Transcripts For CSPAN2 Al Capone 20161226

Out of this is al capone and it is so wonderful to have a to have a new book that really delves into and as something more than the stereotypes and cartoon figures that you see on tv. So enough for me other than a little housekeeping. If anything horrible happens, emergency exit are here and here. If you have anything that will make noise during the talk, cell phones, beepers, small children coming days for new jersey, please turn them off now. Also, please do not take any film or recordings of the talk in progress. Very important. Without further ado, it is my great joy, deirdre bair. Thank you. [applause] there will be a question and answers afterwards. It will be an orderly fashion to ask your questions. Well, thank you for coming. It delightful to see everyone here in so many good friends. That makes me especially happy. I am going to begin tonight by reading a few pages from the book that is going to give you a brief introduction to al capone, starting with the man himself and then alleging he became. And then im going to talk about his life and his legacy and sort of give you a sense of what you are going to find when you read the book yourself. This is how i began the book. This is the story of neighbors was killer, a scofflaw, a keeper of corvallis, a perpetrator of fraud, a convicted talon and the mindless comment lumbering idiot. Also a loving husband, son and father who describes himself as a businessman whose job was to serve the people what they wanted. Al capone was all of these. He died in 1947 and almost seven decades later it seems that anywhere one travels in the world, people still recognize his name and they have something to say about who he was and what he did. Everyone has an opinion and yet within a deeply private world, his extended family, theres an ongoing quest to find answers about the familys most famous member. The same goes that all Family History is often a mystery and that all families are closed narratives. Difficult to read from the outside. Attempting to reconstruct the truth of the family, it is very much like trying to solve the most complicated puzzle imaginable and in the case of those who bear a name that his statements or as in the case about capones relatives and defendant, and finance the task can be heavy indeed. Some relatives found it easier to change their surnames and to deal with his history. They chose to distance themselves and deny the relationship for a number of reasons. Some merely wanted to be ordinary private lives. Some said they fear reprisals from gangland, chicago while still others remained connected in varying degrees said they wanted to make their way in the world unencumbered by the long shadow of al capone. And still, there were those who kept the capone man, but said it was the reason why they had to lead lives, some of it as far away as they could get while others on the most cautious he from one town to another throughout northern illinois, never far from the security and familiar and i were meant to chicago. In recent years, the question of who has the right to claim a legitimate place within the family of al capone has resulted in some interesting pieces that may or may not say it into the puzzle of its history. You who only know him from newspaper stories from ever realize the real man he is sent his sister in 1929 when he was in his prime. It is the remark echoed today by his granddaughters who have only recently become in all in sorting out what they call their amazing Family History. One of the questions they is how they could have different personality traits. The talk among themselves about the history and argue and debate about whose memory is the most correct and which is the closest to the truth. They try to assist their grandparents and parents with honesty, object to the become an distance and attachment and they admit the difficulty of if not the impossibility of arriving at a definitive conclusion. When they talk about their papa as they call him, they first put out upon an error quote and they ask themselves, what gave rise to the minute into the legend . How did the grandfathers they adored fit into all of these stories . Where was the real person within the grandiose and exaggerated public personality whose exploits continue to grow ever more outrageous seven decades after his death. It will be 80 years next year that al capone has been dead. What was it then takes the name of the man who died sick, broke implemented in 1947 so instantly recognizable at decade and a half into a brandnew century. Are we fascinated with him today because of the socalled roaring 20s of the colorful time in which he lived . Is it because we now seek to understand the many ethnic histories that formed our country and therefore the circumstances of his birth and family life as an italianamerican that might shed some light on our own assimilationist american or is it simply al capones largerthanlife personality, the outsized figure who strutted across our historical stage for such a brief time that we did not have enough time that he was a test to assess him. After so many intervening years can we figure him out . And after seven decades, it is nothing left but admit. The members of this family accrues me that the magma of al capone is a riddle to be solved and now is the time to try to do it. Now im going to reach a little bit about the legend of al capone as it is today. Al capones brief life was florid and dramatic but his afterlife with even more powerful and his reign as the king of crime lasted for six short years and after he was stripped of power, the public still could not get enough of him. And the almost seven decades since he died, the frenzy of publicity he inspired during his lifetime has increased exponentially and shows no sign of slowing down. He died in 1947 and in 2016, the daily google alert still records anywhere from half a dozen to two dozen new head every single day. New books and films appear about him almost every year and these include novels, bio pics, documentaries, even documentaries. There are memoirs that purport to tell the real truth along with biographies for specific audiences that include young adults and very, very young children. 