Original subtitles

[♪]

Gangs rule their territories through ruthless enterprises,

fear,

and a strict code.

Deviate from this code

or challenge their power...

and retribution soon follows...

especially in the bloody heyday

of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit.

From its petty crime beginnings

on the Windy City's south side

to the meteoric rise of Al Capone,

here are three stories

that define this vicious Chicago organization.

First, a ruthless capo kills his boss

to build a bootleg empire.

Torrio makes the very gangster-like decision

that Colosimo has to go.

[Narrator] Next, the Outfit orchestrates

the most infamous mob massacre in history.

[Selzer] You can see a guy's brain sitting next to his hat.

These are just brutal killers.

[Narrator] And last,

the U.S. government finds an unexpected clue

that will take down the Outfit's kingpin.

The paper trail is what brings Capone ultimately to justice.

[Narrator] These are the stories

from inside the Capone years of the Chicago Outfit.

This is Gangland Chronicles.

1920.

Chicago.

A vicious threat to public safety

grips the streets of the Windy City's south side.

It's the notoriously violent Italian mafia gang

known as the Chicago Outfit.

The origins of the Chicago Outfit

really reside in the person of Big Jim Colosimo.

He built an empire of vice.

He develops a fairly large and effective gang

that's involved in prostitution, gambling, narcotics,

and labor racketeering.

If Big Jim needs to have violence committed

on his behalf,

there will be people who do it for him...

and they were willing to kill people.

[gunfire]

[Narrator] In charge of Big Jim's hit squad

is his ruthless underboss, Johnny Torrio.

[Jarroush] Torrio is an enforcer.

After establishing a pretty decent crime career

in New York,

Torrio makes his way out to Chicago

to help Colosimo sort of organize

his burgeoning brothel empire.

[Narrator] To help, Torrio brings in

trusted muscle from his hometown,

an ambitious 20-year-old named Al Capone.

He is big.

He is strong.

He is capable of violence.

Capone is a tough guy.

He starts in the bottom rungs of the Chicago Outfit.

[Narrator] But Capone won't stay at the bottom for long,

because the criminal opportunity of a lifetime

is about to turn the Chicago Outfit upside-down.

January 17, 1920.

Washington, DC.

The 18th Amendment

banning the import and sale of alcohol

comes into effect,

forcing a multi-billion-dollar industry underground.

Johnny Torrio sees a fortune to be made

selling bootleg booze,

and floats the idea to Big Jim.

[Schumacher] And Colosimo's like,

"Eh, I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

[Jarroush] He's like, "I'm good.

We're doing okay with prostitution.

I don't have to worry about it.

The sex-work trade is doing numbers for us.

I'm fine."

[Narrator] In 1920, Big Jim's vice racket

earns him $50,000 a month,

$720,000 today.

Colosimo is happy with his take,

but Torrio is furious.

[Schumacher] There was a very serious conflict at that point

between Torrio and Colosimo,

and Colosimo stood in the way

of many millions of dollars in profits.

Torrio makes the very gangster-like decision

that Colosimo has to go.

[Narrator] May 11, 1920.

Big Jim Colosimo is getting ready

for a date with his new bride

when he receives a message

that a man wants to see him about business.

Sometime during the afternoon,

Big Jim Colosimo was in his headquarters,

which was Colosimo's Cafe on the south side of Chicago.

[Narrator] Moments later, a man arrives,

and the porter directs him toward Big Jim's office...

but he slips into the coat room,

pulls out a gun, and waits.

May 11, 1920.

Chicago.

Inside Big Jim Colosimo's restaurant headquarters,

a gunman waits for the most powerful gangster in the city.

A man pops out of a cloak room and fires two shots.

One misses,

the second one doesn't.

Hits him in the head.

[Narrator] Colosimo is dead at the scene.

The shooter is never caught,

but everyone suspects the hit was arranged

by Colosimo's underboss, Johnny Torrio,

with help from his right-hand man.

Capone may have had a hand in murdering Big Jim Colosimo,

and in murdering Colosimo,

opens the door for Johnny Torrio to take over.

[Narrator] Torrio appoints Al Capone

to be the Chicago Outfit's underboss.

Together, they dive headlong into bootlegging.

The gang smuggles alcohol in from Canada

and starts making their own beer and liquor,

selling it in illegal bars called speakeasies.

These guys were brewing beer for eight bucks a gallon,

then selling it for $55 a gallon.

There's a lot of money in this.

That's a heck of a markup.

