by David Ward
An encounter on the morning of June 23, 1936, appeared to justify the family’s fears. Capone was at work, cleaning the shower area in the basement of the main cell block. At 9:45 A.M. he walked into the clothing supply room next to the showers and began looking at a mandolin that had been left on the counter. James Lucas, who had been issued a pass to get a haircut in the barbershop in the basement, came into the supply room at that moment. Moving quickly, Lucas stabbed Capone in the lower back with a barber’s scissors. Capone whirled around, began wrestling with his assailant, and succeeded in striking Lucas in the face with his fist and the mandolin. The two men were then separated by guard Thomas J. Sanders, who had pulled out his billy club as the altercation began. Sanders pushed Capone behind him and demanded that Lucas surrender the scissors, which he did. Capone was taken upstairs to the prison hospital while Lucas was hustled off to solitary. Questioned as to the reason for the fight, Lucas said he blamed Capone for snitching on him, causing him and a friend to lose their jobs. But Capone reported that the attack was for the usual reason—Lucas had asked him for money that he had declined to provide. Capone suffered a wound in his back, a quarter inch deep and a half inch long, as well as superficial cuts on his hand and arm.
Warden Johnston notified Bureau of Prisons headquarters fifteen minutes after the attack, but he did not notify the FBI; the warden and the Bureau regarded the attack as an internal matter for the prison administration. In a rare deviation from policy, anticipating the flood of rumors that would reach the press due to Capone’s celebrity status, a news release about the incident was prepared and distributed. The news stories that followed increased the concerns of Capone’s brother, mother, wife, and other family members about his safety. Capone’s mother wrote to Director Bates, saying, “I am sick in bed from the shock of hearing how he was stabbed.” But their requests to visit him and have the family doctor examine him were denied.
The United States attorney, upon being notified that an assault on a government reservation had occurred, declined prosecution on the grounds that bringing Capone and Lucas over to federal court on the mainland would involve escape risks, and that the amount of good time Lucas could lose through normal prison procedures would be longer than any new sentence he could receive for the assault. On June 26, a good time forfeiture board chaired by Deputy Warden Shuttleworth was convened at Alcatraz. After listening to Lucas’s revised explanation for the assault—that Capone had ordered his murder—the board concluded that if Capone had indeed made such a threat, it came after the assault in the clothing supply room, not before. Lucas was penalized by the loss of 3,600 days of good time, in effect adding ten years to his sentence.
Capone had no serious problems with other inmates during the next eighteen months, although he refrained from going to the yard as his health began to rapidly deteriorate. On February 5, 1938, the cell house officer reported he was confused as to the right clothes to wear to work, and he was unable to find his own cell after returning from the dining room. Guards directed him to his cell, where he was held until he could be questioned by Deputy Warden E. J. Miller. Capone’s responses to questions were described by Miller as “indistinct, incoherent mumblings. Approximately one hour later, Miller was called back to the cell house after a guard reported that Capone had vomited in his cell and was having “a hysterical fit of some sort.” The chief medical officer was called and after a brief examination ordered that Capone be taken to the prison hospital. A convict friend told the doctor that Capone’s personality seemed to have changed and that Al was frequently wrong about dates.
An interview with a psychiatrist was scheduled; during it Capone was unable to recall short sentences or telephone numbers. He had been treated for syphilis since his commitment to Atlanta, but now the consulting psychiatrist concluded that the syphilis had “invaded his central nervous system as indicated by . . . changes in memory and personality.” He added, “the two convulsive seizures speak strongly for [a diagnosis of] general paresis.”7
Warden Johnston feared the news of Capone’s behavior would encourage widespread rumors and allegations that imprisonment at Alcatraz was driving inmates crazy. He promptly wrote to Bureau headquarters suggesting that since the expiration of Capone’s two five-year sentences was coming up in less than a year, transfer to another prison for treatment before release be considered. To forestall press reports that Capone’s mental problems were a result of doing time on the Rock, Johnston released a brief statement announcing that the prisoner was ill but receiving excellent medical care. Within hours, the Capone family was on the telephone to Alcatraz demanding to know the truth of press reports that Al was “raving mad, violent, and being restrained in a straitjacket.”
Capone had never permitted the doctors at Atlanta to do a spinal tap to determine the presence of disease but now, confronted with the deterioration of both his mental and physical health, he agreed to the tests; they confirmed the diagnosis of paresis. The medical staff informed Warden Johnston that any patient in Capone’s condition might, at certain times, require restraints to keep him from injuring himself or others. Capone, in the meantime, fearing that he had done something wrong that could affect his good conduct record, asked Deputy Warden Miller to come to the hospital so he could explain that “he did not know what had happened, that it was just like a curtain down over him that day . . . if he had done anything wrong, he did not mean to.”8
Capone continued to have seizures and became incontinent at times. On some occasions he arose many times during the night to make his bed over and over. He sometimes made childish remarks to guard attendants, became noisy and started singing, and occasionally became violent. For one eighteen-hour period restraints were used to confine him to a bed. Hospital records describe the patient’s deterioration. From February through May 1938, the records report that on various occasions Capone was “yelling at top of his voice and threw himself under the bed,” that he persisted in strange repetitive behaviors including “arranging and rearranging his magazines, making his bed over and over,” and dressing and undressing, and that he had also been found “lying in bed, tears running down his eyes.” On May 18, the report stated that Capone yelled something about “crazy men” being put in his room and then “threw his bed pan full of fecal matters through his glass transom.”
