AL CAPONE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 21

AL CAPONE

"THE MOST SHOT-AT-MAN IN AMERICA"

1000 SHOTS AT ONCE

(By "Ajax.")

Al Caponc: The Biography of a Selfinado Man. By Prod D. Pasley, Now York: Ivcs Wasburn. [Fourth Notice.] Tho funeral of Dion O'Bauion put Torrio and Capono in a position of considerable delicacy. The deep cut he had made into their bootlegging business in Cicero and his peremptory refusal to compromise had given them so strong .1 motive for tho murder that everybody supposed it to be their work. To stay away from the funeral would, therefore, havo been a confession of guilt, but there were obvious risks in attending. They took tho bold course, however, and the basket of roses "From Al," which I mentioned last week as contributing to tho 50,000 dollars' worth of flowers at the funeral, was followed up by Al himself and his chief. * * * Torrio and Capone, says Mr. Pasley, steeled themselves to attend the services. They knew what the O'Banions were thinking. They did not dare stay away. They sat opposite George Bugs Moran, Earl Hymie Weiss, and Vincent the Schemer Drucci [the three Jeading O'Banion gunmen] at the mortuary chapel; rode with them to the cemetery," faced them across the grave at the cemetery. Then Torrio fled the city, with the O'Banions in pursuit, trailing him to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas and to Cuba, then back again to tho United States; finally overtaking and shooting him down in the presence of his wife, in front of his Chicago home. So Torrio fades from the picture and Capone alone remains, in the role of General Al tho Scarface. * * * Torrio had been hit by the o'Banions before and nearly killed. He had fallen in the street with a revolver bullet buried in his left arm, and his jaw shattered and his lungs and abdomen pierced by a charge of buck shot. Moran. was about to load again in order to finish him off when the honk of his chauffeur's horn told him it was time t* go. Torrio had a long spell in hospiial, during which Capono gave the O'Banions no chances. fie took command of the sick room, »ays Mr. Pasley, employing extra private ■aurses and posting a bodyguard of four Men —two in the room and two outside the building. Torrio insisted, 100, that he be kept in an inside room. He was in the hospital sixteen days. When he left, 9th February, it was via a fire escape to circumvent any designs of the O'Banions at another attempt on his life. * * * A week previously Capone himself had had a very narrow escape. Tho three gunmen above-mentioned as sitting opposite to him at the funeral service had driven np to his sedan in a touring car with drawn curtains, bombarded it with sawed-off shotguns and machine-guns at three-foot range, riddling the hood and touneau and destroying the engine. They let it have everything but the kitchen stove, was the comment of a policeman. The only thing wanting to a complete success was that Capone was not inside. But instead of trusting to luck again he ordered an armoured car. * * « The body was of steel construction, Mr. Pasley writes, the windows of bullet-proof glass, and the fenders non-dentable. The average family sedan weighs between 3600 and 4000 pounds. Capone's weighed 7 tons (15,6801b). It cost him 20,000 dollars. Shrapnel, buckshot, or rnachine:gun bullets would splatter off it as harmlessly as raindrops off a tin roof. It had a special combination lock so that his enemies couldn't jimmy a door to plant v bomb under him. Additional safeguards were a scout flivver which darted in and out of the traffio about half a block ahead, and a touring car containing tho bodyguard to protect his rear. The appearance of the portable fort and convoy in downtown Chicago was always an occasion of public interest, says Mr. Pasley. "There goes Al" would fly from lip to lip, and pedestrians would crowd to sidewalk curbs, craning necks as eagerly as for a circus parade. * * ♦ The O'Banions chose the most crowded period of a fete day in Capone's stronghold—the lunch hour of a Cicero lace meeting, on the 20 th September, 1926—f0r their most brilliant and almost incredibly audacious attack. He ■was lunching in the Hawthorne Restaurant with Slippery Frank Rio, a member of .his bodyguard, when they heard the sound of machine-guns. Capone rose and made for the front door, but Rio pushed him down, saying, It's a stall, boss, to get you out. The real stuff hasn't started. You stay here. Al obeyed, and lay flat on the floor ■with some sixty other diners. Rio was right. The O'Banions' fighting men had arrived in eight touring cars. The first of these cars was "equipped like a detective bureau squad car with a gong on the left running board," and it had sounded the gong as it came along at 50 miles an hour. They all glowed down to 15 miles as they entered the block where the Hawthorne Restaurant was, the first car being thirty seconds ahead of tho other seven, which were separated from one another by intervals of about 10 feet. The first ear had fired blank cartridges only, its function apparently being, aa Bio had divined, to serve as a decoy to draw Capone and his friends to the doors and windows. * # # As the second car passed the Anton Hotel a machine-gunner began spraying its facade up and down and across in the manner bi a fireman at the nozzle of a hose. When it halted at the Hawthorne Restaurant, which was next door, the other cars closed in and five of them poured streams of bullets into every door and window of both the hotel and the restaurant. The sixth car, says Mr. Pasley, halted directly at the entrance and passage-way leading to the lobby of the Hawthorne Hotel. A man in a khaki shirt and brown overalls stepped out, strode over to the door, knelt on the side-walk, and coolly aimed a Thompson sub-machine gun. . . He used a ukclele (machine-gun) with 100 shells, and his typewriter (drum) was set for rapid fire. That means 600 shots a minute, including reloading, as an expert can slide in a new drum in four seconds. So the O'Banions' serenade of Capone's personal headquarters in Cicero lasted a little less than. 10 seconds. It was intended for the lobby, and the artillerist's aim was perfect. As he pressed the trigger he moved tlio gun slowly back and t'ortli the width o£ the passageway. Tim results are still visible —neat horizontal lines of A~> caliber bullet holes against the wall, some the height of a

man's waist, some breast-high. The reader ' will understand just how deadly was that serenade when it is explained that Thompson sub-machine gun-fire will cut down a tree trunk 24 inches in circumference at a distance of 30 feet, and will peneti'ate oue quarter-inch steel armourplate. » * • When the artillerist had emptied his last drum he rose and returned to his ear. Tho driver honked his horn three times, and tho whole "cavalcade" — if Mr. Pasley's stretch of that word may be imitated —moved off unmolested along the same street by which they had come, aud continued their journey towards Chicago. The police estimatod that 1000 shots had been fired. Every pane of glass in the guest rooms of tho two hotels facing the street was smashed, as well as the doors and windows of tho barber's shop, delicatessen, and laundry, but though there were a few minor casualties Capone escaped without a scratch, and nobody was killed. Instead of attracting victims, the blank cartridges of the "decoy" car must have scared everybody into safety. * ' * -s For audacity, coolness, accuracy of timing, and reckless disregard of human life this futile adventure of the O'Banions will surely stand comparison with the greatest of their enemy's successes. And, as all of thoso thousand shots must be rogarded as having been aimed at Capone, the accuracy of Mr. Pasley's description of him as "the most-shot-at man in America" is probably vindicated by this single bombardment.