[Narrator] Gangs all over the city

run similar operations,

but the Chicago Outfit is the most profitable of them all,

eventually raking in over $100 million a year,

more than $1.7 billion today.

The Chicago Outfit is doing this

at, you know, 10 times the volume of anybody else.

[Narrator] But one rival gang

wants a bigger piece of the action,

and what happens next

will set the stage for the most famous mob hit in history...

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

1924.

The Chicago Outfit's biggest rival,

the Irish and Polish North Side Gang,

makes a bold move.

The North Side gang decided

that they wanted to start moving into other people's territories

to bring in more money.

Naturally, they started fighting.

[Narrator] The North Side Gang

has declared war on the Chicago underworld,

and its main target is the Chicago Outfit.

January 24, 1925.

On a quiet residential street,

gunmen led by the North Side's Bugs Moran

ambush Johnny Torrio.

They shoot him up pretty good.

Bugs Moran is standing over him

with a .45 caliber pistol pointed to Torrio's temple,

about to give him

what you might call the coup de grâce,

final shot in the head.

[clicking]

[Narrator] But Bugs Moran is out of ammunition.

Torrio came this close

to getting killed by the North Side gangsters.

Johnny Torrio becomes fearful for his life.

He leaves the crime racket behind him,

so now there's an opening at the top.

[Narrator] 26-year-old Al Capone

takes the reins of the Chicago Outfit.

He's dead set on expanding the bootlegging business

and crushing the competition.

So now it's Capone versus Moran.

The two sides are at each other constantly.

[Selzer] Gangsters were getting shot pretty regularly.

On average, there was probably a gangster murder every week.

[Narrator] As the Chicago Outfit's

war with the North Siders escalates,

Al Capone is running out of patience.

[Binder] By late 1928, Capone has decided

he's had enough of these guys on the north side,

and he decides to try and take out Moran.

February 14, 1929.

The Chicago Outfit sees their opportunity

when Moran is scheduled

to inspect a shipment of bootleg whiskey

at a North Side garage.

[Jarroush] Capone's crew is waiting nearby.

What they do is

about three four of 'em roll up to this garage

dressed as police officers,

and they say, "This is a raid.

We found you. Up against the wall."

[Narrator] But Bugs Moran has yet to arrive.

The North Siders aren't overly concerned.

They're used to routine shakedowns by cops on the take.

They were lined up against a brick wall,

their hands up,

as if this was going to be a typical police roust.

[Narrator] Instead, the police raise their guns.

February 14, 1929.

Chicago.

Seven members of the North Side Gang,

rivals of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit,

are lined up against the wall

in what appears to be just another police shakedown.

And instead of doing the police thing,

which is, you know, frisking them...

they mow these guys down.

[Narrator] The North Side gangsters collapse

in a merciless hail of bullets.

When the police get there,

they find essentially utter carnage.

They find six dead men

and one man who actually is still alive.

That's Frank Gusenberg.

[Narrator] North Side Gang enforcer Frank Gusenberg

is shot 14 times,

yet somehow survives the trip to the hospital.

Police show up to the hospital,

and they're asking him,

they're like, "Who shot you? Who shot you?"

Now, one of the rules when you're in one of these gangs

is you don't snitch, you don't rat.

It doesn't matter what the deal is,

because if you do snitch,

you're seen as somebody that can't be trusted.

Gusenberg, being a true gangster,

looks at these cops and says, "Nobody shot me."

[Narrator] Gusenberg dies a few hours later,

leaving police without an eyewitness...

but everyone knows

there's only one man in Chicago

bold enough to have ordered the bloody hit.

Al Capone, however, has a cast-iron alibi.

[Green] Al Capone is out of town.

He's in Florida.

He is nowhere near the warehouse.

He's nowhere near the shooting.

[Narrator] But the press isn't buying it.

They immediately finger Capone as the prime suspect.

Photos of the grisly crime scene make the front page nationwide.

[Jarroush] What will become known

as the St. Valentine's Day massacre

is captured on camera.

The blood and the bodies that appear in pictures in papers

shocks the public,

because the public knows that people are dying,

but it's never been seen

as vividly as these photos in these Chicago newspapers.

[Selzer] You can see a guy's brain sitting next to his hat.

This started to change people's opinion.

These are just brutal killers.

This is dangerous for the whole city.

[Narrator] Bad press is just the beginning

of Capone and the Chicago Outfit's problems.

1929.

