It was 90 years ago in 1931 that notorious Chicago mobster, bootlegger and American public enemy number one Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion. Year later he was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in Atlanta and Alcatraz federal prisons.
Alphonse Capone, known to his friends as “Snorky”, owned several cars during his lawless career which spanned the bloodiest criminal era in American history.
He had a passion for modifying them, his favourite being a 1928 green and black Cadillac 341A Town Car, chassis/engine number 306449, that had a 90bhp, 341 cubic inch V8 engine capable of pushing the 3½ ton car to 110mph.
It had a rear-wheel drive through a three-speed manual gearbox, a beam front axle, a fully floating rear axle with semi elliptic leaf springs and mechanical drum brakes on a 140 inch wheelbase.
Armour plating
It also had a few extras demanded by Capone, such as quarter-inch thick steel armour-plated and reinforced doors. The side windows were spring-loaded and contained inch-thick, five ply laminated glass with round holes cut in them “for ventilation” – which would also, of course, usefully allow a machine gun to be poked through.
A drop-down rear window was added in order to allow those in the back seat to fire freely on pursuers.
The car was painted green and black like the Chicago police cars of the time and it was also fitted with a siren and a police radio concealed in the front passenger footwell. (It was only late in 1928 that the Chicago police had radios in their cars.)
While Capone’s Cadillac 341A offered luxury and performance it was clearly built to withstand an assault by any of Capone’s rival gangs.
The car still exists – but is it genuine? A 93-year-old witness to the car’s alterations, Richard “Cappy” Capstran, remembers as a young boy helping fit some of the armour plating to the Al Capone Cadillac at his father Ernest Capstran’s garage in Chicago.
The garage had previously performed a similar alteration on another of Capone syndicate Cadillacs and Capstran remembers that his father didn’t want to touch the brand new 341A that arrived for similar alterations. “Wrong answer,” was the alleged reply, although when the work was complete Capone showed up in person to settle the bill and paid Ernest Capstran double the asking price.
Cappy Capstran viewed the same car some 80 years later in Texas when it was in the ownership of classic car collector John O’Quinn and was able confirm it was the same car.
In 1931 a Cadillac dealership in Chicago, owned by Emil Denemark, a well-known underworld figure, relative of Capone and member of “The Outfit”, the name of Capone’s gang, sold him two V16-engined Cadillacs, on credit. Denemark was heavily into organised crime and known to supply many cars to members of the mob.
At the time Capone knew the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) was looking into his business and had evidence that Capone was trying to sell his home in Florida together with several cars including his V16 Cadillacs and two yachts for $150,000 dollars.
While in prison awaiting his trial, such was Capone’s influence that an article in the Milwaukee Sentinel of 22/12/1931 stated that one of Capone’s V16 Cadillacs was being used to chauffeur prison warden David Moneypenny of the Cook County Jail. The allegation was denied and indeed the two Capone V16 cars appeared on paper to have been repossessed for non-payment. The registration plates, however, were checked and it was found that one still belonged to Al’s wife, Mrs Mae Capone.
Capone was imprisoned on the tax charges in May 1932 for what would be seven years in both Atlanta and later Alcatraz penitentiary but not before arranging for his favourite Cadillac 341A to be hidden in a Chicago garage, by a “local car dealer”, later identified as Denemark.
Owners after Capone
The car had clearly been overlooked by the IRS and it was eventually purchased in 1932 by Mr Patrick Moore of 37 Grove Street in Rockville, Connecticut from “an agent” in Chicago, again believed to be Denemark. Moore apparently wanted to use it in his travelling carnival show.
An elderly witness, Mrs Pat Denning, daughter of Moore, later confirmed the sale in 1932 and believed at the time that everyone knew the car was previously owned by Capone.
In 1939 the US government tried to intervene and stop Moore openly displaying the car because of the poor public relations it was creating in promoting American gangsterism. Yet Moore used it in his travelling carnival until May of 1943 when the car was sold to a “promoter” Mr Harry LaBreque.
LaBreque shipped the car to England for Captain De Forest Morehouse, where it was to be displayed at amusem*nt parks in Southend on Sea, Essex and in Blackpool, Lancashire. Belle Vue zoological society in Manchester was also believed to be another possible location.
A relative of LaBreque confirmed some years later that Capone’s car had indeed reached the Kursaal in Southend on Sea and offered a link that shows the car outside the Kursaal adventure playground. There is British Pathé film archive, called Essex Voices Past, of the event.