In August of that same year, Capone had an altercation with inmate Ryan:
Capone had been turned into ward “A” by the Guard on duty in the Hospital, to empty his bed-pan. He was in the toilet cleaning it perhaps with a towel which the Ward [Patients] used to clean the table in Ward “A.” Ryan who was mopping in front of the toilet, asked him not to use it. Capone flew into a rage and struck Ryan in the temple with the bed-pan inflicting a small laceration. Ryan then struck Capone over the head with the mop. Capone grabbed the mop out of Ryan’s hands and when the Guard, Mr. Comerford and Mr. Sabin arrived on the scene Capone was fighting off all of the Pts. in the Ward, but no other injuries resulted.
In September Capone had an epileptic seizure. The declining health of their best-known prisoner posed management and public relations problems for the Justice Department: should he be removed to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri, with the likely flood of stories about preferential treatment that such actions would produce? Or should treatment of his medical condition be the decisive factor? The Bureau of Prisons asked Warden Johnston to begin providing daily reports of Capone’s condition. The attorney general’s office notified Bureau headquarters that Capone was to remain at Alcatraz, regardless of his mental status, until one or two months before his release date. Meanwhile, Capone wrote to his wife and son to assure them that he was feeling fine:
So you see dearest, there is nothing for any of you to worry about. Smile and keep that smile until your dear dad comes home, and then sweet, watch me strut my stuff, and all my love, and I mean sweet, for you alone, and with heart and soul, and forever and ever.
Despite strenuous effor
ts by the Bureau to control information coming out of Alcatraz, Time Magazine published a story about Capone’s behavior in the hospital. “Having finished 6 and ½ years of an 11 year term (almost four of them at Alcatraz),” said the story, “Chicago’s no. 1 gangster, Al ‘Scarface’ Capone was reported to have gone berserk on leaving the dining hall, to have been carried to the infirmary where he spent day after day foolishly making and unmaking his bed.”9 The view of one citizen about what to do with Capone was contained on a postcard sent to Warden Johnston:
Why fool with that rat Capone. He’s only playing possum. Hit him in the head with an ax and dump his rotten carcus [sic] over the wall to the sharks in the ocean. Then keep it up with the rest of his ilk until you rid the country of them. Why should we pay taxes to keep them?
Capone was kept in the hospital but was allowed to go to the yard three mornings a week to do cleanup jobs while other inmates were working, but his days of association with the general population in the cell house, the dining hall, and the yard were over. In August the chief medical officer reported that Capone had suffered a strong negative reaction to the treatment he was receiving: “Temperature 104 degrees, muscle pains . . . became confused, tore up his prayer book . . . serious convulsive movement.” At the end of September the medical staff decided to administer a new type of treatment, though they had some concerns about the effects this might have on Capone.10
Debates within the Department of Justice went on and on. In October, Bureau headquarters made an inquiry about medical facilities at the Cook County Jail but concluded that Capone would not be likely to receive the medical treatment he needed there. The Department of Justice tried to decide whether Capone, on completion of his two five-year terms, should serve the additional one-year term in the Cook County Jail or remain in the federal prison system, and if he remained a federal prisoner, in what facility. When asked by Warden Johnston as to his own preference, Capone replied that he had been fairly treated and had received good medical care at Alcatraz but preferred to end his sentence in the Cook County Jail because that location would allow much more frequent contact with his family. In December, however, James V. Bennett recommended to the attorney general that Capone be kept in federal custody:
Capone has a serious case of paresis which seems to be growing progressively more acute. . . . The Cook County Jail has no facilities for treatment and to preclude accusations that Capone was driven insane at Alcatraz and also to do everything possible to prevent discharging Capone in such a condition that he would be more of a public menace than is already the case, I believe our correctional institution or jail at Terminal Island, L.A., ought to be designated for the service of the remainder of his sentence.11
The attorney general agreed to this plan, and the warden at the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution in Los Angeles harbor was instructed to prepare a special cell in the prison hospital for Capone. He was also told to allow a few other inmates in the area so that Capone “would not feel he is being kept in solitary confinement.” While these preparations were under way, Capone was still anticipating a transfer to the Cook County Jail. He wrote to his wife on December 18, 1938, clearly expecting to see his family soon:
I hope to see you and Sonny again before I leave here next January the 18th. I have quite a number of songs written for him to sing them to you and I will play them on the piano and mandola. . . . Tell him [Sonny] to continue with his golf playing as I intend to play with him every day and night and the three of us will see either a movie or a show or go to one of our own nightclubs and dance our troubles away.
