POISON BULLETS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 955, 24 April 1930, Page 11

POISON BULLETS

GUNMAN RAIDED AND BIG SUPPLY FOUND “SCARFACE” EXPLOITS United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright CHICAGO, Tuesday. A police raid was carried out today on the headquarters of “Scarface” A 1 Capone, a notorious gang leader, in a Chicago hotel. Police-Lieutenant Blaul subsequently stated that six boxes of cartridges which had been dipped in garlic were found. Lead and garlic in a bullet would poison a person. *rnat would start tetanus and end in death. Most of the bullets were “dumdums.” They would have meant certain death to anyone wounded by them. Capone is no desperado of the old school, plundering or murdering for the savage joy of crime. He is, in his own phrase, “business man,” who wears clean linen, rides in a Lincoln car, leaves acts of violence to hirelings. He has an eleven-year-old son noted for his gentlemanly manners. Born in Brooklyn of an Italian family, he was a “good boy” until he was 17. Then, in a Greenpoint pool room, he knocked down a stranger, and thought he had killed him. A cousin in Brooklyn’s “Five Points” gang hid him away from the police. When the stranger recovered, young A 1 was ready to work on small “jobs.” In a Coney Island fight he was slashed across the left cheek, though later he insisted that the scar came from war service in the Lost Battalion. LIQUOR GANGS In 1921 Capone went to Chicago and when Prohibition started to create a demand for liquor, gangs were formed to supply the demand and to beat off rivals. Capone began as a brothel keeper, which started his police record with a £lO fine. In 1923 Colosimo. his chief, was murdered. Torrio, the second, took command of the liquor and vice gang, Capone becoming hi 3 No. 1 assistant. Fierce was the hostility between the South Side gang under Torrio and the North Side gan'g under Dion O’Banion. In 1924 O’Banion was shot down in his florist shop. A few months later Torrio was mangled with slugs and fled to Europe. It was then that Capone took charge, pushed liis programme of expansion, and then that “Bugs” Moran, supposed successor to O’Banion, became his bitterest gangland enemy. A sporty dresser, he used to put on mourning when any of his own men fell in a battle. lie wore flashy diamonds and a rose in his lapel. The sight of a photographer used to drive him to a profane rage. Legends grew up about him: that he travelled in an armoured car, wore a bullet-proof vest. With every gang murder that occurred in Chicago his name was automatically connected. But the police could never fasten on him even the least semblance of legal guilt.