Lindsey Graham

Following this meeting with McCormick, Hoover dispatched federal agents to Chicago, but they faced the same problem the local police did.

They could not find sufficient evidence that Capone had ordered the massacre.

But federal authorities were not going to let that deter them.

They still wanted Capone locked up.

As far as they were concerned, he was public enemy number one, and even if they couldn't pin the massacre on him, maybe they could get him for something else.

Leading the charge was United States Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrand.

As a young woman, Willebrand had taken night classes at the University of Southern California, earning her law degree before accepting a position as a public defender for women in Los Angeles.

There, she handled over 2,000 cases, building a strong reputation, and by 1921, legal and political leaders in California recommended her for Assistant Attorney General in the Harding administration.

This made her the highest-ranking woman in the federal government at the time, and throughout the 1920s, she led vigorous enforcement of prohibition laws.

But after several frustrating years of failing to put away gangsters like Capone, Willa Brandt knew she had to come up with a different strategy.

It was clear that Capone and other gangsters were getting rich from their illegal activities, and they weren't paying any taxes on their earnings either.

So Willa Brandt decided they would go after Capone for tax evasion.

At the time, it was a novel legal approach, and many other lawyers initially dismissed it as ridiculous and paradoxical.

How could the government tax income that was illegally attained?

Didn't taxation inherently legitimize the activity?

But Willebrandt had an ally in Chicago, a U.S.

attorney named George Emerson Johnson.

And a few days after the St.

Valentine's Day massacre, Johnson issued Capone a subpoena to testify in front of a federal grand jury.

The subject wasn't the massacre, but rather his income.