Lindsey Graham

Jonathan Ige is the author of Get Capone, the secret plot that captured America's most wanted gangster.

Ige also won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2023 biography of Martin Luther King.

Our conversation is next.

Jonathan Eig, welcome to American History Tellers.

Thanks for having me.

So I think we should start with the big question.

Did Al Capone order the St.

Valentine's Day Massacre?

And if he didn't, who do you think may have done it?

You say you found this letter in the FBI archives.

So that prompts me to think, because this crime, people were horrified by the massacre, grabbed headlines like no other crime in its day.

And it also had an effect on the FBI and the new Hoover administration.

So what effect did the St.

Valentine's Day massacre have at the federal level?

Let's talk about Capone a little bit and his business empire.

I mean, if you were a gangster in 1920s Chicago, you could make money in any sort of ways.

Bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, racketeering, you name it.

But once Al Capone rose in the ranks of the West Side Gang, give us a sense of his business interests, what he called the outfit.

The outfit is a very loose knit structure.

It occurs to me that this chaos may be part of his shield.