let the men stay in his tobacco barn. The men were nervous, knowing the countryside was swarming with people looking for them.

The government was offering a $100,000 reward for the conspirators’ capture, which is the equivalent of $1.6 million in 2021. The biggest price was on Booth’s head, for $50,000.

Explicit warnings on the Wanted posters stated that anyone assisting the fugitives in any way would be treated as accomplices, who would be subject to a trial by a military commission and the death penalty.

The description of JOHN WILKES BOOTH was light on details. “Booth is 5' 7" or 5' 8" in height, slender build, high forehead, black hair, black eyes, and wears a heavy black mustache.”

Herold’s description was more substantial. “DAVID C. HAROLD is 5' 6" tall, hair dark, eyes dark, eyebrows rather heavy, full face, nose short, hand short and fleshy, feet small, instep high, round-bodied, naturally quick and active, slightly closes his eyes when looking at a person.”

In the pre-dawn hours of April 26, soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry arrived at the Garrett farm and surrounded the tobacco barn. They had tracked Booth and Herold to the area, and they had reliable information John Wilkes Booth was inside the barn. The soldiers were under strict orders to take Booth alive.

When they had surrounded the barn, the soldiers called out, awakening the terrified men. They shouted they would set fire to the barn if they did not surrender. David Herold came out at once and surrendered.

Not Booth. He shouted: “I will not be taken alive!”

The soldiers shrugged and made good on their threat. The barn was set on fire. Booth, armed with a pistol and a rifle, scrambled to escape the inferno.

33-year-old Sergeant Boston Corbett, in defiance of orders, crept up behind the barn and shot Booth in the back of the head, severing his spinal cord and instantly paralyzing him.

Sergeant Boston Corbett, who was credited with killing John Wilkes Booth.

This was followed by slow death. A soldier poured water into Booth’s mouth, but he could not swallow it. He turned his head and spit it out. A little while later, he said, “Tell my mother I died for my country.”

He asked the soldier to lift up his hands where he could see them. The soldier did as he asked and Booth cried, “Useless… useless!” The soldier let his hands drop.

He did not speak again but he lingered for two hours and then word went around the soldiers clustered together that John Wilkes Booth was dead. Just eleven days had passed since Lincoln died in the 23-year-old army clerk, William T. Clark's rented bedroom in the back of the first floor of the Petersen House, across the street from Ford's Theatre.

The soldiers examined his pockets, which contained a compass, his diary, and photographs of five women, including Booth’s fiancée Lucy Hale.

Booth's lady Friends.

Booth’s body was wrapped in a blanket, tied to the side of a wagon, and brought to the Navy Yard. According to official records, more than ten people who knew John Wilkes Booth identified him as the assassin. He was identified by a tattoo of his initials (JWB) on his left hand and a scar on the back of his neck. Three of his vertebrae were removed to access the bullet that killed him, and these bones can be seen today at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. The body was temporarily buried in a storage room at the Old Penitentiary.

Meanwhile, Booth’s co-conspirators were captured and tried. Four of them—Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt—were hanged

The Execution of Four Lincoln Co-conspirators.

Dr. Mudd, whose crime was setting Booth’s broken leg, received a life sentence. Edmund Spangler, the stagehand, was given 6 years in the federal penitentiary for being an accessory to the crime. In 1869, Mudd and Spangler were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson. Until the day he died in 1875, Spangler always insisted his only connection to the plot was that Booth asked him to hold his horse.

According to the official reports, Booth’s body was moved from the Old Penitentiary to a warehouse. In 1869 it was sent to Baltimore for burial in the family plot. John Wilkes Booth’s grave is unmarked, but visitors often leave pennies on the grave of Booth’s father. Pennies, of course, feature the bust of Abraham Lincoln.

EVIDENCE OF DECEPTION

Before the final burial of John Wilkes Booth in the family plot in 1869, his mother, brother, and sister viewed the body. The mayor of Baltimore, William M. Pegram, who had known Booth well, was also present. In 1913, Mayor Pegram signed a sworn statement that the remains he saw in 1869 were those of John Wilkes Booth.

