Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation

Chapter 6. Capone's Long Trip Home

107 $ The Philly Pinch The good citizens of Philadelphia who sat down to read their morning newspapers over breakfast on Friday, May 17, 1929, were met with an astonishing and entirely unexpected front-page headline. Said the Inquirer newspaper: Chicago’s Own “Scarface” Held in $35,000 Here Racket Dragnet Yields Notorious Al Capone, Beer Baron and Underworld Leader Must Face Trial for First Time in Long and Fruitful Career Said to Have Netted Him $2,000,000 The story told in the Inquirer and other Philly papers described how Capone and his bodyguard Frankie Rio appeared in the city the previous evening when they stepped off a train from the Jersey Shore. Two alert detectives from the Philadelphia City Hall Detective Bureau, James “Shoey” Malone and John “Jack” Creedon, recognized Capone and watched the two men enter the Stanley Theater at Nineteenth and Market streets. (The feature movie was a detective thriller Voice of the City.) The lawmen waited patiently outside. When the two mobsters emerged from the theater, Shoey, described as “demure, blue-eyed little chap,” accosted Capone and confiscated a .38 snub nose revolver the gangster carried in his c h a p t e r 6 Capone’s Long Trip Home 108 Atlantic City Interlude pocket.At the same time Creedon, who resembled“a back-country deacon with eye glasses,” separated Frankie Rio from his pistol. The Inquirer article, praising the two detectives, noted that they had previously received Philadelphia Citizen’s Awards for bravery. The article went on to describe how Capone and Rio were charged with carrying concealed weapons, photographed, fingerprinted, and locked up in cells at City Hall. A lawyer for Capone appeared on the scene to argue for the release of the mobster and his bodyguard, but Magistrate Edward Carney refused the request and held an impromptu hearing. Carney observed, “There is no doubt in my mind that you have been responsible for a great many murders in America. You have intimidated police. You are known to every District Attorney in the Country. I am going to hold you in $35,000 bail each for court. Take ’em back.”1 The next day, May 18, the citizenry learned more.A few hours after Carney set bail, Judge John E. Walsh presided over a quick trial. Capone and Rio admitted they were guilty of the concealed weapons violation, after which Walsh sentenced the pair to a year in prison. The sheriff’s officers then put them in a van and took them to Moyamensing Prison in South Philly. It all happened with remarkable swiftness. Capone and his henchmen were arrested at 8:15 p.m. on May 16, brought before the magistrate at 11:55 that evening, indicted next morning, May 17, at 10:25, sentenced at 12:21 that afternoon, and in prison by 12:50 p.m.2 The whole process, from arrest to prison, took a mere sixteen hours. Philadelphians were filled with pride. The Inquirer carried an editorial entitled “Philadelphia Puts Capone Behind the Bars,” which boasted that the City of Brotherly Love had succeeded in stopping Capone, where Chicago, Miami, and other parts of the country had failed. Chicago officials , by contrast, were a bit mortified. The deputy police commissioner of Chicago, John Stege, lamely said he had not been able to arrest Capone because the Illinois Supreme Court required the police to get a warrant before they could search a suspect for a gun.3 Capone’s Long Trip Home 109 In the midst of all of this self-congratulation in Philadelphia and excuse-making in Chicago, some troubling news emerged. Voices were raised from Chicago to suggest something fishy about the whole business . Frank J. Loesch, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, said of Capone, “I believe it was his idea for some time to get himself in jail to escape the vengeance of rival gangsters.” Tom Pettey, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune who was in Philadelphia to cover events, related the following rumors that he had picked up and tied Capone’s desire to go to jail with the decisions made at Atlantic City: The Atlantic City conference broke up in a row when “Scarface” refused to “retire” or to come through with a large share of his fortune. Rival gang leaders told him that if he showed up in New York he would “get his head blown...