18yearold told me, you kill bad guys and that was okay because it let them feed poor people. The television series, boardwalk empire, has made him surprisingly not an antiyounger viewers cant get enough of them. His name appears on all sorts of listing it aint one from the Smithsonian Magazine that named him one of the 100 most influential americans of all time in the entire history of our country. Websites are devoted to him and the museum in las vegas gets its best cries when exhibits feature him. Donna tussauds . Museum in and cisco captured him after his disease took over in the lifesize statue of al capone sitting in his albatross fell playing the mandolin. Gangster rally just a those who were fascinated by criminals have been dubbed and professors who proclaim themselves upon scholars debate every aspect of his life and if it can be called as such, his work. Law schools study his court case, bar associations reenacted and academic institutions for the most bypass to the most local courses, Harvard Business school examines the capone a good. The Key Community College Holds a course entitled simply al capone and when it was first given it was so popular that it was oversubscribed and tumor sessions had been scheduled. Restaurants claim he ate there. Hotels claimed that he slept there and theres even the laughable contention that he often sneaked off and on to play golf on scottish courses. One reporter said it best. If al capone frequented even a 10th of the places he said to have come at the notorious mobster or they would have had time to go to chicago crime empire, let alone run the thing. For musical groups to young adult novels, just his name in the title can demand can command far more interest than most of the merit. Cats and dogs on internet postings, especially the countless pit bull to bear his name are sure to be quickly adopted. His name alone can secure a good table at the young women in favor of disco who bears the capone surnamed by this every time she tries to reserve a table in a posh restaurant. His face is on postage stamps, where they even have one of many hiding her face behind a fur coat and where his images centrally placed, and tory escapes yours, mugshots ill capone has centered. In romania, websites and radio groups proliferate and writers and journalists there seek contact with americans who write about al capones life and crime. In bulgaria, the bulgarian mafia claims they study the opposite to learn how to conduct their business. In england in the 1960s, the cray brothers notorious for murder and extortion modeled themselves after, quote, that upperclass criminal, ill capone. And in iceland, the entire town is allegedly a status with the festival were all the residents are devoted to discourage of chicago. When the mexican drug lord al chacko escaped from prison, the comparison to al capone was immediate and allcaps a was quickly dubbed the new public enemy number one. Reporters dont stretch their intellects when writing stories about dodging hedge fund managers. They just make the immediate comparison to al capone in the public gets the message. An amazing midst defense lawyer in chicago. How often his name is used to spice up the story. And without any reference to ca is, was or might have been, ill capones name is the one to grasp when making comparisons with everything in the current president ial election to the finale of the immensely Popular Television series downtown happy. It is so easy for everyone to compare donald trump to al capone, but Hillary Clinton gets her comparison of file. Donald trump is al capone on steroids and Hillary Clinton is al capone in the pantsuit. Donald trumps tax situation and Hillary Clintons female scat plenty of comparison and as for downtown iv, the New York Times that may not the 60s and the pbs serial wrote that certain a couple of days who were each charged with separate murders, quote, has spent more combined time in jail than al capone. People from chicago who travel abroad have a tailor to detail of what happens to them when they say they are from chicago. The local residents quickly form their hands into a tommy gun and make the salad. As one young man wrote on the internet a short time ago, i get sick and tired of coming here. One of the most thoughtful replies that the fascination continues because the device in al capone just gets easier as time goes by and we get more and more disconnected from what he actually did. It is precisely this disconnect that has contributed to the unending question of what was there about this man to turn him into an International Cultural icon and by the mere mention of his name seth at the chain of immediate associations. Writers have long pondered the question of why this particular man became the celebrity among so many colorful gangsters and mobsters and why the legends that have grown up around those sites that display, the violent and benevolent have become so shrouded in myth. How did he evolve the other outside criminal characters of his era become an internationally recognized cultural reference while so many others go unrecognized today. So now im going to talk a little bit and im going to start by telling you that he was born in brooklyn january 17, 1899. He was the fourth son and the second one born in the United States to italian immigrant parents gabrielle he and teresa capone. He grew up in a family that kept the ways that the old country and is deeply steeped in every time and