This unusual statement was necessary because an alternative history emerged of what happened at Garrett’s farm in the early morning hours of April 26. According to that story, John Wilkes Booth did not die at the age of 27 on the front porch steps of Garrett’s farmhouse. A 1911 Washington Post article claimed there were more than 50 theories of what had really become of Booth. In the same article, they described a box containing Booth’s body being sent to Baltimore. The box was decayed but the body itself “was in a fair state of preservation”.

Booth was buried 15 minutes after midnight on a cold February night. Only a handful of people were present. The family wanted privacy and they did not want the public to know exactly where John’s body was.

According to the main alternative theory, Booth died in 1903 at age 65 in Enid, Oklahoma, by his own hand, and the government covered up the truth. Could this possibly be true? Apparently, there is some evidence to support this. Two men, Nate Orlowek and Dr. Arthur Chitty have spent many years researching John Wilkes Booth. Much of the theory is bolstered by the evidence they have brought forward.

According to Nate Orlowek, “There is tremendous physical evidence that proved beyond a doubt that John Wilkes Booth was not killed by the Federal Government Officers as they claimed. In fact, he lived until January 13, 1903, when he died in Enid, Oklahoma territory.”

Let’s go back to Garrett’s farm. The conclusions of Nate Orlowek and Dr. Chitty differ from the official version at the point when the federal officers surrounded Garrett’s barn. When Herold ran out of the barn, according to Dr. Chitty’s research, he told the soldiers, “The man in there is not Booth.” 

Dr. John May was summoned to make the identification. May was a Washington DC surgeon who removed a tumor from the back of Booth’s neck a few months earlier. He looked startled when he saw the body. Speaking in a low tone to the presiding officer, he said whoever the victim was, it was not John Wilkes Booth. According to the research of Dr. Chitty, it was made clear to Dr. May that regardless of what he saw, “this better be Booth.”

Perhaps that’s the key to the extraordinary statement Dr. May wrote. Like much of the documentation about the case, it was hidden from the public for 70 years. Today, the statement is housed in the National Archives.

The summation reads: "I’m sure this is Booth. But it doesn’t look like him. But this is certainly John Wilkes Booth." John Frederick May

Supporters of the government’s story cited a 40-page statement David Herold made to investigators 36 hours after his arrest. Herold mentioned Booth by name ten times when he talked about the barn being set on fire. Dr. Chitty claimed Herold was pressured into changing his story. “He was trying to save his neck. When he thought he would survive by changing his story, he changed his story.”

Dr. May was not the only eyewitness to contradict the official version of the story. In 1937, Mrs. Helen Allen, the widow of Lieutenant William C. Allan, said her husband told her the man who was shot and killed at Garrett’s farm had red hair. The government knew it wasn’t Booth but they were determined to pass him off as the assassin.

You can see why the government might be motivated to do this. The Civil War had only ended three weeks ago. The new peace was uneasy and the people, enraged by Lincoln’s murder, demanded vengeance. If the federal authorities could not produce Booth, who knows what would happen? 

Several witnesses corroborated Lieutenant Allan’s statement on the record. They said the redheaded man who was shot and killed on the farm did not look at all like the raven-haired actor. Two of the soldiers, Joseph Zisgen and Wilson Kenzie, knew Booth personally, and they agreed that the redheaded man did not look like Booth. Neither mentioned a broken leg.

The soldiers who got close enough to see Booth were told to keep their mouths shut. The officers in charge warned there would be dire consequences to anyone who spoke up.

But the story refused to be snuffed out. In the early 1900s, John Shumaker, General Counsel to the Department of the Army, wrote:  “The evidence put forth by the government to support the conclusion that the body was that of John Wilkes Booth was so insubstantial that it would not stand up in a court of law.”

In 1922, Wilson Kenzie, then 77 years old, described what happened at the farm in a sworn affidavit: “As I rode up, Joe Zisgen called, ‘Sergeant, this ain’t John Wilkes Booth at all.’  I could see the color of his hair. I knew at once it wasn’t he. His body was exposed and he had no injured leg.”