Newly elected President Herbert Hoover

wants to make good on his campaign promise

to crack down on organized crime.

It was the St. Valentine's Day massacre

that made Herbert Hoover decide

that "Our state and local authorities aren't doing enough.

We have to get the federal government involved in this."

[Narrator] Federal Prohibition Agent Eliot Ness

is assigned the task

of busting up the Chicago Outfit's

multi-million dollar bootlegging operation

and bringing Al Capone to justice.

[Binder] Eliot Ness develops a reputation

as being honest and incorruptible,

which was kind of scarce in the Prohibition agency.

A lot of the prohibition agents around the country

were quite willing to take bribes to look the other way.

[Narrator] Ness assembles a team of incorruptible agents

who become known as The Untouchables.

They very quickly go after

Capone breweries and distilleries.

Whenever they can find them, they raid them, shut them down.

[Selzer] Eliot Ness and his crew

had an extensive network of wire-tapping

that they were using to block beer shipments,

to shut down speakeasies,

to cut off their sources of income.

[Narrator] In just six months,

the Untouchables dismantle half a million dollars' worth

of the Chicago Outfit's bootlegging operations...

10 million today.

But they're no closer to catching the big boss.

[Binder] Capone delegates authority and responsibility

to the people underneath him,

and when they're raiding

what are clearly Capone gang breweries and distilleries,

they never catch Al Capone inside the place.

He's never there.

[Narrator] Somehow, Capone keeps outsmarting the law,

until his Outfit makes a costly mistake.

1930. Chicago.

While the Untouchables

harass the Outfit's bootlegging operation,

the IRS is quietly working

on a different way to take the gang down.

There's another task force that is being called

to look at all of Capone's paperwork

to try to figure out if he made a mistake.

[Narrator] For years, the IRS

has been trying to bust Al Capone for tax evasion,

but has so far found no hard evidence to charge him...

but in late 1930,

IRS investigator Frank Wilson

is looking through a stack of ledgers

seized from a Chicago Outfit gambling operation

when he finds the smoking gun.

The initials for Al Capone

were listed next to the largest number

that was to be distributed from the revenue of this casino,

so they were able to link these ledgers directly to Capone.

They find a flaw in his paperwork.

Tax evasion.

[Narrator] June 5, 1931.

Al Capone, boss and ruthless mastermind

behind the Chicago Outfit

is charged with 22 counts of income tax evasion.

Assuming he'll receive a light sentence,

a nonchalant Capone enters a guilty plea.

There was a deal on the table

where if he entered a guilty plea,

they would just give him a couple of years.

[Narrator] But Illinois state judge James Wilkerson

refuses to let Capone off the hook so easily.

He insists the case go to trial.

Still, Capone isn't worried.

[Green] Capone figured he could buy his way out of trouble,

pay off jurors, make sure that they would rule his way.

[Binder] All you need to do is get to one juror

who will refuse to vote guilty.

If at least one juror votes not guilty,

you have no conviction.

[Narrator] But Judge Wilkerson gets wind

that Capone's gang is offering bribes to the jury.

[Jarroush] On the first day of the trial,

the judge looks to the bailiff and says,

"Will you please remove the jury from the courtroom?

Take them down to another courtroom.

I believe there's another trial in action right now.

Put them in there.

Bring that jury to this courtroom,

and then let's start this trial."

[Narrator] On October 17, 1931,

Chicago Outfit boss Alphonse Gabriel Capone

is found guilty on five counts of income tax evasion.

A week later, he is sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Probably the only guy to go to Alcatraz for tax evasion.

[Narrator] After seven and a half years behind bars,

Al Capone is released on good behavior.

He retires to Florida,

where he dies in 1947 from complications of syphilis.

Back north, the Chicago Outfit

survives not only the loss of its legendary boss,

but also its primary source of income.

So they had to get creative.

They had to try a lot of new things.

[Schumacher] They really focused in on gambling.

They also got involved in labor racketeering.

It's scary, really,

how many politicians and other public servants

were corrupted by them.

These are kinds of things

that the Chicago Outfit perfected during its heyday.

[Narrator] The Capone years of the Chicago Outfit

set a standard of cunning and brutality

for all gangs that have followed.

You cannot understand the history of organized crime

without understanding the Chicago Outfit.

It is gory. It is ugly.

[Jarroush] Capone is a guy that was incredibly ruthless,

incredibly violent, evil.

It didn't matter who got hurt, what got destroyed.

He is the villain,

the bad guy,

public enemy number one.