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FBI FOLDER #1—AL CAPONE FILESCONFIDENTIAL! DO NOT SHARE THESE CONTENTS WITH ANYONE BESIDES YOUR FELLOW FBI AGENTS!SOURCE #1SOURCE #2SOURCE #3“Al Capone is America's best known gangster and the single greatest symbol of the collapse of law and order in the United States during the 1920s Prohibition era. Capone had a leading role in the illegal activities that lent Chicago its reputation as a lawless city.”SOURCE #4“Capone's first arrest was on a disorderly conduct charge while he was working for Yale. He also murdered two men while in New York, early testimony to his willingness to kill. In accordance with gangland etiquette, no one admitted to hearing or seeing a thing so Capone was never tried for the murders. After Capone hospitalized a rival gang member, Yale sent him to Chicago to wait until things cooled off. Capone arrived in Chicago in 1919 and moved his family into a house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue.”SOURCE #5“When Capone’s mentor was shot by rival gang members and decided to leave Chicago, Capone inherited the "outfit" and became boss. The outfit's men liked, trusted, and obeyed Capone, calling him "The Big Fellow." He quickly proved that he was even better at organization than his mentor, syndicating and expanding the city's vice industry between 1925 and 1930. Capone controlled speakeasies (illegal bars), bookie joints, gambling houses, brothels, horse and race tracks, nightclubs, distilleries and breweries at a reported income of $100,000,000 a year.”SOURCE #650863517018000Source #7“Attempts on Capone's life were never successful. He had an extensive spy network in Chicago, from newspaper boys to policemen, so that any plots were quickly discovered. Capone, on the other hand, was skillful at isolating and killing his enemies when they became too powerful. A typical Capone murder consisted of men renting an apartment across the street from the victim's residence and gunning him down when he stepped outside. The operations were quick and complete and Capone always had an alibi.”SOURCE #8“Capone was never tried for most of his crimes. He was arrested in 1926 for killing three people, but spent only one night in jail because there was not enough evidence to connect him with the murders. When Capone finally served his first prison time in May of 1929, it was simply for carrying a gun. In 1930, at the peak of his power, Capone headed Chicago's new list of the twenty-eight worst criminals and became the city's "Public Enemy Number One."FBI FOLDER #2—JOHN DILLINGER FILESCONFIDENTIAL! DO NOT SHARE THESE CONTENTS WITH ANYONE BESIDES YOUR FELLOW FBI AGENTS!SOURCE #1“During the 1930s Depression, many Americans, nearly helpless against forces they didn't understand, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. Of all the lurid desperadoes, one man, John Herbert Dillinger, came to evoke this Gangster Era and stirred mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country.Dillinger, whose name once dominated the headlines, was a notorious and vicious thief. From September 1933 until July 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding 7 others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging 3 jail breaks—killing a sheriff during one and wounding 2 guards in another.”SOURCE #2SOURCE #3“John Dillinger has gone down in history as a ‘Robin Hood’ character, a gangster with charm and style who was more idolized by the public than reviled. His life has been recounted in many movies, particularly the film-noir gangster films of the 40’s. But the truth about Dillinger is more complicated; that he was simply criminally intent on making as much money illegally rather than having been pre-occupied with Joe Public during the Depression years. Gunned down by the FBI while leaving a Biograph cinema, even his death has helped fuel a mythology about this good looking, charismatic crook, who is as famous for his love life as he is for the banks he fleeced.”SOURCE #4“On 6 September 1924, Dillinger was with an older friend, Edgar Singleton, who allegedly introduced the young would-be gangster into a life of felony. Singleton, being more experienced and with considerable influence, coerced the younger man into robbing a local grocer, Frank Morgan. Returning home with the week’s takings, the two men assaulted him. Dillinger hit Morgan with a cloth-wrapped iron bolt and the victim fell to the ground. Both men were arrested and ironically, despite Dillinger being the younger of the two and with no criminal record, found himself facing a stiffer penalty when he was sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison.”SOURCE #7“After residing in ‘escape-proof’ Crown Point prison in Indiana, Dillinger eventually escaped in an episode which has become part of gangland folklore, when he allegedly threatened guards with a wooden gun blackened by shoe polish. The mobster himself was quoted as referring to it as his ‘pea shooter’.Later, evidence emerged that his lawyer had arranged for Dillinger's escape with cash bribes and the wooden gun was simply a cover story.But it was still an incredible jailbreak, with Dillinger stealing the sheriff's car and racing off to Chicago. J Edgar Hoover (head of FBI at this time) was ecstatic, because driving a stolen vehicle across state lines was a federal crime, making Dillinger eligible for a pursuit by the FBI.Continuing their spree, hitting banks in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Mason City and Iowa, Dillinger ended up wounded in the shoulder during the Iowa robbery. He then lay low with girlfriend, Billie Frechette, at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St Paul. However, the caretaker of the building was suspicious and, after reporting to the authorities, two FBI agents paid a call on Dillinger’s apartment.Frechette opened the door and the agents asked to talk