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Capone's Wis. hideout sells for $2.6 million

WAUSAU — The one-time gangster’s house is built of stone with 18-inch thick walls and protected with guard towers, just in case G-men or goons with machine guns inside violin cases come calling.

Chicago mobster Al Capone, local legend says, used the 37-acre lake nearby for seaplanes carrying shipments of bootleg alcohol, before they were loaded onto trucks bound for the speakeasies of Chicago in the days of Prohibition.

Capone’s hideout, 407 acres of wooded property in northern Wisconsin about 150 miles northwest of Wausau, is owned now by the bank that foreclosed on it more than a year ago after no other bidders emerged at the $2.6 million floor price.

But Chippewa Valley Bank, which bought the site for the minimum bid during a five-minute sheriff’s sale Thursday in Hayward, doesn’t want to own it for long. So what the lender describes as a "very private and pristine" property with some notorious gangster history is still on the block.

Other parties are certainly interested, the bank’s Vice President Joe Kinnear said — but for something less than $2.6 million.

He said at least four people want to buy the property, perhaps to restore it to what it once was — a restaurant, museum and tourist area.

"It looks like we are going to have our hands full trying to get rid of it to these other individuals,“ Kinnear said. "We will market it and sell it. Somebody will buy it."