Alphonse Capone cocked one blue-clad leg over another blue-clad leg in Chicago's Federal Court last week, and every newshawk in the courtroom* gasped in amazement. Snorkey wore no garters.
As acutely sensitive to Snorkey Capone's sartorial condition as the newshawks were: the jury that was trying him for attempting to evade payment of a $215,000 Federal Tax on $1.038,000 income from 1924 to 1929; Judge James Herbert Wilkerson; Prosecutor George Emmerson Q. Johnson; Defense Attorneys Michael Ahern and Albert Fink. After hearing Snorkey linked to Cicero gambling houses ("gold-belching pits of evil" to eloquent Michael Straus of the New York Evening Post) and hearing accounts of lavish personal and household expenditures in Florida (TIME, Oct. 19) the judge, the jury and the reporters had been treated to a detailed description of the rich raiment in which Gangster Capone clothed himself. Eleven rustic jurors and one from the city had listened, gaping, to witnesses who told about the $135 suits he bought by the half-dozen, the $27.50 shirts ordered by the dozen, the $20 hats & shoes, $150 overcoats, the 30 diamond belt buckles for which he had paid $275 each.
The newshawks looked temporarily baffled, then went out and began writing stories about who would succeed Snorkey as gang chief. Consensus was that it would be cocky, sleek-haired Hymie Levin, not his quieter lieutenant, Murray Humphries. Editor Jack Leach of The Daily Northwestern, student paper at Northwestern University, published an editorial entitled "Get This, Capone," warning Snorkey not to attend any more football games.
Next move for the prosecution was to call bald, bespectacled Fred Ries, who testified he handled the finances of four Cicero gambling houses, gave the checks to wizened little Bobby Barton, chauffeur for Jack Gusick, Capone's "financial secretary." Barton, known as "The Little Man," did not testify, but kept popping in & out of court to be identified. Snorkey seemed interested in Ries's testimony, caused spectators to recall gossip that gangsters were looking for him since he helped to get Gusick a five-year sentence. A handwriting expert identified Capone's signature on one of the checks Ries said were gambling profits. Up jumped Prosecutor Johnson, spoke his first words of the trial:*
"The Government rests."
The Defense was not ready. Sadly, indignantly Lawyer Fink protested that it was unfair to give him no warning. Judge Wilkerson was unimpressed, said the defense would have to be ready by 10 a. m. next day.