That brings us to one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that Booth managed to escape. The government was exhaustively documenting everything related to Lincoln’s assassination, but they inexplicably neglected to photograph Booth’s body. The other conspirators were photographed multiple times, including in prison and at their hanging. Why would they fail to take a photograph of the man who had masterminded the plot? They had plenty of time, for the body was taken to Washington Navy Yard, and placed aboard the Montauk, where the autopsy was conducted by three doctors.

But if Booth did not die at the farm, what happened to him?

BOOTH'S FATE

There was a substantial amount of eyewitness testimony that the man who was killed at Garrett’s farm was not John Wilkes Booth. But if it wasn’t, where was Booth? And who was the man with red hair who was shot and killed?

Fast forward twelve years to 1877. In a little place called Granbury, Texas, a man named John St. Helen lay dying. He summoned Finis Bates, his attorney, and confessed that he was not John St. Helen. “My name is John Wilkes Booth.”

Bates thought his client was delirious until St. Helen began to explain in detail how he had murdered Lincoln and escaped. According to St. Helen, he did not go to Garrett’s farm. Instead, he left Dr. Mudd’s house hidden in the back of a wagon.

When Booth heard Union soldiers were nearby, he hurriedly got out of the wagon to hide in the woods. In the process, his personal papers, compass, and journal were dropped in the road. Booth knew he dropped them but was too frightened to stop and pick them up. That night he sent a messenger, a young man with red hair, back to retrieve the papers. While the messenger was looking for the actor’s possessions, a second messenger hurried to Booth’s side.

The Union soldiers were closing in, the boy said. Booth, terrified, decamped immediately. When the messenger returned, at last, triumphantly carrying Booth’s things, the actor was long gone. Not knowing what to do with Booth’s journal and personal effects, the messenger stuffed them in his pockets. They were still with him when he was killed in Garrett’s barn two days later.

To his great surprise, St. Helen recovered. Making a deathbed confession and then failing to die is bad business, and St. Helen knew it. He left town and was heard from no more.

But in January 1903, St. Helen resurfaced at a boarding house in Enid, Oklahoma. He was now 64 years old and using the name David George.

St.Helen/George had decided to end his mortal miseries. He drank a glass of wine laced with Strychnine. Finis Bates, his attorney from Texas, learned of the suicide and arranged to take custody of the corpse. When he arrived and beheld David George, not only did he recognize his old client, John St. Helen, but he was certain that he was looking at the body of John Wilkes Booth.

David George aka John St Helen aka John Wilkes Booth.

But in January 1903, St. Helen resurfaced at a boarding house in Enid, Oklahoma. He was now 64 years old and using the name David George.

St.Helen/George had decided to end his mortal miseries. He drank a glass of wine laced with Strychnine. Finis Bates, his attorney from Texas, learned of the suicide and arranged to take custody of the corpse. When he arrived and beheld David George, not only did he recognize his old client, John St. Helen, but he was certain that he was looking at the body of John Wilkes Booth.

Bates had a picture made of the body, and then he had it mummified. In 1907, he wrote a book called The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth. By 1913, he had sold more than 70,000 copies.

The attorney then took his show on the road, in a very literal sense, by exhibiting St. Helen’s mummified body in carnival sideshows as the “Man Who Shot Lincoln”.

Cashing in on the Mummy of John Wilkes Booth.

In 1931, six Chicago physicians examined the mummified body of John St. Helen. According to their sworn affidavit, the body had a scarred right eyebrow, a crushed right thumb, and a broken left leg. John Wilkes Booth had a scarred right eyebrow, a crushed right thumb, and a broken left leg.

Chain of Custody for Booth's Diary Evidence

Mystery surrounds this diary. The little book was taken off Booth's body by Colonel Everton Conger. He took it to Washington and gave it to Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the War Department's National Detective Police. Baker in turn gave it to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The book was not produced as evidence in the 1865 Conspiracy Trial. In 1867 the diary was rediscovered in a "forgotten" War Department file with pages missing. Although most sources indicate, 9 seperate sheets—18 pages were missing. Were all those pages missing since 1867?

