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20 Significant Mafia Hits

Khalid Elhassan February 19, 2019 23 min

9. Frankie Yale Discovers That Robbing Al Capone Is a Bad Idea

Frankie Yale, right, and Al Capone, left. National Crime Syndicate

Frankie Yale (1893 – 1928), the hitman who took out “Big Jim” Colosimo, got his start as a teenager in NYC’s Five Points Gang, where he earned a reputation as a ferocious fighter. By age 19, he had his own protection and extortion racket, which operated out of a Coney Island bar, where Al Capone got his start, working for Yale. From protection rackets, Yale soon branched out into prostitution, running a string of whorehouses. When Prohibition arrived, he got into illegal booze, and became one of Brooklyn’s biggest bootleggers.

Yale and Al Capone were friendly, but things soured in 1927 when Yale got greedy, and started hijacking the Chicago gangster’s trucks. A meeting failed to resolve matters, and Capone set plans in motion for his former boss’ downfall. On July 1st, 1928, Yale received a call that something was wrong with his wife. Refusing to wait for his usual escort of bodyguards, he jumped into his armor-plated car and sped off, only to be intercepted en route by gunmen who riddled his car and shot him to death with armor-piercing bullets.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.