Al Pacino Was Arrested in Rhode Island in 1961 and Charged With Possession of a Concealed Weapon

Years before he made his movie debut, Pacino was briefly inmate #48634 at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Before he became a famous actor, Al Pacino was arrested in Rhode Island.

Years before making his movie debut, Pacino was briefly inmate #48634 at the Adult Correctional Institutions, which listed his occupation as "unemployed." He'd been picked up by the Woonsocket Police Department early on the morning of Jan. 7, 1961, and charged with possession of a concealed weapon.

Records from the arrest, which went up for auction in 2014, indicate that Pacino spent four nights in jail before he could make bail. A brief item in The Providence Journal referred to "Alfred Pacino, 20, of Manhattan" – who would go on to become one of the most celebrated actors of all time – as a "New York City youth."

One of the Woonsocket police officers who arrested Pacino, William J. O'Coin Jr., recounted the story to The Journal decades later.

He and his partner, William Angell, were parked outside the Mezza Luna restaurant on Park Avenue around 2 a.m. when they noticed a suspicious car circling around, he recalled.

The driver was Vincent J. Calcagni, a 24-year-old North Smithfield man. Pacino was in the passenger seat. Bruce Cohen, a friend from the Bronx, sat in the back.

The officers beamed their flashlights into the car. Inside, they spotted black gloves and masks "like the Lone Ranger's."

"What are you doing with the masks?" O'Coin asked. "Don't tell me. You're coming from a Halloween party."

"We're actors from New York," Pacino and Cohen replied, in O'Coin's retelling.

Inside the car's trunk, Angell found a loaded .38-caliber revolver stuffed inside a box. The three men were searched, handcuffed and taken to the police station for questioning. Pacino was cooperative, O'Coin recalled.

The Journal's archives include one additional detail: There were also two toy pistols in the trunk.

All three men were charged with a felony and held on $2,000 bail, The Journal's archives indicate. They pleaded innocent in Woonsocket district court and the case was referred to a Providence County grand jury, which ultimately declined to indict them.

Pacino has never publicly told his side of the story, so it's unclear why he wasn't convicted – though it probably helped that he wasn't the owner of the car. In O'Coin's recollection, Pacino said that he and Cohen had arrived in Providence by bus earlier that night, and Calcagni picked them up.

Confusingly, the former police officer recalled that Pacino knew Calcagni from "the service" – but Pacino's ACI identification form lists his military service as "none."

Pacino's memoir, "Sonny Boy," which was published in October, doesn't shed any light on how he wound up in Woonsocket on a cold January night. But it does mention that "Bruce," a close friend from childhood, enlisted in the U.S. Army but "got second thoughts, pretended to flip out, and threatened to jump out a window."

That could refer to Cohen – suggesting that he was the one who knew Calcagni from the military.

In his memoir, Pacino writes that Bruce later died from a drug overdose. Calcagni, who became homeless and cycled in and out of jail, also appears to have died. And the officers who arrested them, Angell and O'Coin, are deceased as well.

If there's more to the story, Pacino will have to be the one to tell it.