Al Capone: Chicago's Most Infamous Mob Boss

Capone reveled in his new found celebrity status and used Damon Runyon as his press agent.� But the damage of all that publicity had been done.� He attracted the attention of President Herbert Hoover.� "At once I directed that all of the Federal agencies concentrate upon Mr. Capone and his allies," Hoover wrote.� In the beginning of March, 1929, Hoover asked Andrew Mellon, his secretary of the Treasury, "Have you got this fellow Capone yet?� I want that man in jail." A few days later, Capone was called before a grand jury in Chicago, but did not seem to understand the seriousness of the powerful forces there were amassing against him.�

Capone thought he had more pressing matters to resolve.� Evidence was mounting that two of his Sicilian colleagues were causing Capone problems.� Kobler describes the famous scene in which Capone met the problems head on:

"Seldom had the three guests of honor sat down to a feast so lavish.� Their dark Sicilian faces were flushed as they gorged on the rich, pungent food, washing it down with liters of red wine.� At the head of the table, Capone, his big white teeth flashing in an ear-to-ear smile, oozing affability, proposed toast after toast to the trio.� Saluto, Scalise!� Saluto, Anselmi! Saluto, Giunta!�

"When, long after midnight, the last morsel had been devoured and the last drop drunk, Capone pushed back his chair. A glacial silence fell over the room.� His smile had faded.� Nobody was smiling now except the sated, mellow guests of honor, their belts and collars loosened to accommodate their Gargantuan intake.� As the silence lengthened, they, too stopped smiling. �Nervously, they glanced up and down the long table.� Capone leaned toward them.� The words dropped from his mouth like stones.� So they thought he didn't know?� They imagined they could hide the offense he never forgave -- disloyalty?

Capone had observed the old tradition.�� Hospitality before execution.� The Sicilians were defenseless, having, like the other banqueters, left their guns in the checkroom.� Capone's bodyguards fell upon them, lashing them to their chairs with wire and gagging them.� Capone got up, holding a baseball bat.� Slowly, he walked the length of the table and halted behind the first guest of honor.� With both hands he lifted the bat and slammed it down full force.� Slowly, methodically, he struck again and again, breaking bones in the man's shoulders, arms and chest.� He moved to the next man and, when he had reduced him to mangled flesh and bone, to the third.� One of the bodyguards then fetched his revolver from the checkroom and shot each man in the back of the head."