AKA Capone

The Strange Tale of Al Capone’s big brother

Al Capone’s oldest brother Vincenzo was born in Campania in 1892, well before his father would summon his family to America. Fearing for her sickly first-born’s life, his mother administered morning doses of goat milk (some say bull’s blood) to toughen him up.

With one hand on his holster and the other on his rifle barrel, Vincenzo “Jimmie” Capone, alias Richard J. “Two-Gun” Hart, poses with the stills and bootleg he collected on his raids as a Prohibition agent. Photograph courtesy of the State Historical Society of North Dakota

As the firstborn, Vincenzo oversaw his little brothers, trying (and ultimately failing) to keep them out of trouble. There is a story that he used to take the ferry to Staten Island to hang around the local farms, and there he became fascinated with horses and may have visited the ranch of the future cowboy star, William S. Hart, whom he came to idolize. In 1908, when Vincenzo would have been about sixteen, he fled New York. No-one knows why. Some suggest Hart might have encouraged Vincenzo to get out of Brooklyn, others that he fell out with his father when Gabriele destroyed his fiddle, and still others that he may have killed someone in a brawl. In any event, he went off and joined a circus.

A year before America’s entry into World War I, he joined the army and took part in “Blackjack” Pershing’s futile pursuit of Pancho Villa.

Bayonets at the ready, Hart (far right) and his motley comrades are photographed, probably during the Villa Campaign. Unlike the others, he appears ready to spring into action, and already bears a medal. Photograph courtesy of Jeff McArthur.

When World War I broke out, he was the only Capone to serve. Passing himself off as one James Hart, Vincenzo rose from sniper to lieutenant, and received a Distinguished Service Cross from Pershing himself.

General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing stood a little under six feet. As this indicates, Vincenzo was never the towering older brother some family members recall. Photograph courtesy of Jeff McArthur.

Vincenzo loved westerns and so idolized William S. Hart, that after the war he dubbed himself Richard J. Hart and became “Two Gun Hart”: a Wild-West-show sharpshooter. Drifting westward, he eventually settled among the 500 residents of Homer, Nebraska, where he explained away his neapolitan swarthiness and unusual manner by claiming to be half Indian. He was befriended by a family named Winch who were driving with him one day when their car got swept up in a flash flood. One after another fell into the swirling water, but Vincenzo rescued them all, including their 19 year-old daughter, whom he soon married.

Impressed by stories of his bravery and ambidextrous skill with a Colt .45, the Governor appointed him town marshall. But there wasn’t all that much to marshall in Homer, and he soon tired of arresting drunks and petty thieves.

Then, in 1920, the Governor recommended him to serve as, of all things for a Capone, a Prohibition agent. He was soon being lionized in Nebraska papers for riding on horseback hither and yon with his six-guns blazing, fearlessly breaking up stills and arresting moonshiners by the dozen.

Hart posing with a Native American, possibly a Lakota Sioux. Photograph courtesy of Jeff McArthur.

Just as Chicago dries deplored his brother Al for violating Prohibition, Nebraska wets hated Vincenzo for enforcing it. His unflagging campaigns snared not only moonshiners but various compromised local lawmen and politicians who spread stories about his brutality and braggadocio.

Eventually he resumed his rounds as an Indian agent, raiding the moonshine operations that targeted the local reservations. In 1927, he served as Calvin Coolidge’s bodyguard when the President came to visit the Black Hills.

But when Prohibition’s repeal followed hard on the Great Depression, Hart could barely make ends meet, and was apparently accused of engaging in brawls and drunkeness, and suspected of breaking into stores at night to steal food for his family.

Apparently as publicity-hungry as his brother Al, a middle-aged Hart poses with his chaps and pearl-handled .45’s against the painted backdrop of an Omaha Indian encampment. Photograph courtesy of Jeff McArthur.

One family legend has it that Jimmy didn’t reunite with his family of origin until after Al was released from prison. But there is testimony that Jimmy had maintained contact with his brothers earlier on, visiting them in Chicago as early as 1924, when he would have been about 32. A local news photographer claimed that Al had proudly squired Vincenzo around, introducing him to all and sundry as his big brother the Prohibition agent, with whom he had struck a deal whereby Al wouldn’t try to sell booze in Vincenzo’s territory and Vincenzo wouldn’t conduct any raids in Al’s.

A family tradition holds that when he first visited the family, he managed to convince his mother of his identity only by reminding her about the goat’s milk (or bull’s blood) she’d given him back in Naples. Perhaps this occurred during one of his later visits, by which time he must have been so changed by his wind-burned, trail-riding life Out West that his own mother couldn’t recognize him. Be that as it may, his children recall that during the Depression he would disappear for weeks at a time and then return temporarily flush with money, presumably contributed by his brothers.

Otherwise, the former Vincenzo “Jimmie” Capone was dead broke, and for the rest of his life had to rely on his little brothers — especially Ralph — to support his wife and sons. In 1950, he for the first time publicly disclosed his true identity as Al Capone’s long-lost big brother in order to testify on Ralph’s behalf, fraudulently but nonetheless successfully claiming ownership of one of “Bottles’” properties to save his little brother from another indictment for tax evasion.

Waiting to testify before the Kefauver Committee, Vincenzo “Jimmy” Capone poses with his Stetson, cane, and adoring wife, the former Kathleen M. Winch, whom he married after rescuing her and her family from a flash flood. Together they raised four sons. By the time this photograph was taken, Al was long dead, otherwise he would never have okayed his brother’s ensemble, especially that tie. But Vincenzo was given permission to wear his Stetson on the witness stand. Photograph courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

Lame and nearly blind from the loss of one eye in a frontier brawl and a cataract in the other, Richard James Hart, alias James Richard Hart, alias Jimmy Capone, alias Vincenzo Capone, died in Homer in 1952.

I highly recommend Jeff McArthur‘s fascinating biography of Vincenzo titled Two Gun Hart: Law Man, Cowboy, and Long-Lost Brother of Al Capone, available on Amazon.

Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Ward. All rights reserved.