All language subtitles for Gangland Chronicles S01E07 1080p WEB h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[♪]

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.