Al Capone/Bio & Battles

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone, nicknamed Scarface, was an American mobster and crime boss of the infamous Chicago Outfit during the Prohibition era.

The son of Italian immigrants to the US, Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1899. He was expelled from school for violent behaviour at the age of fourteen, which led to him getting involved with several Brooklyn gangs. It was during this time that Capone met gangster Johnny Torrio, who would become Capone's mentor.

At age twenty, Capone moved to Chicago at Torrio's request. Capone worked as an enforcer for James Colosimo, the head of the Chicago Outfit. Capone quickly rose through the gang's ranks, eventually becoming the new boss after Colosimo's death and Torrio's attempted assassination.

Capone greatly expanded the Outfit's alcohol bootlegging and racketeering business through the use of violence, but his bribes and mutual relationships with authorities ensured his protection from the law. Because many urban Americans opposed Prohibition, Capone became something of a hero to the people, who saw him as a modern-day Robin Hood. Capone justified his criminal actions by saying that all he was doing was giving the people what they wanted.

However, Capone's reputation was tarnished in 1929, when Capone was blamed for the brutal killing of several members of a rival gang. The public turned against him, once complacent authorities became determined to have him arrested, and newspapers gave him the title of "Public Enemy Number One".

Although he was never successfully convicted of racketeering or bootlegging, Capone's mobster career was effectively ended in 1931, when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income-tax evasion. He was sent to a series of prisons, including the infamous Alcatraz. He would be released on parole in 1939, but his time as a mob boss was already over. He died of cardiac arrest in 1947.