Century-Old Loaded Gun With Possible Tie To Capone Found In Wall Of Distillery

THORNTON, IL — A handgun believed to date back to the Chicago area’s Prohibition days or earlier — and maybe even be linked to Al Capone — was discovered in the wall of a historic distillery in Thornton.

Employees at Thornton Distilling Co. found the gun, which was loaded and in a leather holster, while working on the building and contacted police, who identified the weapon as a Colt from the early 1900s.

“Based on its condition and location, it appears the firearm had been concealed inside the wall for many years,” Thornton police said in a social media post, adding the gun was not known to be associated with any criminal activity and was returned to the property owner.

The distillery in a social media post said the firearm may be tied to the famed Chicago mobster Al Capone, but that the weapon’s origin was unknown and that the business was consulting with an expert.

“At any other workplace, this would be a very unusual thing to happen, but here with all the history of this building, it kind of makes sense,” head distiller Ari Klafter told WGN.

Dating back to the 1857 construction of the Bielfeldt Brewing Co., the building is the oldest standing brewery in Illinois and once housed Capone’s largest bootlegging facility during Prohibition, according to the distillery.

The gun was in a wall inside an underground catacomb below the business, according to WGN.

“We always heard lore, stories about that underground catacomb, that’s where Capone would take people and they had tunnels down there,” Klafter told WGN.

“We always took that with a grain of salt, and then actually seeing this from that era breathes new life into some of these stories we’ve been hearing.”