Capone Correspondence Revealing

on Dienstag, 08 Oktober 2013. Posted in General Autograph News

The Manuscript Society News, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, 2013

“Here is your friend Al Capone, writing you this letter from here.” A recently sold cache of correspondence from the collection of Capone’s Florida physician pulls back the curtain on the once-fearsome mobster’s final years.

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Courtesy of RR Auction 


The letters show a man with the mind of a child; a recluse who whiled away his time fish- ing, golfing, and playing cards, rarely leaving his sprawling Miami estate and then only with men capable of controlling his savage outbursts.
Capone’s doctor in those days, Kenneth Phillips, kept a file on his famous patient. It included medical correspondence with Dr. Joseph Moore, a Baltimore specialist who had treated Capone for late-stage neurosyphilis. The disease, diagnosed during Capone’s stint at Alcatraz, ravaged his mind and body. In Janu- ary 1947 Capone suffered a stroke and died soon after at age 48. Dr. Phillips’s medical records of his patient’s last days, along with an official copy of Capone’s death certificate, were featured in a collection recently sold by RR Auction.