Capone’s cell wasn’t Pa. palace of myth. He even had roomie.
PHILADELPHIA — When mobster Al Capone was jailed in Philadelphia in 1929, one newspaper portrayed his cell as a luxurious lockup, adorned with richly colored oriental rugs, polished wood furniture and other trappings the mob boss told the reporter were “very comfortable.”
The Eastern State Penitentiary, which is now a museum, worked hard to recreate the cell to fit that description.
Turns out, that account might not have been accurate, and a key detail was missing: “Public Enemy Number One” had a roommate.
What started in January as a simple project to repaint Capone’s cell turned into a complete reworking of it and led to an entirely new exhibit.
The new Capone cell, now with an extra cot and less fancy decor, opened to the public Thursday.
Workers prepping for the paint job found dozens of layers of highly decorated paint on the walls of the cell, one depicting an apparent mural, another with intricately painted faux wood grain, said Liz Trumbull, manager of historic preservation at Eastern State Penitentiary.
They decided to preserve the various paint examples in Cell 1, and move the Capone exhibit next door to Cell 3. It was never certain that Capone was housed in Cell 1 to begin with, said Sean Kelley, director of interpretation at the museum; he could have been in any of the four cells that held high-profile prisoners, a stretch dubbed “Park Avenue.”
“As we began to research what the cell looked like at the time, we began to question if his treatment was as luxurious as portrayed,” Kelley said.
They discovered that the day after the Public Ledger reporter wrote about Capone’s fancy digs, a journalist from a competing paper found that the mobster’s abode was no lap of luxury.
“Capone’s cell, which he shares with an embezzler known as ‘Bill’ Coleman, prison statistician, doesn’t look like the cozy den of a king of leisure,” reads the Philadelphia Record account from Aug. 21, 1929. It goes on to describe a small table with a vase of gladiolas, a prison-made rag rug on the floor, a dresser and two cots at the rear of the cell.
The only fancy detail was a “smoking stand in the form of a butler.”
The museum has recreated the room to better match that description but retains other items from the previous exhibit, including the period radio that plays waltz music.
Capone dominated organized crime as a bootlegger in Chicago during the period when liquor was banned. His legend grew in 1929 with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre — when seven men linked to a rival gang were lined up outside a garage and shot dead. No one was charged in the deaths, though experts cite Capone.
In August 1929, Capone and his entourage were driving to Chicago from Atlantic City when he was apprehended on concealed deadly weapon charges in Philadelphia. Some accused him of tipping off authorities himself to arrange his arrest as a way to hide out from escalating gang violence.
He was released in March 1930.
Less than two years later, a federal court convicted Capone on multiple charges of tax evasion and sentenced him to 11 years in prison, effectively ending his criminal career. After his release in 1939, he moved to Florida where he died in 1947.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A military-charted jet carrying 143 people landed hard, then bounced and swerved as the pilot struggled to control it amid thunder and lightning, ultimately skidding off the runway and coming to a crashing halt in a river at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
It meant chaos and terror for passengers in the Boeing 737, as the plane jolted back and forth and oxygen masks deployed, then overhead bins opened sending contents spilling out.
But authorities said everyone on board emerged without critical injuries Friday night, lining up on the wings as they waited to be rescued.
The charter flight slid off the runway Friday evening and abruptly landed in the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.
The Miami Air International Boeing 737, inbound from the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, skidded about 9:40 p.m., the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department said. There were 136 passengers and seven crew members aboard, all of whom survived. Twenty-one people were transported to local hospitals, according to the fire department.
Capt. Michael Connor, the commanding officer of NAS Jacksonville, said the passengers were a mix of military personnel and families, and a few civilians.
“I think it is a miracle,” Connor said Friday night. “We could be talking about a different story this evening.”
The NTSB sent a team of investigators Saturday to the crash site in north Florida, where the aircraft was still partially submerged in shallow water and its nose cone was sliced off, apparently from the impact. Several pets were still on the plane as well, and their status wasn’t immediately clear. A navy statement early Saturday offering “hearts and prayers” to their owners said safety issues prevented rescuers from immediately retrieving the animals.
It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to overshoot the runway, but it landed in a thunderstorm, with lightning nearby and heavy rain on the runway, according to the Weather Network.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry announced Friday that teams had quickly contained any jet fuel from contaminating the river water. The White House also called to offer assistance, Curry said.
Coincidentally, the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue division had trained its Special Operations team and marine units in protocol for a similar incident earlier Friday.
In a statement early Saturday, Boeing extended its “well wishes to all those involved.”
The plane, a Boeing 737800, first flew in April 2001 and is the oldest of six aircraft in Miami Air International’s fleet, according to the Aviation Safety Network. It has been leased in several stints to airlines in Europe.
The U.S. Navy operates a base at Guantanamo Bay, on land it leases from the Cuban government. Since 2002, there has been a military prison at the base.
Cheryl Bormann, a criminal defense attorney from Chicago who was a passenger on the flight, told CNN they flew through thunderstorms on their approach to Jacksonville.
“As we went down, we had a really hard landing,” she said. “And then the plane bounced and screeched and bounced some more ... then it came to a complete like crash stop.”
When things calmed down in the cabin, passengers tried to figure out where they had landed. “We were in water,” Bormann said. “We couldn’t tell where we were, whether it was a river or an ocean.”