Capone Correspondence Revealing

“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.

 

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.