552 people were found dead, their blood all over their hands. 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, poor Italian immigrants were gifted a beautiful baby boy. Little did they know this innocent creature, their sweet child, would turn into America’s most notorious and bloodthirsty gangster. His family struggled when the moved to Brooklyn, New York from Naples. They found themselves in a poor little tenement with street violence all around. They eventually were able to move to a better neighborhood when he was ten. His mother was devoutly religious, and his father was a modest barber. They had nine children, all who sadly ended up being criminals. Al Capone seemed like a normal child; he did well throughout elementary school. History.com even referred …show more content…
Capone never returned to the field. He took over little gangs in his neighborhood as a kid. “When he saw an elderly lady’s washboard being stolen, he organized a kid gang to beat up the other kids who stole it and made them give it back to her. Afterwards, he made everyone do a celebratory parade portraying himself as a hero,” claimed Laurence Bergreen, author of Capone, The Man and the Era. He spent his days doing odd jobs as a candy store clerk, bowling alley pin boy, laborer at an ammunition plant, and even a box cutter. He then later became part of a gang called James Street Boys. This is where he met the infamous Johnny Torrio who was described as “the man who would become his lifelong mentor.” (Britannica) Al Capone was only sixteen when he became part of the Five Points Gang which Johnny Torrio was a part of. Even at a very young age, he was extremely violent and anger filled; the article Britcannica describes Al Capone like this, “Before Capone turned 21, he was involved in several violent incidents.” His violent and rude behavior continued with him throughout his whole life and even earned him his notorious nickname: …show more content…
The gangster heard and slashed him across the face with a knife, giving him a famous scare. Al Capone surprisingly enough hated the nickname “Scarface” and constantly tried to hide it from the press, making up stories saying he earned it during war. He was an active gang member before he was even considered an adult. He gunned a man down just to get his winnings in a neighborhood game. He killed another low-level gang member and left him dead. He was involved in many bloody scrapes, and was questioned, but somehow always slipped away. Al Capone married his wife at the age of nineteen, weeks after she gave birth to their child Albert Francis. Now that he was a family man, he wanted to head back towards the straight and narrow. They moved to Baltimore, where he took a modest job as a book keeper for a construction company. Sadly, that did not last long. Capone’s father died from a heart attack on 3 February 1920 and Torrio invited him back to Chicago with a job in his gang. Al Capone was only too eager to