Capone’s car was later sold in 1958 to Tony Stuart, a dance hall promoter from the USA, for $510 dollars but he subsequently realised that it was illegal to own an armoured vehicle in his country after 1929 and sold it again some months later to Harley Nielson, a car enthusiast and businessman from Todmorden in Ontario, Canada.
In the mid-1960s it was sold to the Niagara Falls Antique Auto Museum which was liquidated in 1971 and the Cadillac was purchased for $37,000 dollars at auction by Peter Stranges, also of Niagara Falls, in time to promote the 1975 opening of the film Capone in Chicago.
He sold it in 1979 to B H Atchley, owner of the Smoky Mountain Car Museum in Tennessee, who refreshed the by now “yellowing” windows before selling the car at auction to John O’Quinn in 2006 for $621,500 dollars.
In 2013, the 341A was sold at a Sotheby’s St. John’s auction on behalf of O’Quinn’s estate for $355,000.
In February 2020 it again was offered for sale at auction with just 1,111 miles on the clock but failed to reach its asking price of £1,000,000 dollars.
Today the car remains in private ownership.
Capone’s other cars
Capone also owned various other cars in his life of crime including a Packard, two McFarlans and at least two Cadillac 351 saloons, none of which he had armour-plated. (McFarlan cars were made in Indiana from 1924 to 1928. These huge cars were adored by celebrities of the day like Jack Dempsey and Fatty Arbuckle and were dubbed the “American Rolls-Royce”).
In 1930 Capone ordered a new Cadillac series 452 V16 Imperial seven-seater limousine built by Fleetwood, chassis/engine number 701617, which he had converted into what can only be described as a rolling fortress.
This car had armour plating and five layers of bulletproof glass for the windows and windscreen. As with the 1928 V8, both featured holes for poking machine guns through when necessary. The wire wheels were painted black, with spares mounted either side of the car, and it had stone guards on the mirrors and radiator.
The interior had a privacy roll-up window between front and back, a police radio and a slot cut into the floor so that oil or tyre-puncturing nails could be dropped to thwart pursuers. A 40-gallon tank was added along with gadgets that created both an oil slick and a smokescreen, some 40 years before James Bond had the same in his Aston Martin.
At the time of his arrest Capone’s car was impounded from his Miami vacation home by the FBI and it remained in US custody for several years.
Was the Capone car used by a US president?
A story about its use circulated some years later when it was suggested that it had been used by Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) the day after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. American Secret Service agents allegedly needed to take the president to Congress and they were not sure how to securely transport him the short distance from the White House to Capitol Hill the next day.
With nothing suitably armour plated or bulletproof, the president’s agents allegedly decided to use Al Capone’s armoured Cadillac, which had been moved to the Treasury Department car park.
This story was later proved doubtful, however; one of FDR’s Secret Service men, Michael F. Reilly, wrote in his book Reilly of the White House: “We first picked up FDR in the Capone car on December 9th 1941” – the day after the president asked congress to declare war on Japan.
He also claimed in his book to have arranged the use of an open-topped car for the president even though Capone’s car was clearly not a convertible. Newspaper and magazine cuttings of the time also pictured the car used by FDR on that journey and it looks nothing like Capone’s car. It is assumed the story originated to boost sales of Reilly’s book. Clearly, this false provenance also benefitted future sales of the car itself.
Back into private ownership
Capone’s Cadillac 452 was eventually purchased in 1960 by Paul Ekins of Sikeston, Missouri who gave it a cosmetic restoration and obtained an authenticated statement about its ownership from an elderly gangster called Morris “Red” Rudensky, who had been Capone’s cell mate in Atlanta prison in 1932.
Rudensky suggested that while the custom modifications to the Imperial Sedan reportedly cost Capone around $12,500 dollars, a huge amount at that time, Capone’s criminal enterprise was reputedly turning over $100 million dollars a year.
In 1982 the car was purchased by the Imperial Palace Auto Collection in Las Vegas, putting the car on display until 1994 when it was sold to Sid Craig.
After several other private sales Capone’s 452 was sold at auctionfor $309,000 in 2009 and again offered for sale at Sotheby’sfor $355,000 back in 2012.
Today the car remains in a private collection.
Capone allegedly left millions of dollars squirrelled away in several of the mansions that he owned. The truth however if it can be believed recalled by cell mates, relatives, historians and researchers suggest that at the end he had little money and few possessions.
When he left prison in November 1946 after serving seven years he was a very sick man suffering from neurosyphilis with a mind like a 12-year-old and he was sadly not able to confirm or deny any of the stories about his life or possessions. He died of a stroke on January 25, 1947 aged 48.
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