tradition. But all his life he was quick to correct anyone into become angry every time he was called battalion. Im an american. I was born in brooklyn he would say and im proud of it. His first home of the crowded tenement on the street that led to the main gate at the Brooklyn Navy card. And he grew up watching the boys who were in a local game called police at may the he watched while they assault the sailors aboard out of the main gate. As soon as he was old enough, which was publicly when he was around eight years old, he joined a gang. He was victorious aged he was a fast runner. So no sale are ever caught him. By the time he was 12, he had graduated from being the gangs mascot to being one of the most dependable and fearless fighters. He stayed in school for the sixth grade, which he had to repeat. But not because he was a bad student, because actually he was a very good student, but because he played so often he was seldom in the classroom. His parents believed in education and they wanted all their signs to stay in school as long as possible. But every one of them quite at the first opportunity and they found work such as that was an anticriminal activity. Ill like school and United States longer if he had not gotten into a brawl with his teacher. He knocked her down or maybe he can knock her out and then he simply walked out of school and he never went back. After that, he followed his two older brothers, ralph and frank into the criminal world and this was after the oldest brother, vincenzo simply walked out of the house one day and disappeared, not to be heard from again for the next 47 years. And when he came back, he was known as to kunhardt, a gun toting, worse writing cowboy in full regalia who had been a blond man in nebraska, dedicated to smashing toes and enforcing the laws of prohibition all of which his brothers have been actively flaunting. You cant make that a period house leaving school with a particular blow to his father who had worked hard to learn english and he hoped that his sons would lead better lives than his own. He set himself up as a barber while his wife took in boarders and did piecework selling to help keep the family afloat. Gabrielle he thought he was encouraging out to become a legitimate businessman when he bought him a shoe shine box and set him up on brooklyns columbia street under the famous clock. Instead, all became just the opposite. From the ages of 14 to 18, he was brooklyn punk who very early showed signs of the street smarts that he later used to run the chicago outfit. His father did want out to learn the lessons of capitalism and in a real sense he did. When the other boys validate a vocation he had chosen, they set their own boxes near his. Ill didnt want to get his hands dirty, so he sold his box and then he rounded up some other boys to intimidate the other enterprising shoe shiner is into paying him protection money. If they wanted to keep doing business, they have to pay all capone or alice. So what are we going to call this . Are we going to College Talent . Such talent did not go unnoticed by the various in crime boss says who were always on the lookout for young enterprising husbands to join the ring. By the time how was 18, he was working from john victoria. The crime boss responsible for bringing him to chicago. By the time he was named team, al capone was also a father several weeks before he became a married man. It was the most unlikely marriage for this was early in the 20th century immigrant ethnic groups within their own enclaves intended to stick to their own kind and was always called many with irish. She was two years older and very much about him on the social round of the reboot pouring into this country. May his family with lace curtain irish while alice was before. They lived in their own house while the capone split and rooms on the upper floor of the walkout that is jampacked with others just like them. Her father went to work in an Office Every Day in a white shirt and tie while his father cut hair in the family kitchen until he could save enough to set up his own shop. Her mother went directly from his house to her own house and never worked to so many irish processing households surveyed. His mother clung to the ways of the old country and was so frightened of the world outside her building that she never left it except for food shopping and she called that going down to america. The marriage was highly unusual for several other reasons. In those days, irish girls to marry italian men were said to have made mixed marriages and the italian partner was commonly referred to as the colored. Even more unusual come at the did not take place until several weeks that are the birth of their child, Oliver Francis capone who was always called 70. A mixed marriage such as this brought almost as much shame acid of pregnancy before marriage. It may stayed throughout the pregnancy openly and proudly and her family home. They had to visit the woman he desperately wanted to marry but only when her mother was in there. It is generally believed by the capone descendent of mrs. Conklin was responsible for the delay because the pregnancy was a difficult one and her mother thought she would miscarry and therefore would read no need for a mixed wedding. But sony was born prematurely after a troubled pregnancy, and so they held firm and several weeks after she gave birth, they were married. Before i talk about his life in crime, i want to take a moment to talk about circumstances in which italian immigrant lived in the 20th century. Im not using it to defend the reasons that al capone turned to a career in crime, but i want to use it to explain the world in which he grew up. It was a time when the new york metropolitan area was swelled by around 800,000 people who came from southern and Eastern Europe and that was when people let john quinn, the lawyer who bankrolled writers like t. S. Eliot and james joyce despite every one of these newcomers. This is what quinn said using one of the many slurs for italians. And i quote, for a seven or 800,000 day goes. A couple hundred thousand low walks. 