to ‘Carl Hellman’ - an alias Dillinger used. At first, Frechette told the agents he wasn't there, and when they then asked to speak with her, she told them to wait while she dressed. After a few minutes, Dillinger cleared the way with a machine gun, and he and Frechette escaped with an agent receiving a leg wound. “SOURCE #8“On 22 July 1934, Dillinger invited Sage, a friend, and girlfriend Hamilton to see the Clark Gable movie ‘Manhattan Melodrama’ at the Biograph cinema in Chicago. On that night, the trio went to see the film, while FBI waited outside. The tense scene was like something from a gangster movie itself Sage, who as an informant to the FBI had been asked to wear an orange skirt and white blouse to identify her and Dillinger, knew all along that agents were waiting outside.As the trio exited the cinema, thee FBI agent Purvis shouted ‘Stick ‘em up, Johnny’. Dillinger bolted, running down the street and struggling to take his gun out. He was shot six times in the back. Two female passers-by were also wounded by the exchange of gunfire”SOURCE #5-2914654889500SOURCE #6Dillinger also teamed up with his friend from the Reformatory, Homer Van Meter. The new gang relocated to the St. Paul, Minnesota area. During the month of March, the Dillinger Gang went on a crime spree, robbing several banks. Yet law enforcement continued to be hot on the group's trail, as Dillinger and Frechette barely escaped the FBI while staying at an apartment building in St. Paul, Minnesota. ?With Frechette taken into custody after returning to Chicago, Dillinger and some of his men were forced to hole up in a Wisconsin hideout called Little Bohemia.FBI FOLDER #3—ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE FILESCONFIDENTIAL! DO NOT SHARE THESE CONTENTS WITH ANYONE BESIDES YOUR FELLOW FBI AGENTS!SOURCE #1"It was extremely cold blooded. Nobody knows to this day who did it. Nobody was ever arrested, nobody was ever charged with the crime. It was widely believed to have been the work of Al Capone, who was said to be in pursuit of Bugs Moran. Bugs Moran was not one of the seven men killed." SOURCE #2“Al Capone's most notorious killing was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On February 14, 1929, four Capone men entered a garage at 2122 N. Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. The building was the main liquor headquarters of bootlegger George "Bugs" Moran's North Side gang, the rival gang of Capone’s. Because two of Capone's men were dressed as police, the seven men in the garage thought it was a police raid. As a result, they dropped their guns and put their hands against the wall. Using two shotguns and two machine guns, the Capone men fired more than 150 bullets into the victims. Six of the seven killed were members of Moran's gang; the seventh was an unlucky friend. Moran, probably the real target, was across the street when Capone's men arrived and stayed away when he saw the police uniforms. As usual, Capone had an alibi; he was in Florida during the massacre.”SOURCE #31657355715000SOURCE #4NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE after the shootingChicago, Feb. 14 (1929) -- Chicago gangland leaders observed Valentine's Day with machine guns and a stream of bullets and as a result seven members of the George (Bugs) Moran-Dean O'Banion, North Side Gang are dead in the most cold-blooded gang massacre in the history of this city's underworld.The seven gang warriors were trapped in a beer-distributors' rendezvous at 2,122 North Clark Street, lined up against the wall by four men, two of whom were in police uniforms, and executed with the precision of a firing squad.The killings have stunned the citizenry of Chicago as well as the Police Department, and while tonight there was no solution, the one outstanding cause was illicit liquor traffic.The dead, the greatest in point of numbers since Chicago gang killings began in 1924 with the assassination of Dean O'Banion, were remnants of the "mob" organized by O'Banion, later captained by Hymie Weiss and Peter Gusenberg and recently commanded by George (Bugs) Moran.Capone's Name is MentionedOne name loomed in the police investigation under way this afternoon and tonight. It was that of Alphonse (Scarface) Capone, gang leader extraordinary.Six of the slain gangsters died in their tracks on the floor of the North Clark Street garage, a block from Lincoln Park and its fine residential neighborhood. A seventh, with twenty or more bullets in his body, died within an hour.The police found more than 160 empty machine gun shells strewing the floor of the execution room and there was a report that Moran had been taken out alive by the marauders.SOURCE #6-1771657937500FBI FOLDER #4—PROHIBITION FILES CONFIDENTIAL! DO NOT SHARE THESE CONTENTS WITH ANYONE BESIDES YOUR FELLOW FBI AGENTS!SOURCE #1The Noble Experiment“When the Prohibition era in the United States began on January 19, 1920, a few sage observers predicted it would not go well. Certainly, previous attempts to outlaw the use of alcohol in American history had fared poorly. When a Massachusetts town banned the sale of alcohol in 1844, an enterprising tavern owner took to charging patrons for the price of seeing a striped pig—the drinks came free with the price of admission. When Maine passed a strict prohibition law in 1851, the result was not temperance, but resentment among the city's working class and Irish immigrant population. A deadly riot in Portland in 1855 lead to the law's repeal. Now, Prohibition was being implemented on a national scale, and being put in the Constitution no less. What followed was many unintended consequences.This should have come as no surprise with something as experimental as Prohibition. It is no mistake that President Herbert Hoover's 1928 description of Prohibition as "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose" entered the popular lexicon as "the noble