Over the years there has been endless speculation on those missing pages including rumors that they had surfaced. Nevertheless, they remain officially missing. Two of the pages were torn out by Booth himself and used to write messages to Dr. Richard H. Stuart on April 24, 1865. To speculate on their contents makes for interesting reading, but it's essentially fruitless as no one knows for sure what the rest of the missing pages may or may not have contained.

John Wilkes Booth Missing Diary Pages

Booth's diary was a small book, which was actually an 1864 appointment book kept as a diary, was found on the body of John Wilkes Booth on April 26, 1865. The datebook was printed and sold by James M. Crawford, a St. Louis stationer. The book measured 6 by 3 1/2 inches with pictures of 5 women found in the diary pockets. Booth's entries in the diary were probably written between April 17 and April 22, 1865. 

Mystery surrounds Booth’s diary. The little book was taken off Booth’s body by Colonel Everton Conger. He took it to Washington and gave it to Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the War Department’s National Detective Police. Baker in turn gave it to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Despite its obvious interest to the case, the book was not produced as evidence in the 1865 Conspiracy Trial.

In 1867 the diary was re-discovered in a forgotten War Department file with more than a dozen pages missing. Conspiracy theorists became convinced that the missing pages contained the key to who really was behind Lincoln’s assassination, and several fingers pointed toward Stanton. 

 

Support for this theory came about in 1975 when Joseph Lynch, a rare books dealer, claimed to have found the missing pages through one of Stanton’s descendants. Despite the apparent authenticity of Lynch’s claim, his story contained a few missing pages of its own. Over the years there has been endless speculation on those missing pages including rumors that they had surfaced. Nevertheless, they remain officially missing.

In 1977, yet another administrator with the National Park Service’s National Capital properties asked the FBI to examine this little book “in order to rest any question about the possibility of invisible writing in the diary.” (The concerns of the Park Service grew from the release that same year of The Lincoln Conspiracy, a film that alleged the secret involvement of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the president’s death.) In addition, the Park Service hoped that the FBI would authenticate Booth’s handwriting by comparing the handscript in the diary with the handwriting in letters known to have been composed by Booth. The FBI did disclose they felt confident no one had added to or edited the diary entries. They also confirmed nothing was written with invisible ink.

The FBI exposed the historical artifact to a variety of light frequencies, including ultraviolet, fluorescence with ultraviolet excitation, infrared, and x-ray. No hidden notations appeared. The agency judged the handwriting to be Booth’s. FBI's forensic laboratory has examined the diary and stated that 43 separate sheets are missing. This means that 86 pages are missing. 

Was Lincoln’s death part of a larger conspiracy? Did Booth write about working for the Secretary of War? Were the missing pages torn out deliberately by Stanton, or was it someone else who had something to hide? We may never know.

In 1994, a small group of historians from the Smithsonian worked with Booth family descendants to obtain a court order for the exhumation of John Wilkes Booth’s body. They wanted to “prove or disprove longstanding theories on Booth’s escape.”

Their plan was to conduct a photo-superimposition analysis. A Baltimore Circuit Court Judge refused, saying it was a “less-than-convincing” conspiracy theory. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the judge’s ruling.

Was St. Helen/George really John Wilkes Booth?

In 2010, the Booth descendants tried again. This time they sought to exhume Edwin’s body to obtain DNA samples to compare with the DNA in the bones of the man shot and killed at Garrett’s farm. The three vertebrae the doctors had removed were at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Three years later, the museum announced, without further comment, that the family’s request to extract DNA from the vertebrae was denied.

The mummy is owned by a private collector. It was last seen in public in the 1970s.

The government stands by its story that John Wilkes Booth was killed by federal troops on April 26, 1865, eleven days after murdering President Lincoln.

But there are voices that continue to ask troublesome questions about Booth’s story. Why doesn’t the government have photos of the body of the man who was killed at Garrett’s farm? Why did eyewitnesses who knew Booth say the dead man was not him, and describe a man with red hair and no leg injury who bore no resemblance to the actor? Why does the government continue to block petitions by the Booth family to exhume John Wilkes Booth or his brother Edwin so the theory that Booth escaped can be proven or disproven, once and for all?

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Main Contributor; Kimberly Tilley