50 or 60,000 croat and seven or 800,000 sweating, pacing germans. They are automatically pewaukee appetites. New york City Government essentials had a different did and i quote again. We cant get along without the italian. We need someone to do our dirty work and the irish wont do it anymore. Only jacob rees who wrote about italian immigrants in his classic book of the other half lived saw the italianamerican situation for what it was and this is what he said. Italia and had the instinct of cleanliness, but it is drowned out by the mass events. Eggs of every sort were rampant and it was almost as if there was no other possibility for an upwardly striving boys to better himself and through a life of crime. Several things came together just after sonny capone was born and just after al married may. Their descendents and many of the scholars who study his life and work believe this is why he turned away from legitimate work to a life of crime. Just after he was married, his father died of a heart attack at a very young age 59 years old and even though was the fourth son, he listed tenable one so he became the patriarch in the head of his family. The older brother had disappeared. The other two could not be counted on to support their mother, their sister had three younger brothers and it failed to provide for those five people as well as his own wife and son. His family thinks he might have been the legitimate businessman he always proclaimed himself to be if he had not then they become the sole support for seven people and writers whose daddy al capone when he started his life in crime make remarks such as if he had been born 30 or 40 years later, he could have been lee iacocca. The fact that the Harvard Business school makes a case study surge of support that possibility. I am not going to go into details now about how he got to chicago except i am going to say that he claimed one simple reason for going there. I needed to make a living and i thought i needed more. Once he got there, his rise to the spec tacky alert. As one writer put it, and i quote here, capone would go from a 15 a week ma voip, and occasional to one of the most powerful and wealthy man in the world and he did all of this in a mere 60 years. He was 25 when he took over and 31 when it all and it. And during those six years, his first goal fortune was estimated at over 40 million by the time he went to jail, he was broken. And the book i wrote that his ascent and mobbed him was sensational in his downfall media iraq. And yet, here we are almost speedy years later and everything about that brief time continues to command worldwide attention, interest and speculation. One of the reasons i think its because early on he learned how to coopt the media. I credit out the pot with the invention of spin while other gangsters stayed out of the limelight, he courted it. He put reporters on his payroll and with one editor in particular, he offers the first crack at scoops in exchange for positive stories being written about him. He even tried to hire one of the earliest and most famous publicist to polish his public image. This is the man who is known to all as poison ivy the period he was the man who changed the public image of clients such as john d. Rockefeller and Charles Lindbergh and he very quickly declined how capones very lucrative offer. Ill even try to hire a writer to ghost write his autobiography the same time savior of everybody in chicago. But this terrified fellow with it off the hook once the government set its sights on al capone and had other things to worry about. Again, i hesitate to make comparisons to the Political Climate of the current election year, but i cant resist doing it. Reporters described the clothing he wore, the yellow pea green suit with diamond pinky ring that was anything from four to 11 carats depending who is writing about it. But the lots of silver dollars that he allegedly threw from his specially at fleet of bullet proof cars. When he set up a soup kitchen, a genuine act of kindness in the depression, reporters were quick to say yeah, sure, that he extorted all the food he served from small businesses. Even after he went to prison, when there is nothing to report or read about, they invented stories. One headline read how capone lost 11 pounds. Another one was how capone read a biography of napoleon. The biggest scoop above two russians writers were touring the United States and in their book, they wrote that al was sitting in his alcatraz so secretly writing antisoviet articles at the Hearst Newspapers for publishing. So i found out lots of surprising things about al capone during the four years they spent researching and writing the book. But one of the most surprising was how briefly he was on top of the criminal world. He was in a court room type and a half years after he ascended to power, defending his, not from the several hundred murderers he was thought to have ordered in the several dozen or so he was alleged to have been correctly involved in. He was in the courtroom for tax evasion, particularly his income tax. In 1831, he was in the atlanta federal penitentiary. The most punitive prison in the country until alcatraz was set up in 1934 because the government wanted to send the less into the criminal world that this was going to be a present whose name was send shivers down the spines of the most hardened criminals and who better to imprisonment public enemy number one, al capone. Nevermind that his brain is already so riddled that he had the mentality of somewhere between seven and 12 years of age. His end was a sad one