experiment." It was unfortunate for the entire nation that the experiment failed as miserably as it did.”SOURCE #216573512890500SOURCE #3-6286513716000A line of shamefaced bootleggers in a Detroit, Michigan police stationSOURCE #4“The effects of Prohibition on law enforcement were also negative. The sums of money being exchanged during the dry era proved a corrupting influence in both the federal Bureau of Prohibition and at the state and local level. Police officers and Prohibition agents alike were frequently tempted by bribes or the lucrative opportunity to go into bootlegging themselves. Many stayed honest, but enough succumbed to the temptation that the stereotype of the corrupt Prohibition agent or local cop undermined public trust in law enforcement for the duration of the era.SOURCE #5“The greatest unintended consequence of Prohibition however, was the plainest to see. For over a decade, the law that was meant to foster temperance (no alcohol) instead fostered intemperance and excess. The solution the United States had devised to address the problem of alcohol abuse had instead made the problem even worse. The statistics of the period are unreliable, but it is very clear that in many parts of the United States more people were drinking, and people were drinking more.”The growth of the illegal liquor trade under Prohibition made criminals of millions of Americans. As the decade progressed, court rooms and jails overflowed, and the legal system failed to keep up. Many defendants in prohibition cases waited over a year to be brought to trial.SOURCE #6-1771657302500Source #7: Why Prohibition?“By 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year – three times as much as we drink today – and alcohol abuse (primarily by men) was wreaking havoc on the lives of many, particularly in an age when women had few legal rights and were completely dependent on their husbands for sustenance and support.The country's first serious anti-alcohol movement grew out of a fervor for reform that swept the nation in the 1830s and 1840s. Many abolitionists fighting to rid the country of slavery came to see drink as an equally great evil to be eliminated – if America were ever to be fully cleansed of sin. The temperance movement, rooted in America's Protestant churches, first urged moderation, then encouraged drinkers to help each other to resist temptation, and ultimately demanded that local, state, and national governments prohibit alcohol outright.”FBI FOLDER #5—GANGSTERS IN ST. PAUL FILESCONFIDENTIAL! DO NOT SHARE THESE CONTENTS WITH ANYONE BESIDES YOUR FELLOW FBI AGENTS!SOURCE #1St. Paul earned its reputation as the “sanctuary for criminals” in the Midwest with the help of corrupt politicians and police chiefs who agreed to turn a blind eye to gangsters’ underground activities, which included smuggling, racketeering, and gambling. This collaboration began in 1900 with the?Layover Agreement, an unofficial contract between criminals and Chief of Police John O’Connor.In exchange for tip-offs about FBI raids and protection during their “layover” in the city, the gangsters first agreed to check in with the St. Paul police when they were in town. Secondly, they gave a portion of their gains to the police department. Finally, they agreed to commit no crimes within the city limits, though Minneapolis was fair game. Police chiefs after O’Connor, such as Frank Sommer (1922–1923) and Thomas A. Brown (1930–1932), continued to use the “O’Connor System” in an effort to keep crime levels down in St. Paul and to profit from gangsters’ illegal operations.SOURCE #2Knowing that they were generally safe in St. Paul, notorious criminals—including bank robber John Dillinger and his girlfriend Evelyn Frechette; racketeer and mob leader Al “Scarface” Capone; and the outlawed duo Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker—stayed in the city at some point, though most of their crimes were committed in other Midwestern states. In 1932, however, more than 20 percent of the nation’s bank robberies took place in Minnesota.Gangsters frequented favorite spots throughout the city, such as the Green Lantern Saloon on Wabasha Street and Nina Clifford’s brothel on Washington Street. Some gang leaders used St. Paul as the headquarters of their operations. Leon Gleckman, known as the “Bootlegging Boss” and the “Al Capone of St. Paul,” established the base of his bootlegging business at the St. Paul Hotel.Source #3: “Wanted throughout the country, "Ma" Barker and her sons, Herman, Lloyd, Arthur, and Fred teamed up with Alvin Karpis to form the Barker-Karpis Gang.? The actual degree of Ma Barker's own criminality is in doubt.? However, she did likely know of the gang's activities and helped them before and after they committed their crimes.” The Barker-Karpis Gang robbed several banks throughout the Midwest and committed numerous murders, but two high-profile kidnappings elevated their status with the FBI. In 1933 they abducted William A. Hamm, Jr., a Minnesota brewery owner, earning $100,000 in ransom. In 1934 they netted $200,000 after kidnapping Minnesota millionaire Edward Bremer.”SOURCE #4“One of the fiercest of criminal bands, the Barker-Karpis Gang ranked at the top of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) famed War on Crime, alongside John Dillinger, George "Baby Face" Nelson, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd. The Barker Gang is rooted in the family of Arizona "Ma" Clark Barker and her four sons, Herman, Lloyd, Arthur "Dock”, and Fred. In 1927 Herman Barker apparently committed suicide after he was wounded by Kansas police. In 1932 Lloyd began serving a twenty-five-year term for mail robbery at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Herman and Lloyd were never part of the later gang that earned the family's notoriety.”Source # 5 ................
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