Al Capone's niece coming to Crystal Lake to clear up mobster's reputation

There was a time when Deirdre Marie Capone hid her last name.

But at 76 years old, she’s channeling her strong Capone genes into a single mission – she wants people to know the truth about her late uncle, the infamous mobster Al Capone. Yes, he broke the law, but he wasn’t a monster, she said.

“Just the things they say about him and the different historical facts that have been written are simply not true,” she said. “It was very difficult for me to grow up in the city of Chicago with the last name Capone. So many people believe most of the stuff they read, and it’s just not true.”

Speaking at 3 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Capone intends to clear up decades of what she calls half-truths and falsehoods while promoting her book, “Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story from Inside His Family.” She also is finishing a screenplay based on the book for a movie she expects to be released by early 2017.

At a cost of $15 a person, the program is part of the Raue’s Artful Women Series, dedicated to exploring current issues in a format to enrich, inspire, educate and entertain.

The grandniece of Al Capone, Deirdre Marie Capone is believed to be the last member of the family with the name Capone. Her grandfather was Al Capone’s older brother, Ralph Capone, listed in 1930 as Public Enemy No. 3 to Al Capone’s Public Enemy No. 1 label.

Al Capone died on Deirdre’s seventh birthday in 1947. She knew him after his incarceration in Alcatraz for tax evasion, and he taught her how to ride a bike and play the mandolin.

A second-grader at the time of his death, Deirdre was enrolled in a private Catholic school in Chicago using her middle name as her last. But after Al Capone’s death, she said, the entire Capone family attended her first Communion. Newspaper reporters picked up on it, snapping pictures and writing stories.

Soon, all of her classmates and their families knew her heritage.

Two weeks later, the entire second-grade class was invited to a birthday party, except her.

“No one was allowed to have anything to do with me,” she remembered. “It hurt because I didn’t know what I did wrong. It was very painful to grow up in the city of Chicago. In 1972, I fled the city and went to Minnesota. No one knew me. My wings spread and strong Capone genes came through.

“For a long time, I hated God for making me a Capone.”

She went by her married name for years, not even telling her four children her maiden name until they ranged in age from 9 to 14 years old.

One of her sons came home from school talking about how he had learned about the Capone family in school.

“I said, ‘Kids, I’ve got something to tell you. I was born Deirdre Marie Capone. Al Capone was my uncle.’ They looked at me, back at each other and back at me again, and all four in unison went, ‘Cool, mom.’ I wasn’t expecting that,” she said.

At the encouragement of her son, she set out to clear up inaccuracies about her uncle by writing a book.

“I’m a very old woman, but I’m very strong. I think there is a message there I can share,” she said. “I have no ego. I don’t boast or brag. That’s not what I’m about. What I’m about is getting the truth out there.”

Among the most glaring of inaccuracies, she said, is her uncle being credited as the force behind what has been dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the 1929 murder of six mob associates and a mechanic of Chicago’s North Side gang led by Bugs Moran. At the time, Capone was said to have headed up the rival gang on Chicago’s South Side.

Deirdre said she’s researched everything possible, including prison records, old newspapers, every book written about the Capones and more.

“I have proof in my book, backed up by history, no Capone had anything to do with [the massacre],” Deirdre said. “We think we know who did it. I’m not free to say that right now.”

Her uncle, known to be involved in bootlegging and gambling, ran more than 300 businesses and had more than 200 people on his payroll, she said.

The Capones opened the first soup kitchen after the stock market crash and donated to charities, she said.

“[Al Capone’s] depicted as a kind of mindless, brainless thug. They weren’t mindless. They were very smart businessmen,” she said of her ancestors. “No bootlegger in the world could have been in business longer than a week without the cooperation of politicians and policeman. Nobody sees that part of things.”