as he was released early on because he had contracted a very kind man which he gave to his wife and son had so riddled that mentality. He didnt die in prison. He died in his own bed in his miami homes surrounded by the family that loved him and the wife who claimed she knew every terrible thing she had ever done, but she still loved him anyway. He was only 48 years old. And as i said, here we are almost 80 years later with his name so widely known that the smithsonian put him on its list of the 100 most influential americans of all time. What was there then about al capone that captured so many different kinds of imagination . I am going to an by reading just a few paragraphs from the book. A writer named catherine fortune in 1931 good article about al capone and she called him gorgeously and typically american. I think she was correct to say that about him because his rise to fame so paralleled the most unusual moment in american history, one that could well fit the same description and of course i referred to prohibition it was curious early form of Political Correctness that was imposed upon the entire country when a small number of fanatics convinced the National Government that laws mandating universal behavior could be enforced. It was a weirdly schizophrenic time when even the former president and later chief justice of the Supreme Court of the William Howard taft observed with regret that the strongest tendency of human nature was the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people. I dont think weve changed very much, happily since then . Unlike others who had wealth and socialist nation in use and surreptitiously to defy the unpopular law that they were often charged with enforcing, ill capone ignored it and he told the truth about why he did so. He openly admitted that he sold illegal alcohol to the best people and he said he did it as a Public Service to supply a demand that was pretty popular for most americans. In the 1920s, and made him an American Hero because he did publicly what most of them had to do in hiding. Ill capone to fight the law and he got away with it. It is the next step to true ascend that the cultural norms underwent ethnic changes at the end of world war i. Women got the vote. They shorten their skirts and went to work. She did and dissolution than refuse to join the traditional workforce then they took off for foreign clients to create the Great American novel or to revolutionize the art world. And theyre opting out of what is known as the traditional american way gave rise to the glamorous minute but have since surrounded european expatriates. The rich who always got richer suddenly found they have lots of company as the economy soared in the middle classes found themselves with lots of disposable income. The time is right for thumbing ones nose at what constituted acceptable social conduct and with the flamboyant bootlegger leading the way, many others were as eager to break all the smaller prohibitions and constrictions on their private lives as they were to disobey the large one that was forced upon them by the 18th amendment. Ill capone led them on and the public loved him. Even though he was largely with possible for washing the street of chicago in blood. For most americans who did not ask. Such sites directly, newspaper photographs and movies that portrayed sprawl, bloody dead gangsters and bullet ridden cars are only entertainment and far removed from real life. Evo was appealing. It was even enticing. As long as it didnt touch them directly. Evil had he come entertainment, disconnecting the public even more from the violence of the gang wars and ill capones part in them. James odonnell bennett was one of the first journalist to try to explain the phenomenon that al capone had become and he described how, and i quote here, with no conscious effort, he emanated was saying please. He was the criminal version of a scottish b b and his luridly covered but exquisitely tailored suit with a handkerchief neatly folded in his pocket right back out to cover the disfiguring facial scars whenever he needed to smile for the cameras. Everyone knew to be where that smile for it to turn sinister in a moment. He was censured the perfect human paradox and the counterpoint, the political paradox that was prohibition. He was so wildly charming, so blatantly outsized and everything that he did and so fully in the public eye that it is hard to believe such a good fellow and ones so highly entertaining a key of the pithy quotation and catchy phrase, he couldnt be all that bad. Or prohibition it mightve been the law of the land, but nobody took it seriously. That was how al capone both of the publics imagination and that was how we was regarded until the market crashed. Once that happened, Public Opinion reflect did the change new world of the great depression. Public opinion is easily diverted and fickle at best and it turned against him. Not entirely, but just do not for people to feel selfrighteous satisfaction to say in one breath at a cop what was coming to him and in the next that he got that in a shaky trial on trumped up charges and yet even as they passed righteous judgment, they remained alert for every scrap of information about al capone life in prison and his mental decline seeped out. They were ghoulishly avid for news the more bizarre the better. The stories about him during his lifetime are often flawed in both content and interpretation. So arriving at the factual certainty at Public Events is difficult. The consensus is that arriving at anything approaching a definitive interpretation of the man who was ill capone remains elusive. All that we have speculation and probability and they only lead to endless possibilities. Oscar wilde said of himself, god knows when he was asked whats posterity going to make a view . His answer, oscar was the