Saturday Morning, January 21, 2023
The Sword in the Stone
Silence, punctuated by the rolling rhythm of the rail, blanketed the Federal agents sitting in the passenger car. The clicking wheels beneath, in metronome precision, marked milestones along the journey. Chicago to Atlanta. A cargo so dangerous, the trip was nonstop. Few words were spoken. There weren't any left. A two-week trial had consumed all the oxygen in the courtroom.
James Muir bronze, Last Embrace, 20" H.
It was a final goodbye for crime boss Al Capone as he departed Chicago, heading to Federal prison, never to return.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, the king of Chicago crime, Public Enemy Number One, had just been dethroned, convicted of tax evasion. Scarface, his street name, had controlled Chicago's crime syndicate throughout the Roaring Twenties, absolute power maintained with intimidation, bribery, and murder. It was said a mouse couldn't steal a piece of cheese without Capone's blessing. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven men were machine gunned into chopped meat, was an example of his signature. His heavy hand ruled unabated. He moved freely, ruling his city. Few challenges lasted beyond the first squeezed trigger.
Louis Gossin bronze knight, on marble & slate base, 23 1/2" H.
Sanity returned to the city courtesy of Special Agent Eliot Ness, the man who stopped
Capone's Roaring Twenties crime spree in the city-by-the-lake.
Capone swaggered into the courtroom, his cocky smile anointing the jury. Each serving member had been persuaded into his pocket. The crime boss knew there would be no conviction here, not if these jurors valued their lives. Federal prosecutors, weighed down by Capone's criminality, could only indict him on tax evasion. Still, this would be enough to remove him from the streets of Chicago. Federal Judge James Wilkerson refused Capone's initial guilty plea, a move opening the door to plea bargaining. There would be no bargaining here, stated the judge. Capone never worried. This tainted jury would find him not guilty. Capone sat behind the defendant table, beaming, staring at each juror, glowering at the judge. No one in the world could untie his Gordian knot.
Gee...Man
Judge Wilkerson entered the courtroom. After a sweeping glance across the room, he ordered the jury to leave the room and report to another courtroom down the hallway. A second jury now entered, replacing the first. Lady Justice lifted her blindfold, blinked and winked. A murmur broke across the room. In a thirteen-day ordeal, the government presented its case. Capone's lawyers spun and swung, ripping the evidence into shreds. But in the end, the verdict was guilty.
Joseph L. Rusby breast drill, 1912, Newark, NJ
This auction will start the selling of an extensive tool collection covering America's great steel industrial revolution. Many carry the endoresement of bankrobbers making late night withdrawals.
Capone was unmoved. He could still run Chicago from his Federal prison cell in Atlanta, but his plans were dashed when he was transferred to Alcatraz, a remote island in the San Francisco Bay offering all the amenities of Napoleon's St. Helena. From this spot, Capone remained isolated, never to return to the Windy City.
A Star is Born
Who was the man responsible for dethroning Al Capone? Meet Special Agent Eliot Ness. His appointment to the task was supported by President Hoover and the Justice Department. Eliot moved to Chicago, the place of his birth, with his handpicked team. These agents were irreproachable, one hundred percent immune to corruption. It was a bold move. Death was on their doorstep every day. Esteemed for their honesty and loyalty to Eliot Ness, they earned the name Untouchables.
James Muir, child & doll maquette, 9 1/2" H.
This is a smaller version of Muir's four foot sculpture. The child represents the European refugees displaced by WWII. She holds a German Kathe Kruse doll. The finished sculpture resides at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial concentration camp. A strong reminder why criminal despots should never have a chance to seize control of any government. Only a free democracy offers defense.
Capone enjoyed a lavish lifestyle but was careful not to maintain personal bank accounts. Cash ruled his world. So Eliot Ness went on the offense, raiding and seizing any and all evidence from Capone's businesses. It was here the G Men discovered ledgers filled with evidence of money earned. It was to be Capone's Achilles' heel. Ness's success in building a legal case strong enough to imprison this titan was so eventful, he entered the public consciousness becoming as famous as the crime boss himself. In fact, Eliot Ness's exploits were immortalized by cartoonist Chester Gould in his newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy.
James Muir bronze, In Tierce Point. The term is for the position holding a sabre in a cavalry charge.
Once Upon a Time
The miles ticked by as the train headed south. Here, for the first time, Eliot Ness and Al Capone met. Little was recorded of their conversation, assuming there was one. Few doubt it. Capone was still dangerous. More so now. It is here our story starts, a twisted tale of irony, each man's fate so parallel. Their exploits reached the thin air of legend. These stories climb on their own momentum. Told and retold until they reach this plateau. It is a feat reserved for the few. Both were young. Late twenties. Early thirties. Both were determined. Both victims. Capone earned his status through brutality, Ness through uncompromising ethics. Two locomotives on the same train track steaming headon never end well. In essence, that which made them, destroyed them.
Alongside the wooden block plane is a most unusual screwdriver, the Archimedean Spiral Drill, Reid's Lightning Brace No. 1, by Alban Hooke Reid, Phila., patent Dec. 12, 1882. Knob is rosewood. 19" L.
At only 48, Al Capone died, ravaged by neurosyphillis, a penalty of promiscuous youth. His condition brought on dementia. His death was slow and very painful, much like watching your childhood home demolished, one brick at a time. He felt himself slipping away, the ultimate sentence for such a powerful man. At 54, Eliot Ness passed away. Post Chicago, he was assigned to other cities to cleanup crime. The work was tedious, the rewards limited. No one in the public wanted their bookie jailed, or their prostitutes prohibited, or their booze removed. Let's be honest. Not really. Look around you today. Idealism is as lonely an island as Alcatraz. Very quietly, Eliot Ness would succumb to alcoholism. Two failed marriages and one destroyed soul later, he died. The scales of justice balancing at death.
In their respective funeral homes, the grandfather clocks in the hallway ticked, their pendulums swinging in metronome precision. A silence blanketed the mourners. An open window. A moving curtain. A slight breeze whispering the word we ourselves forever ask. Why?
Doors open at 8 AM. Auction starts at 9 AM. PA 1265L [bb]
Carl Pugliese bronze, Enlistment Terminated. 14" H.