DEATH IN CICERO: THE BLOODY END OF FRANK CAPONE

1924: DEATH IN CICERO
The Bloody End of Frank Capone

In 1923, the South Side Outfit, which was run by John Torrio and Al Capone, went looking for a place where they could not only expand their operations, but could stay out of the reach of Chicago’s new reform mayor, William E. Dever. In just a short time in office, Dever had closed down more than seven thousand speakeasys in the city and had made a sizable dent in the mob’s business.

The found a suitable haven in the West Side town of Cicero. The industrious town, located on the ragged western boundary of Chicago, extending from Roosevelt Road on the north to Pershing Road on the south, was home to about sixty thousand people and while it had a reputation for being politically corrupt, it was largely a law and order town. The area was dominated by the Western Electric plant, which paid its forty thousand employees well, meaning that the local populace had plenty of money to spend in the gambling parlors and saloons. Cicero also had a large number of Czech immigrants, who were accustomed to thick, Bohemian beer. This was supplied by the West Side O'Donnells, who had not joined the Torrio-Capone syndicate, and who regarded Cicero as their territory.

Torrio decided to probe the extent of the O'Donnells' power in Cicero by setting up a brothel on Roosevelt Road. The Cicero police, acting for the O'Donnells, shut it down. The city leaders disapproved of prostitution, but they did allow gambling, although only at slot machines. The slot machines in Cicero were all controlled by Eddie Vogel, a local politician. Torrio, in retaliation for the brothel closing, sent out the Cook County Sheriff to confiscate Vogel's slot machines. Torrio then sat down with the O'Donnells and Vogel and negotiated a truce. The slot machines were returned and Torrio agreed not to open any more sporting houses in Cicero. In addition, Torrio allowed them to continue to supply beer to some areas of the city. In exchange, the Torrio syndicate was granted the right to sell beer everywhere else in Cicero, and to run gambling parlors and dance halls wherever it wanted.

Torrio, having gained entry into Cicero, left everything in Capone's hands and departed for a sightseeing tour of Europe and Italy with his wife and mother. He bought his mother a villa in Naples and deposited a considerable sum of money in various continental banks. He later returned to Chicago, but before that, Capone was left to consolidate their gains in Cicero.

Frank Capone

Torrio left Al Capone to handle setting up operations in Cicero.

In Torrio’s absence, Capone sought a new headquarters and found it at the Hawthorne Inn, located at 4833 Twenty-Second Street. It was a two-story structure of brown brick with white tiles set in the upper façade. Bulletproof steel shutters were fitted for every window and an armed guard was stationed at each entrance. The interior lobby was dominated by four green columns and by mounted big game heads on the walls. Red-carpeted stairs went up to the second floor bedrooms, where Capone and his men often spent the night.

The first challenge that awaited Capone in Cicero was taking over the city government. His chance came with the mayoral election of 1924 between Democrat Rudolph Hurt and Republican Joseph Z. Klenha. The Klenha faction, a bipartisan machine, had ruled the town for three terms, but now the Democrats were putting up a separate slate. Worried that Cicero would be infected by the reforms that were taking place in Chicago under Mayor Dever, the Klenha bosses came to Capone with an attractive proposition. If they made sure that Klenha won the election, they could count on immunity from the law in any operation they undertook in Cicero, with the exception of sporting houses.

Twenty-Second Street in Cicero. The Hawthorne Inn is clearly visible. Next door was the Hawthorne Smoke Shop, a gambling parlor that the Outfit opened after the 1924 elections.

Capone immediately began making plans for Election Day and borrowed about two hundred men from his Chicago allies to make sure the vote went their way. The opposition was also supported by gangsters, rallying bootleg beer wholesalers who wanted to take Torrio-Capone territory for themselves.

The first casualty was the Democratic candidate for town clerk, William K. Pflaum. On March 31, the night before the election, syndicate gangsters raided his campaign headquarters. The place was ransacked and Pflaum’s face was bloodied and his wife was shoved against a wall.

On April 1, Capone threw the weight of the syndicate behind Klenha. By this time, Capone had brought his entire family to Chicago, and his brothers Ralph and Frank and his cousin Charley Fischetti helped bring out the vote for Klenha and other syndicate candidates.

Death Photo of Frank Capone

They spread terror wherever they went. Gangsters stationed themselves at polling booths and made sure that voters only cast ballots for the candidates of choice. Those who opposed them were violently beaten and those who went along were allowed to vote as many times as they wished. Honest poll watchers and election officials were kidnapped and held captive until the polls closed. A Democratic campaign worker named Michael Gavin was shot through both legs and dumped into the basement of a gangster-owned Chicago hotel along with eight other troublesome Democrats. An election official named Joseph Price was beaten and then kept gagged and tied up at Harry Madigan’s Pony Inn. A policeman was black-jacked. Two men were shot dead on Twenty-Second Street near the Hawthorne Inn. A third man had his throat cut and a fourth was killed at Eddie Tancl’s saloon.

A group of terrorized Cicero residents appealed for help from Cook County Judge Edmund K. Jarecki. He ordered seventy Chicago police officers, five squads of detectives and nine squads of motorized police to go into Cicero and put a stop to the violence. Throughout the afternoon, gangsters and police officers fought pitched battles. The climax of the day came near dusk.

A squad car carrying Detective Sergeant Cusick and Patrolmen McGlynn, Grogan, Cassin, and Campion pulled up alongside a polling place at the corner of Twenty-Second Street and Cicero Avenue. There, intimidating voters with automatics in their hands, were Al and Frank Capone and their cousin, Charlie Fischetti. The policemen, all dressed in plain clothes, got out of their car with shotguns and rifles and started walking across the street toward the polling place.

The Capones and Fischetti spotted the armed men coming toward them and mistaking them for rival gangsters, opened fire at them. Frank Capone took careful aim at Patrolman McGlynn and pulled the trigger – but the automatic didn’t fire. Before he could react, McGlynn and Grogan gave him both barrels of their shotguns and Frank fell to the sidewalk. The police then emptied their revolvers into his body as he lay bleeding on the pavement.

Al Capone, fleeing down the sidewalk, ran into another squad and managed to hold them at bay with a gun in each hand until he could vanish under the cover of darkness. The police never arrested him. They captured Fischetti but he was released a short time later.

Frank Capone, only twenty-nine years old, was given a magnificent gangland funeral. He was placed in a silver-plated casket and the modest Capone home on South Prairie Avenue was filled with more than $20,000 worth of flowers. A procession of one hundred cars took the casket to Mount Carmel Cemetery. In Cicero, as a mark of respect for the slain man, nearly every tavern owner kept his blinds drawn and his doors locked for two hours.

One month after the elections, Torrio and Capone launched, without interference, their first Cicero gambling den, the Hawthorne Smoke Shop, next to the Hawthorne Inn. Capone had lost a brother but he had won the election. The mob was now in charge of Cicero.

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