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 a very gangster-like decision that Colosimo has to go.

The outfit orchestrates the most infamous mob massacre in history.

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

These are just brutal killers.

And last, the US government finds an unexpected

clue that will take down the outfit's kingpin.

The paper trail is what brings Capone ultimately to justice.

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 Southside.

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.

In charge of Big Jim's hit squad is his ruthless underboss, Johnny Torrio.

Torrio's 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.

To help, Torrio brings entrusted 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.

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 17th, 1920.

Washington, D.C.

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.

And Colosimo's like, eh, I'm not so sure that's a good idea.

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. 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.

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.

May 11th, 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.

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 cloakroom, fires two shots, One misses, the second one doesn't.

Hits him in the head.

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,

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 $8 a gallon, then selling it for $55 a gallon.

There's a lot of money in this. That's a heck of a markup.

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 10 times the volume of anybody else.

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 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. 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.

The North Side gang has declared war on the Chicago underworld,

and its main target is the Chicago outfit.

January 24th, 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 grace, the final shot in the head.

But Bugs Moran is out of ammunition.

Torrio came this close to getting killed by the Northside gangsters.

Johnny Torrio becomes fearful for his life.

He leaves the crime racket behind him.

So now there's an opening at the top.

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.

Two sides are at each other constantly.

Gangsters were getting shot pretty regularly.

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

As the Chicago outfit's war with the Northsiders escalates,

Al Capone is running out of patience.

By late 1928, Capone decided he's had enough of these guys on the North Side,

and he decides to try and take out Moran. February 14th, 1929.

The Chicago outfit sees their opportunity when Moran is scheduled

to inspect a shipment of bootleg whiskey at a Northside garage.

Capone's crew is waiting nearby.

What they do is about three,

four of them roll up to this garage dressed as police officers.

And they say, this is a raid.

We found you up against the wall.

But Bugs Moran has yet to arrive.

The Northsiders 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.

Instead, the police raise their guns.

February 14th, 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.

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.

Northside 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 them, 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.

Goosenberg 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.

Al Capone is out of town. He's in Florida.

He is nowhere near the warehouse. He's nowhere near the shooting.

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.

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 the Chicago newspapers.

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.

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 state 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.

Federal Prohibition Agent Elliot Ness is assigned

the task of busting up the Chicago Outfit's

multi-million dollar bootlegging operation and bringing Al Capone to justice.

Elliot 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.

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.

Elliot Ness and his crew had an extensive network of wiretapping

that they were using to block beer shipments,

to shut down speakeasies, to cut off their sources of income.

In just six months, the Untouchables dismantle half a million

dollars' worth of the Chicago outfit's bootlegging operations.

Ten million today.

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

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.

Somehow, Capone keeps outsmarting the law until his outfit makes a costly mistake.

1930, Chicago.

While the Untouchables harass the Outfitz 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,

try to figure out if he made a mistake.

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.

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.

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.

Capone figured he could buy his way out of trouble, pay off jurors,

make sure that they would rule his way.

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.

But Judge Wilkerson gets wind that Capone's gang is offering bribes to the jury.

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.

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.

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.

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 Chicago Outfit perfected during its heyday.

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.

Capone is a guy that was incredibly ruthless, incredibly violent, evil.

Didn't matter who got hurt, what got destroyed.

He is the villain, the bad guy, public enemy number one.