Page:Summary Report of Al Capone for the Bureau of Internal Revenue.djvu/14

SI-7085-F gambling place,playing the games and getting the low down on their activities. When we arrived the place was put under arrest, and everybody, including our operators, were lined up against the wall (I mean Hoover and this other party). I was stationed as guard at the front entrance and told to let nobody out or in. There was a crowd congregated in the street that rapidly reached three or four-thousand people. The noon hour crowd at the Western Electric was then filling the streets, and the people from the Western Hotel (that time it was called Anton's Hotel) across the street soon learned about this, including Al Capone, who came across the front door and tried several times to get in there. I stayed there and held the door but he tried to push it open three or four times. I closed it each time. Finally he made a desperate effort to get the door open and I opened it part way, and then I discovered from his scarred face who he was. I knew from pictures and other information that I had. He said, 'Let me in, I am the owner of the place', and I greeted him, and said, 'Come on in Al, we are looking for you'. He went on upstairs where our party was dismantling and loading gambling equipment and bringing it down to the street to be loaded into trucks, and we had backed up to the front of this entrance. I think we also had a truck at the rear, thinking that we might load each way. I am not sure whether they brought much of that out the back way, or whether it all came out the front. We loaded two or three truckloads full of wheels and all sorts of gambling equipment. When this job was finished, I went out of the front door with Morgan, a paid investigator, and the crowd milled around so, trying to get at us, and knock us down. They followed us all the way across the street and as I was trying to get into my car, I was slugged and my nose was broken. Morgan also was knocked down and they tried to kick his face in and I got him on his feet, and the two of us made a run for our car, and I got in there with blood spouting from my face and nose, all over the wind shield, wheel, and my clothes. We drove through to La Grange and convoyed these loads of gambling equipment, and they were locked in the La Grange police station for safe keeping. This evidence was used in a trial before Judge Dreher of Brookfield, and although this evidence was brought into the case, it was dismissed for lack of evidence. Capone was dressed as though he had been suddenly called from his own hotel, across the street, by noise of the raid. I am quite positive that he had no necktie and that his shirt was opened and unbuttoned at the neck. - 13 -