You couldn't make it up dept no.83 - Brothers under the skin

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Al Capone's oldest brother, Vincenzo (who took the name of an early Western movie star, Richard Hart), became, quite independently of his younger brother, a frontier lawman in Nebraska. The same opportunity made both brothers: while young Al went to Chicago and swiftly grew rich on Prohibition smuggling, his brother went to Homer, Nebraska, enlisted in the police when it was being expanded under the impact of Prohibition, and swiftly became an ideal frontier lawman. Brave, clever, and incorruptible, a deadly shot with a gun (he was a decorated and highly promoted World War One veteran), he was employed to keep whiskey off various Native American reservations, and gained their trust by learning their languages and habits. He actually became town marshall for Homer, to complete the all-round real-life John Wayne story. He was, however, still Italian enough to acknowledge his family, and in the late forties he revealed his identity to his wife and son and allowed his son to take part in a family reunion and meet his grandmother - and his famous uncle (who, alas, was by then a syphilitic wreck). Family links even managed what probably no other consideration could have: Capone/Hart, apparently in financial trouble in the last years of his life, accepted a little financial help from his brother Ralph, apparently without bothering that Ralph had been in Al's paybooks in the days of his glory.

Al Capone himself started out in life as an accountant - a skill that helped him greatly as he built his booze empire in Cicero and points north.