answer is something ill capone could have set as well, and i quote, somehow or rather i will be famous and if not famous, ill be victorious. Wild conditioned himself as bleeding, and again i quote, a life of pleasure for a time and after that, who knows, perhaps that will be the end of me, too. For now the only certainty as time passes and the man who is al capone into his eerie, the legend shows no sign of stopping. Thank you. [applause] so often when you read a book, i know youre going to want to have the opportunity. If you have a process, please why not we will have you come forward. [inaudible conversations] i will repeat it. I will repeat the question. [inaudible] how does he get away with all those murders . The basic question is how he got away with all those murders. Well, he delegated. He learned that from johnny tori appeared he deserves the biography of his own, but im not going to read it. That is for somebody else. A great delegator. Al didnt get his hands dirty with the shoe shine kit and he didnt get his hands are good with the murders. St. Valentines day massacre, which if you would like me, one morning i had 12 different books spread out in my office as i was trying to arrive at certainty and every single one of them had a different version of who did what to whom. So i gave up on trying to settle the question once and for all. When the st. Valentines day massacre took place, al capone was throwing a party for miami City Government officials and his miami homes. And that is one of the ways he got away with it. No murder was other pinned on hand as everybody seems to know. He went to jail for tax evasion and even that was very shaky because income tax was so new and there were so many other differences in the law at the time. Another question. The background of how you came to write the book. Thats a very interesting story. All of my books began everything i write weekends with either an idea that i have are questions that i want to find an answer for. This one in a sense was a whole lot of questions i wanted answers for. But it began when a young man with the surnamed capone wanted to know his Family History. He heard a project to a version of his Family History that one of his uncles or perhaps even his own grandfather could then an illegitimate son of al capone. And he, through a friend of his contact with the friends sister who worked in publishing in new york city and she phoned me one day and said what should i tell him . Should i tell him to get a private detective or should i tell him to get a ghostwriter . I said i dont know because i dont really know what it is they want to find out. She said she would get back to me and she would let me know if perhaps i could help her and help him. I started reading books. I went to the library and picked out two or three books about al capone and i thought this was an incredibly fascinating man and having been a former journalist and investigative reporter, i thought wow, wouldnt this be the scoop of the century. One thing led to another and i started out to write the book. So i went to the agent and a publisher and told them i wanted to write about al capone and ill never forget the shocked expression on their faces. But i am very happy to say that they both decided that it might be a pretty decent book so why didnt i go ahead and write it. I just want to remind you that there is books available [inaudible] , then use the microphone so we can hear you. The microphone is right here. Here we go. Why do you think people in bulgaria for tg could stand, what particular aspect of al capone did they admire . His murdering or extortion . It really boggles the mind, doesnt it . I wish i could give you an answer. I think there are many, many answers to such a question. But those countries i do hate to generalize, but they do have a reputation for reputable behavior and perhaps that has something to do with it. There are a lot of games there, a lot of poverty. In romania, in particular, i know romania because i read about saul steinberg. I dont know about bulgaria and other countries. The poverty, the ghetto like ways certain ethnic groups after this. There are so many parallels to the early years of the 20th century. I i think perhaps that might have something to do with it. They look at this immigrant boy in brooklyn who became a success and they may think that is the way for them to go. Other than that i cant answer it. [inaudible] yes, please. Going along with the different culture and being attracted to him, theres a lot of myth within mexico like albert dey, who asserted this Robin Hood Type and maybe they have some sort a list of their own that sort of goes along with al capone. I noticed that with a bunch of Different Countries but they all seem to have dismissed this Robin Hood Type character in type character in maybe that is why it they are sort of like grabbing onto as far as idealizing him. Sure. Excellent observation. Go in once. Ive had the joy and pleasure of reading the book and it is phenomenal. One of the things they understand that distinguishes this book is because of your talk and work with the family about it, the man is more human than weve ever known this side of him committed family man from their point of view. Could you say some more about that now . The sure. As i said, a hot one son always known as sunny. Perhaps because sunday was a sickly child, sonny did not go to school and help the west and think the seventh grade. He was homeschooled in may was very protective of sonny. That might have had something to do with why he did not follow his father into a life of crime. But also, i believe may was responsible and that they wanted to sonny to grow up street if we will. Sonny went to notre dame. He started at notre dame and the joy that al felt and his son being a student at Notre Dame University was beyond