WEDRON (AP) – A Chicago professor thinks he finally has gotten the goods on Chicago Mayor William Hale, "Big Bill" Thompson and Al "Scarface" Capone.
His key piece of evidence comes courtesy of a photo snapped long ago in La Salle County by an Ottawa photographer.
On Dec. 9, 1930, a panoramic shot was taken of about 300 people standing in front of and on top of St. Joseph's Health Resort, along the Fox River in Wedron. The occasion was William Hale Thompson Day, because Thompson was at the resort recuperating from appendix surgery.
Thompson was considered by some the best mayor money could buy, holding Chicago's highest office from 1915 to 1923 and again from 1927 to 1931 smack in the middle of the Capone era. Many historians also believe Thompson was smack in the middle of Capone's pocket.
However, the hard proof connecting the two was not there.
Until perhaps now, according to John Binder, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a researcher into Windy City crime.
He recently bought a print of the Wedron photo from a man who worked for the gas company in Chicago. The man said he entered a vacant building on the North Side to disconnect gas lines and found the photo on top of a garbage can.
Binder examined the approximately three-foot long photo. Thompson was easily identifiable, but determining whether Capone was present among the sea of mugs was similar to playing the game "Where's Waldo?"
Binder went online to search for information about the picture, coming upon an excerpt about Thompson and Wedron in the book, "Capone's Cornfields: The Mob in the Illinois Valley." Binder kept studying the photo until it came time for him to yell, "Eureka!"
Binder said he is "99 percent plus positive" Capone is standing about dead center on the roof, diagonally from Thompson, who is below on the resort's steps. The man Binder tapped for Capone is smiling, clad in an unbuttoned overcoat and wearing a pearl-gray fedora with the brim turned down turned down the same way the brim was turned down on a fedora Capone wore in a 1929 mug.
Several men on either side of the possible Capone also sport pearl gray fedoras — a trademark among the Capone gang. Binder is certain one of the men is Mike Spranze, an underworld figure close to Capone. Another one looks similar to a man visible in a newsreel of Capone leaving the federal courthouse in Chicago in 1931.
Capone was 31 years old at the time of the St. Joseph's photo, standing 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall and tipping the scales at more than 220 pounds.
Binder showed the photo to two other Capone experts Scarface scholar Jeff Thurston and Mars Eghigian, biographer of Capone successor Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti and they agreed with him. Capone and Thompson in the same picture.
"It makes it undeniable there was a connection. This explicitly links them. This wasn't downtown Chicago, where they could have accidentally come together," Binder said. "This photo is historically significant."
Binder is also convinced this links well with La Salle County lore that says Capone visited the county, in particular the Wedron resort.
Binder also said one clue Thompson and Capone were in cahoots was the fact the Chicago Tribune more than once ran stories accusing Thompson of accepting money from Capone, stories which Thompson did not deny and for which he did not try to sue. After Thompson died in 1944, almost $1.5 million cash was found in his safety deposit boxes. Thompson never made more than $22,500 annually during his 12 years as mayor.
