8th Grade Winner - Al Capone

Creepy, dark, intense, however very, very well researched and very, very well written. Awesome job Chayeh, you absolutely deserve $100 for your work. Keep writing, you have a great talent.

Chayeh P
Dixon Middle School.
Eighth Grade.

If I Could Meet Anyone, It Would Be…

If I could meet anyone in the world, from any country or time period, it would the infamous mob boss Al Capone. I want to meet Mr. Capone because of his reign of crime on the entire world, and because I have an interest in the minds of the criminally insane and plan on making it a career someday. I believe that he has such an influence on the mobs and gangs today because of what did and believed in, so being able to meet him would be a very big and educating opportunity. There would be many questions I would want to ask him, things I would tell him and things I would record if I was able to finally meet him. His impact on the crime world and also the well-known Italian mob is huge, and dreaming of being a criminal psychiatrist, meeting Mr. Al Capone would be a very opportune moment to look further into the mind of one of the most criminal men of all history, perhaps find one common factor between different crime lords to why they do what they do.

I would want Al Capone to feel as comfortable as ever, so I would want to meet him at his Florida home near Miami where he returned after being held in a prison institution in 1939. Personally, it would be comfortable for him because that is where he lived the remaining years of his life after serving seven years in there very harsh environment of the Atlanta Prison Alcatraz. It would the best for him, because he lived there with his wife for eight years before he passed away of a stroke and pneumonia. Perhaps if he was comfortable enough I would be able to ask the questions I wanted without any distractions.

Certainly, I would not meet him in Alcatraz because of the mental stress put on him being institutionalized. Not only did he leave with paresis (a disease derived from Syphilis); which lead him to live with the mentality of a 12-year-old, but Alcatraz was known for being strictly disciplinary, which most likely lead to the stress. The home would be very friendly and nostalgic for him, so that would be the ideal place to meet him if I were to meet him.

The first question I would ask Mr. Capone is: “Why did you do the things you did?” I would ask this question because it would let me know a lot more about his life rather than searching up the information in encyclopedias and media from the internet. This question would be very informative coming from him because the things said about him could be misunderstood and taken differently by others because of opinion. Not only could this let us know the way he rationalized it, but it could also give us more insight on why usual mobsters kill and do the things they do. There could be similarities between his gang and the gangs of today. Because I am fascinated with the criminal mind, this could give me great experience and it would also let me know how some criminals make the things they do okay.

It is a very intriguing, the mind of the criminally insane. The way some of them think and rationalize the crimes the commit is very interesting, and seeing Al Capone try to persuade into thinking what he did was right might let me understand the things some criminals do. As I said earlier, there are many other questions I would ask him such as ‘Why would you risk being executed at Alcatraz for the people you’ve killed?’ and ‘Why would you put your family’s life in danger, especially your wife Mae?’ There are a lot of things I would ask him, just like I said in the previous paragraphs.

I would like him to know that his life has affected me greatly because it has boosted me to look more into criminal insanity cases than just domestic and simple mental instability. He has affected my country in a way that no one can really describe in a concise way. Crime rates weren’t exactly sprung by him, but I believe the mob world has grown since Al Capone’s crime spree in the early years of America. He is a big inspiration to me despite his wicked motivations of the things he did such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. No matter the intimidation inflicted upon me by his wide range of body-guards, gang members, and him added onto it, I would be elated to meet with him and see how he reacted with the changes of society since his life in the early 1920s.

Al Capone was originally the mobster I wanted to research in my elementary days, he pushed me to think that psychiatry was my trail to my future, but I never took the path because I was only a child. Crime has always been an interest of mine, but the minds behind it all always have got me researching the things that have happened in said cases. Mr. Capone was a huge inspiration to many king pin’s and crime lords that have gangs started today, I’m convinced. Because of the turn of style of the gangs doesn’t mean the violence and rivalry is different in any other way. I know that Mr. Capone was a ruthless, wanted man. But behind all his hostility towards gangs in the world then, there was a boy who hadn’t lived in society normally since he dropped out of sixth grade and turned the streets at such a young age. In my opinion his power-hungriness drove him to do everything he did, like an addictive drug it was not to be stopped or it would go somewhere that America would regret more than they did.
I believe meeting this man would change everything, my understanding, the world’s understanding if I shared with them his opinions and thoughts, and the way his story was portrayed. His reign of crime locally and not only nationally was huge and it certainly inspires me in ways indescribable. I would love to meet the well-known Italian mob-king Al Capone; if I could have been alive to meet him I would have so much experience.