On January 4, 1939, Capone’s attorney paid $37,000 of his $50,000 fine and court costs in preparation for his client’s transfer to Chicago. On January 7 Capone, dressed in a prisoner’s blue suit, covered by an overcoat, and wearing a fedora hat and leg irons, was accompanied by three Alcatraz guards to the Lark, a train which traveled due south to Los Angeles. The party got off at Glendale, a stop before the main Los Angeles station. Capone was placed in a car and driven to Terminal Island, where he was locked up in his second island prison. His confusion as to where he was and what was happening to him was evident in the first letter he wrote to his wife from Terminal Island: “If I am not out by the 19th, you will know there is something wrong.” Terminal Island Warden Lloyd, given the letter by his staff, went to Capone and informed him that he would be at Terminal Island for a year. After this conversation, Capone, still anxious not to displease the federal government, agreed to rewrite his letter and inform his wife that he preferred to serve the one-year sentence where he was rather than at the Cook County Jail.
The departure of America’s most prominent gangster from what had become the country’s most prominent penitentiary brought forth expressions of relief in San Francisco. An article in the San Francisco News said it this way:
One reputation San Francisco does not cherish, namely that here is situated the depository of the nation’s No. 1 enemies. Al Capone was the symbol of that frightful era of gangsterism created by prohibition, an era we want to forget. As long as he was here his name was identified in the public mind with the name of San Francisco. At least we can do a better job of forgetting now that he is no longer with us. So we’re glad he’s gone.12
But expectations that the departure of Al Capone would diminish the Rock’s reputation did not turn out to be realistic.
Capone’s months at Terminal Island were marked by continued deterioration of his mental faculties. Upon arrival he was reported to be “confused, indifferent, somewhat depressed, [to have] periods of irritability but he was at all times the cooperative person as always.”13 In March his propensity for grandiose ideas was evident when he promised some Mexican inmates he would provide them all jobs at $100 per week and assured them that he would help them with their problems. He frequently became confused as to the location of his cell and his place in the dining room. When he became irritated, he threw items around his cell, broke windows, threw bottles, and threatened other inmates. He focused his hostility at one point on the inmate in the next cell, pounding on his door and threatening to kill him because he flushed his toilet (Capone claimed the inmate flushed his toilet to annoy him). On another occasion, he hit another patient for no apparent reason while they were finishing a game of dominoes. The medical staff recommended that Capone be transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri, but Bureau headquarters again turned down the request.
In May Director Bennett made an exception to the rule prohibiting ex-convicts from visiting prisoners and gave permission for Ralph Capone to visit his brother, mainly so that Ralph could see Al’s mental condition for himself. After another experiment in which he was allowed to live in a dormitory, Capone got into a fight with several other prisoners and was returned to his room in the hospital. In August he went back to his job cleaning up the prison yard but was removed again after he became agitated during a wrestling match when he thought that one man was biting the other. On September 2, after seeing one inmate knock another down and start to go after him with a fork, Al intervened, striking the aggressor in the face with his fist and throwing him up against a table.
Five days later, he assaulted an inmate attendant in the hospital with no apparent provocation. When the attendant tried to rise from the floor while asking what was wrong, Capone struck him several more times, knocking him down again. When the staff told Capone that he was going to punitive segregation for this assault, he became enraged and shouted that they did not want him to go home and he might as well commit suicide. He then picked up a comb from his bed and scratched both sides of his throat. He forcibly resisted being taken to disciplinary segregation; after he was placed in a cell, he struck his head against the wall and threatened to gouge out his eyes. He was then stripped and given a blanket for warmth. After raving for some fifteen minutes, he finally quieted down and allowed the medical staff to swab his neck wounds.
The investigation into his conduct in th
e hospital revealed yet another incident ten days before his attack on the attendant. On the evening of September 8, a cardiac patient under strict bed rest in the hospital had reportedly asked Capone to get him a slice of bread when he saw Capone passing by his room. According to the patient, Al responded by telling him, “Go fuck yourself” and then spit in his face. But the following day Capone came into the cardiac patient’s room and began tickling his toes. When the patient told him to stop and reminded Capone of how he behaved just the previous night, Capone allegedly “slapped him [in] the face and hit him a severe blow in the abdomen, causing him to vomit up his supper.” The patient confided that he had been afraid to give this information as long as Capone was still on the ward but was willing to talk once he knew Al had been sent to isolation.14
In punitive segregation, Capone had an altercation with the inmate in an adjoining isolation cell over the noise each man created by flushing his toilet; both men tried to throw water from their toilets into the other’s cell, and Capone tried to strike the other man’s arms. After thirteen days, Capone promised to behave himself and to stay out of fights and arguments and was returned to his room in the hospital. He agreed to eat his meals in his room and come out only for general yard recreation each day from 1 to 3 P.M. He was not, however, able to stay in his room, so his door was locked except for the exercise period.
As the days passed and the November 16 release date drew closer, Capone became more and more cheerful, often holding forth at length with stories of how he had been poisoned at Alcatraz by inmate James Audett and how his present illness was related to the poisoning of his food. When the prison doctors urged him to seek hospitalization after his release, Capone denied that anything was wrong with him. He stated that Chicago was “too hot” for him and that he planned to live at his Palm Island estate in Florida.
