In January 1899, Gabriel and Theresa Capone were awaiting the birth of their new son, unaware that he would eventually become one of the most notorious gangsters of all time. On the seventeenth of that month, their child Alphonse, later known as Al, was born. "He grew up in a rough neighborhood and was a member of two "kid gangs," the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors" (www.chicagohistory.org/history/capone.html). He enlisted, "as a waiter-bouncer for Frankie Yale's Harvard Inn at Coney island in the summer of 1917, where his face was scarred in a knife attack by Frank Gallucia"( " . Capone was later forced to move to Chicago when he became wanted by the police for attempted murder. He began working for a former acquaintance Johnny Torrio, who handled a local vice lord's assets. The murder of the vice lord, rocketed Capone from his current position of a lowly bouncer all the way to a place in history as one of the Prohibition era's most prominent underworld bosses and one of the most treacherous gangsters of all time.
             Capone combined many different gangs, "including the... gang, who introduced the Thompson submachine gun (into) gang warfare, to form the Chicago Syndicate, or Outfit"( " . After Torrio was shot in the Chicago Beer Wars and he retired in New York, Capone inherited the Syndicate. The five-year war eventually erupted in a brutal massacre at 2122 North Clark Street on February 14, 1929. Capone gangsters lined up six members of a rival gang and an innocent bystander and machine-gunned them. The intended target was not even present at the time. This atrocity, cunningly named the Valentines Day Massacre, awoke a feeling of public indignation in all of America. To complicate Capone's life further he was declared Public Enemy Number One by the Chicago Crime commission. They intended to turn the public even more against him.
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