"Big Bill" Buddies With Bad, Bad Bootleggers? Believe It.

By Karl Klockars in News on Jun 2, 2009 6:40PM

If you've ever hoped for a "smoking gun" photo connecting a Mayor of Chicago with a major criminal figure, today could be the day you've been waiting for. No, it's not a photo of the current Mayor Daley taking a big fat check from Tony Rezko. No, it's not a photo of the elder Daley palling around with Sam Giancana. It's not even a picture of Michael Bilandic and John Wayne Gacy.

No, the mayor in question is William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson, and the criminal in the same photo as him is none other than Alphonse "Scarface" Capone. The Tribune today documents the discovery of the photo by a utility worker in a vacant building. The photo was passed forward to John Binder, a professor at UIC, and the author of "The Chicago Outfit." How significant is the shot? The Trib breaks it down:

The timing of the photo is intriguing, Binder said, because Capone was at the height of his power in Chicago and Thompson faced re-election the following year. Thompson lost that election and, that same year, Capone was indicted and later convicted on income tax evasion.

"[Thompson] was recovering from surgery and he had an election coming up. Maybe he had called in the faithful to go over his plans?" Binder said. "We can only imagine."

The Chicago Syndicate site has been on the story for a couple weeks now, and expands the discovery a little. The photo is anywhere from 3-4 feet across, showing all the attendees to the resort.

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." During the next few days, 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 vest and pearl gray fedora, the same type fedora Capone wore in a 1929 mug shot taken by Philadelphia police.

Hunting for Capone's face in photos of St. Joseph's residents is nothing new, as this article from MyWebTimes discusses. Capone had been long rumored to have been at the resort through the years, but only now has anything concrete been revealed. Another small piece of trivia from the MWT article? Charles Lindbergh parachuted into beautiful and scenic Wedron when his plane ran out of gas. But whatever happened to the St. Joseph's Health Resort itself? Gone condo. Big surprise.