Al Capone: Chicago's Most Infamous Mob Boss

Back in Chicago at the beginning of 1926, Capone was in excellent spirits.� Not only had he made his mark in New York, but his whiskey deal would change the face of interstate transportation.� Young men with a thirst for adventure and the need for money made a good living working as one of Capone's truckers.

In the spring of 1926, Capone's run of good luck hit a snag.� On April 27, Billy McSwiggin, the young "hanging prosecutor" who had tried to pin the 1924 death of�� Joe Howard on Capone,� met with an accident.� He left the home of his father, a veteran Chicago police detective, and went with "Red" Duffy to play cards at one of Capone's gambling joints.� A bootlegger named Jim Doherty picked them up in his car.

Doherty's car broke down and they hitched a ride with bootlegger "Klondike" O'Donnell, a bitter enemy of Capone.� The four Irish lads went on a drinking binge in Cicero with O'Donnell and his brother Myles and ended up at a bar close to the Hawthorne Inn where Capone was having dinner.� O'Donnell's cruising around in Cicero was a territorial insult.

Capone and his henchmen, not realizing that McSwiggin was in the bar with Myles O'Donnell, waited outside in a convoy of cars until the drunken men staggered out.�� Then out came the machine guns and McSwiggin and Doherty were dead.

Capone was blamed.� Despite the blot on McSwiggin's integrity for keeping company with bootleggers, sympathy was with the dead young prosecutor.� There was a big outcry against gangster violence and public sentiment went against Capone.

While everyone in Chicago just knew that Al Capone was responsible, there was not a shred of proof and the failure of this high-profile investigation to return an indictment was an embarrassment to local officials.� Police took out their frustrations on Capone's whorehouses and speakeasies which endured a series of raids and fires.