stratospheric. So, sonny had or daughters. He married his High School Sweetheart and of the four daughters, one of them died of cancer and the three others are still alive. I have a great pleasure of getting to know them as well as the many other family or his. They were young. They were children, very small children. But they were old enough to have strong memories of their grant father and their grandmother and they told me the stories of growing up in miami and told me the stories of being at the island house at their grand parents who adored them. They lived to be 86. Al died when he was 48. She was 50 then, so she lived a very long life after his dad. She would often visit these grandchildren and she would tell them stories as one of them said to me, it was momma may. They said it was the reality and of course with rosecolored glasses. We understood that. He knew it. But weve loved her so we let her tell us these stories. So that was how a lot of family back round came in. Then something very interesting. When i first started talking to the granddaughters and i had met a couple of other family members in the chicago area who are the descendents of one of his brothers and then someone phoned me and that coming in now, im living in the midwest and i know a whole big family here and maybe you would like to talk to them. They have another name. They were all deeply closeted, all brothers except ralph changed their name from capone and deep history of lifetime. They wanted to get away from under his shadow. I joke about this, but this is true. And responsible for so many family reunions i cant tell you because i introduced the peasants on the west coast to the midwest cousins to the chicago area cousins to the eastern cousins and theyve all met each other. Ive been able to see some of these reunions, the great emotion that takes place when they see each other. So i have lots of tories from lots of different family members and friends. There was a 96yearold woman still alive who knew many people in al capones immediate personal world. My job was to take all of these stories into factor then into what shall we call it, the most object is, the most real, the most probable possible version of this place. And so that is what i try to do. It is interesting to me the reviews and comments are starting to come out. The internet is a great thing. We all do this and say what we think on it. There was one man just the other day who wrote he was a good family man, that hitler loved his dog, too. You know, there is going to be that kind of response to the book and its probably appropriate and probably necessary because he was he had so many facets of his personality. Everyone i talked to, particularly granddaughters, we would use for like a magna, conundrum, read all they all read the book and im happy to say very positive things to say about it. We all agree that my book is the first step. It is not the final word. I hold the view that no biography is ever definitive. Every generation needs its own. We dont know the questions the next generation is going to want to get answers for. We can only take care of our own time and offer possibilities for further research, for the writing and thinking, further understanding and thats how i see this book. I see this book as a tool that other writers are going to need to explore different asset of al capones life and work. [applause] lets end with a very short story, which by the way [inaudible] we have the forensic evidence, the bullets from st. Valentines day is what lots of interesting things than we give you a tour of this place but we also have remarkable oral histories. Im going to butcher the last name because im doing this from memory. A Little New York companion, one of capones lieutenants granddaughter came to the museum and told us a wonderful story about al capone which was so sad and why a book like this is so. She says she would come and visit her grandfather in the old peoples home where he was in the same home who was said in a wheelchair with a large fedora that she would not assume all the time. Instead of asking her grandfather who it was, she asked one of the nurses and she said thats ralph capone. He still hangs that he is somebody. And it looks like this that so remind us of the importance of everybodys life and that they sold treasures of memory need to be found and talked about and written about. Thank you so much. Please join us in the front lobby and meet professor deirdre bair bear. [applause] thank you all. You are great ideas. [inaudible you are all a great audience. [applause] [inaudible conversations] thank you so much for coming out. I think what we will do is talk for the first 20, 25 minute and i imagine there will be all sorts of questions specifically pertaining to the boat and questions pertaining to the issues the book has raised about contemporary cases and so we can sort spinoff from there. So, i guess where should we start . Again come to thank you for me to do this. Absolutely. Thanks to the Wilson Center where is the fellow from january to may of 2015 when i was hard at work on this book. So it is very nice to be able to speak to all of you here at this great institution. Give us the back story of how you and it up id love to talk about that. So i actually came across this case of brian reagan who in the book is the spy who couldnt spell. I came across the case back in 2009, on a lark gone to the fbi lab in quantico to interview a crypt analyst and i wanted to hear about his last story, his name was dan olson. And he told me about a variety of cases and most of them involve codes that prison gangs use to communicate with each other and then right at the end of his little 10 minute talk to me, he described this case. And he said you know, i worked on solving some of the code that this five brian regan had used and i thought