Al Capone memorabilia sells for $3m at auction

A sale of items belonging to the notorious US gangster Al Capone has raked in $3m (£2.2m) at an auction held over the weekend in California.

Some 174 items were featured, including firearms and personal photographs as well as jewellery and furniture.

The event, called A Century of Notoriety: The Estate of Al Capone, was held at a private club and attracted nearly 1,000 bidders.

The most popular item was Capone's favourite gun, which sold for $860,000.

The gun is believed to have reached the highest selling price for a 20th-Century firearm sold at auction, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Al Capone was a Chicago mobster known as Public Enemy Number One for his relatively brief reign as crime boss in the 1920s during the Prohibition era. He was eventually imprisoned for tax evasion, and spent several years locked up in Alcatraz - the infamous island prison in San Francisco Bay.

The belongings remained in the possession of his family for almost 75 years after his death in 1947.

Diane Capone - one of of Al Capone's three surviving granddaughters, who lives in California - said the decision to sell the items was based on her and her sisters getting older, Reuters reports.

She also said the increasing threat of wildfires to their homes in northern California had been a factor.