Tap Ralph Capone`s Phone

Tap Ralph Capone’s Phone
Location: Montemarte Café, Cicero, IL
Date: sometime 1929
Unit: Eliot Ness and the Untouchables
Ralph Capone took over Al Capone’s rum-running, bootlegging, speakeasy-purveying operation in 1929 and 1930 while Al
was out of commission serving time on gun charges in Pennsylvania. Eliot Ness and his crack prohibition agents wanted to
run a tap on Ralph’s phone line in order to get the inside scoop on the operation, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
[The Situation:]
The Suspect
CAPONE’S HEADQUARTERS
The Elder Capone ran the operation out of
the Montmartre Café in Cicero, Illinois. It
was heavily guarded at all times.
Around back...
Mobsters were stationed in
front and behind the café
around the clock. The
telephone pole with its
all-important terminal box
was in plain view of the rear
guards. Any agent up on the
pole would be a clay pigeon
to the mob’s watchdogs.
Ralph used a phone
located in an alcove
behind the bar in the
Montmartre’s
speakeasy for most
of the Outfit’s
business.
Ralph “Bottles” Capone
1894-1974
The Agent
[The Plan:]
CREATE A DISTRACTION
Four Untouchables, well-known to
Capone’s men and flaunting their
tommy guns, would do a slow, obvious
drive by the Montmartre, drawing away
some of the Mobsters keen to put on
an equal show of strength.
Elliot Ness
1903-1957
SHINNY UP THE POLE
The guards took the bait, leaving the way clear for
Agents Ness and Robsky. Ness stood a tense guard
with his .38, while Robsky climbed the pole to the
terminal box to tap the
telephone wire. With
50 lines running into
the Montmartre’s
building, Robsky
needed to hear a
voice that he
recognized on
Capone’s line.
Al Capone’s older
brother and public
enemy #3 to Al’s
#1, Ralph typically
ran the legitimate
side of the
Capone empire.
He got his
nickname from
the manufacturing
plant he ran
producing bottles
for milk and other
non-alcoholic
beverages.
Meanwhile...
THE INSIDE MAN
A flashily dressed undercover
Bureau of Prohibition Agent named
Marty Lahart had worked his way
into the good graces of Capone and
his men to the point where his
girlfriend “Edna” (really a widow of a
Justice Department agent) would call
him on Ralph Capone’s line. Lahart
arranged for Edna to call him as
Robsky worked his way through the
terminal box.
[Success!]
In a basement apartment three blocks away, Ness and his agents spend months listening
in as Ralph Capone made the illegal hooch flow freely in the Windy City. Transcripts of the
wiretaps show that Capone was already hurting from the efforts of the Untouchables to
curtail his bootlegging operation and the wiretap helped raise the heat a few more notches.
[Justice is served]
In 1931, Al Capone was tried for tax evasion and convicted. Ralph
Capone followed his brother Al to prison—convicted of tax evasion in
1932, he served three years to Al’s 11. Neither brother was ever tried for
the numerous prohibition violations Ness and his team had racked up
against them, but their efforts put a huge dent in Capone’s operations.
Ness was a
23-year-old
college grad
working a dull
insurance job
when he signed
up as an agent of
the Bureau of
Prohibition. He
and his team were
incorruptible (or
“untouchable” as
the press put it) at
a time when
Capone and his
Outfit owned most
of Chicago.
The Aftermath
Bureau of
Prohibition Agents of
the Treasury
Department used
wiretaps routinely in
their pursuit of
bootleggers. Its use
was a matter of wide
debate at the time
and reached the
Supreme Count in the case Olmstead v. United States
(1928). In a five to four decision, the Court determined that
the use of wiretaps did not violate the search and seizure
limits of the 4th Amendment. Justice Louis Brandeis’s
dissenting opinion had a significant impact on later
decisions which put greater restraints on wiretapping
operations. In his dissent, Brandeis rightly predicted that
“the progress of science in furnishing the government with
means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping.”